The New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) is an agency whose purpose is to serve New York's public by promoting the safety, permanency and well-being of children, families and communities via a system of family support, juvenile justice, child care and child welfare services.
OCFS is responsible for improving the integration of these services for children, youth, families and vulnerable populations — promoting their development and protecting them from violence, neglect, abuse and abandonment.
Case study
Title IV-E project
- Situation
- Task
- Actions
- Results
In order for social services districts to claim federal payments under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, the child's eligibility has to be established beforehand, documented and authorized. Prior to the project, agents had to go through complex legislation and cases serving as examples to validate each claim.
The project board expressed the need to facilitate the validation of claims and thereby to reduce the burden on caseworkers.
The solution comprised an internal web portal enabling interactive interviews, whose sequence would be determined by a rules engine. Caseworkers would be guided through a screen flow resulting from the answers they would give on each question screen.
A close collaboration between caseworkers and rule developers was deemed essential for modeling the rules.
An Oracle Policy Automation consultant led the development of the eligibility rules, the design of the OPA collection screens and the programming of their sequence, working as part of a distributed team in the UK/US.
OPA was deployed as Oracle Web Determinations (OWD) to enable interactive interviews.
The main phase of the project was successfully completed, with all the initial business rules and screen flows fully operational. The rulebase was handed over to the US team for further adjustment and testing with caseworkers prior to the release.