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Santa Clara County

Santa Clara"Knowledge is power, and Business Objects empowers our workers to help needy recipients get the benefits they deserve."

Ely Turkenitz
director of systems development and support
Social Services Agency of Santa Clara County

Challenge

In 2004 Ely Turkenitz heard a knock. Ely, the director of systems development and support for the Social Services Agency (SSA) of California’s sprawling Santa Clara County, was pretty sure he knew who it was: the CalWORKS Information Network, or CalWIN, a system that maintains case data, automates eligibility determination for public assistance programs, and coordinates the delivery of related benefits.

"CalWIN was the monster at the door," Ely recalls. "Our challenge was to implement this massive system and simultaneously create a reporting environment that would satisfy our business goals. We needed reliable, consistent data. We needed timely input for hundreds of scheduled reports, plus the ability to respond quickly to ad hoc queries. We needed a smooth transition from our legacy reporting system, Hummingbird, with electronic report distribution. And we needed to address all County-specific processes and reporting requirements. It was a very tall order."

CalWIN is California’s name for the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. For Santa Clara County, it is one of two huge systems that manage social services. The other is the Child Welfare Services/Case Management System, or CWS/CMS, which corresponds to the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) at the federal level.

Both State systems were already using Business Objects software for reporting, so when the monster knocked at his door, Ely knew just what to do. "We looked at the business intelligence (BI) world in 2004, and at the reality of what we had—Hummingbird in house, and Business Objects coming from the State—and we clearly figured that Business Objects was the way to go."

Approach

SSA’s mammoth reporting task exists in a web of technical and business complexities. "On the business side, our main data element is the ‘case,’" explains Ely. "Whenever an individual applies for benefits, he or she becomes a case. We have literally hundreds of thousands of cases spanning many years. Sometimes families are on public assistance for generations."

The technical side is no less complex. "We interface with a Federal SSI system in Baltimore, with multiple California State systems, with CalWIN, and with several smaller, in-house applications," Ely continues. "All of these systems talk to each other, so there’s a lot of data flying back and forth."

The decision to move from Hummingbird to Business Objects was straightforward. Prior to implementing the Business Objects solution, most users lacked direct access to the reporting system; instead, requests went to a central reporting group on the business side of the house. "In reality, that meant a lot of canned reports and considerable delay in getting needed information," says Ely. "Users did not have the option of running their own queries or what if scenarios. By contrast, the power of Business Objects now gives our users the ability to run their own reports, based on the comprehensive universes that we’ve built—in addition to the 400 to 500 regularly scheduled reports that are produced."

The delivery mechanism has also improved dramatically. "We used to get hard copies, or at best an email with a text file," says Ely. "Now, you see people log into BusinessObjects™ Web Intelligence®, and the reports are right there in the inbox. Our supervisors and business analysts can access the reports on the web at any time."

Results

How about the caseworkers themselves, the people on the front lines who engage directly with individuals and families seeking assistance? "In today’s environment, the caseworkers receive reports on certain occasions," explains Ely. "Most offices manage their own case loads centrally, with business or management analysts producing weekly, daily, and ad hoc reports on performance, case loads, prioritization, scheduling, and the like. But it’s safe to say that having up-to-date, accurate case information at their fingertips has greatly improved caseworker productivity and job satisfaction. Knowledge is power, and Business Objects empowers our workers to help needy recipients get the benefits they deserve." Timely and comprehensive information also goes a long way toward reducing fraud and abuse.

Compliance is another area in which the Business Objects solution shines. "There are literally dozens of reports geared toward meeting State or federal requirements—how we’re managing our money, how soon we provide services in certain areas, and so on," says Ely. "Just recently, several counties were audited by the federal government. The U.S. Department of Agriculture wanted very specific information about our food stamps over-issuance situation. They wanted to see detailed data behind each and every number in the report, and they gave us a three-week deadline to get the job done. In our previous environment, we simply would not have been able to comply with this request."

SSA is presently enhancing its Business Objects environment with a migration to BusinessObjects XI Release 2 Premium. Several features of the new platform are particularly compelling, including increased performance, more robust integration with Business Objects Crystal Reports®, and greatly expanded dashboard capabilities. "We publish many reports on key performance indicators (KPIs)," says Ely. "In today’s world, these reports are a single Excel document that might have 58 different cells, and each cell is basically the summary line of a complex Business Objects report. With dashboards, we can put it all together. That is extremely appealing to us."

With the help of Business Objects software, Ely and his team have established the Santa Clara County SSA as a clear technology leader among its peers—so much so, in fact, that other counties are leveraging the universes that SSA has created. "We are now able to provide accurate information instantly to everybody," Ely concludes. "We have an environment in which any user, at any time, can ask any type of business question that relates to cases, case load, office performance, personal performance, future appointments, anything. This translates into fewer mistakes and much greater responsiveness. In a sense, my team here is considered a bunch of local heroes, because we enabled all that."

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