Oranga Tamariki is hoping a new tech system will help it deal with a surge in reports about children being abused. Photo: RNZ
As alerts about children being abused surge, Oranga Tamariki is pinning its hopes on a $70 million technology upgrade.
The existing IT system is so bad social workers say "it is difficult to find out about what has happened in the past or is happening now" to children.
Documents show the Children's Ministry, desperate for a circuit-breaker, is months into a project, though it has yet to put out a key tender.
It labels the existing 22-year-old central case management system, CYRAS, "outdated, laborious and unhelpful".
One staffer told the independent children's watchdog it took them a "whole day getting information from CYRAS for a referral".
New figures show notifications of concern about children have been surging, up 60 percent and running at a rate of almost 10,000 a month.
That represents masses of new data being delivered into a moribund system.
"It ... means risky practices such as critical case information may be sitting in emails and not on the case record."
One impact is that the queue of children not allocated a social worker within targeted times has been growing.
Even the worst, most urgent cases were at 86 percent for getting a response on time (24 or 48 hours), instead of the target 95 percent.
The agency made clear in a new Official Information Act response to RNZ that the $68.5m Frontline Technology System Upgrade, or FTSU, was core to fixing this.
"The new system will increase the amount of time social workers have to engage with tamariki, rangatahi, whānau, victims, caregivers and partners by reducing time spent duplicating information across multiple systems."
Oranga Tamariki's existing IT system is so bad social workers say "it is difficult to find out about what has happened in the past or is happening now" to children. Photo: 123RF
Under the old system, children and their whānau are blocked from getting their own information.
"When children request information, it is difficult to find and extract. When they receive it, the form it is in can be confusing, intimidating and raise further questions," said the November 2024 business case, proactively released five weeks ago.
New add-ons, such as a Caregiver Information System, cannot talk to the old system easily.
Another barrier is to keeping proper tabs on OT's performance, the subject of myriad bad reviews since it was established eight years ago.
OT has for years been unable to tell the Independent Children's Monitor Aroturuki Tamariki about the reasons children were going into state care, because though the reasons were recorded "they are not collated and made available for reporting".
Similarly, it remains unable to show what it was doing about children's annual health and dental checks, or school attendance, even though it is required to.
On that score, however, the agency is finalising steps to get attendance and enrolment information from the Education Ministry.
With the pressure building from more notifications about children, Cabinet last December opted for the fastest of three options for implementing the FTSU.
Minister Karen Chhour has promised it would be delivered by next February.
Minister for Children Karen Chhour. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
An initial exploratory tender went out in February, though one for procuring an actual system is yet to go out; that process is meant to be finished by August.
A Treasury 'Gateway' review last year rated the project amber (green is best, red worst) but OT said it fixed those problems.
Fixing breaches
The agency's poor IT, coupled with incredibly slack IT practices, contributed to a series of "grievous" privacy breaches notified to watchdogs in 2022 and 2023.
These had led to a woman being assaulted and other instances of physical harm, as revealed by RNZ reporting in March.
An independent report made a host of recommendations to stop it happening again.
One was to set up a strong new way of classifying just how sensitive its data is, and who should get to see it; this is now part of the FTSU.
Half a dozen of the recommendations have not been started yet, a year after the damning report.
Among those not started is setting up an induction process so new staff are less likely to breach clients' privacy, as they had been doing, and also to find a way to prevent access to restricted systems.
"Not yet started," said the entry next to this.
The update on the Privacy Improvement Plan showed about a dozen responses were underway but not complete, while just four responses had been completed, as of late April.
OT had given itself a misguided pass mark for privacy around the time of the breaches.
This was in contrast to its latest feedback about children's safety to the Children's Monitor a few months back, after the agency recorded a lot of statistically significant drops in its measures for keeping children safe.
"This is the fourth report that shows insufficient progress by Oranga Tamariki," OT said in response.
"We are very concerned that serious issues continue to be raised and we are still not meeting the National Care Standards."
However, last week the government claimed the agency was making "strong" progress against four new ministerial priorities.
Cabinet had signed off on the FTSU on a cloud-based platform last December, after it was initiated in the last days of the previous government in mid-2023.
It should allow the rapid transfer of information with doctors, and with MSD and the Justice Ministry, which are undergoing their own costly IT upgrades.
Aroturuki Tamariki said tech upgrades were "long overdue".
They would help the ministry gauge itself how it was doing, while the monitor planned to look at what the new tech was delivering in its 2024-25 report.
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