Overview
The Province of British Columbia’s Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) is one of the largest service providers of Adoption, Foster Care, Early Childhood Development and Child Care, Child and Youth Mental Health, Youth Justice and Youth Services, Special Needs Children and Youth, and Adult Community Living Services in British Columbia.

The Challenge
As early as 2000, MCFD was predicting a 4% to 5% growth in the number of client cases per year, a significant increase considering the ministry was already providing services to 16,000 children and their families in that same year. Unfortunately, information regarding service provision was managed using a wide variety of technologies, many of which were unable to easily communicate with each other. With all of this expected growth, MCFD saw the importance of information technology integration as a way to ensure scalable and satisfying service delivery to the people of British Columbia.

The Solution
TP Systems Ltd. was contracted to design and develop three electronic registries to manage clients, services and privacy. The registries were designed to meet the specific needs of MCFD’s five core business areas. Even though each business area is topically different, all areas share common elements that relate to clients, services and privacy. For this reason, three registries to deal with each element were created. Included in the three registries are databases that store the information, web applications that allow authorized MCFD employees and service providers to manage the data and web services that make information integration possible. Web services were the key to centralizing MCFD’s core data, ensuring data is accurate, timely and efficiently managed regardless of the particular technology used to build the data. The three registries created were the Person Registry, the Service Registry and the Security Registry.

The Core Electronic Registries

1. MCFD Person Registry
Traditionally, MCFD had a file-centric service delivery model, inhibiting collected client information from being easily shared among all service providers. This model was eschewed for a person-centric service delivery model that included advanced security features, drastically reduced repetitious data-entry, improved data quality and made a client’s “full picture” accessible by allowing multiple business areas and authorized service providers to share data.

2. MCFD Service Registry
MCFD is in the business of providing services to people. Service provision generally follows a basic model: service providers provide services under the power of Service Agreements. The MCFD Service Registry provides MCFD with a “full-picture” view of service provision, using real-time business intelligence. This allows MCFD to recognize issues with service provision and service consumption and, at the same time, ensure data quality — important features for any organization.

3. MCFD Security Registry
The MCFD Security Registry is the central place for managing privacy and access policies, keeping data well-protected. The registry supports a number of different security models and is adaptable to changing organizational structures.

Design, Development and Performance
TP Systems designed and developed all three registries using cutting-edge technology with industry standard tools, ensuring feature richness and long-term return on investment. In addition, the use of N-tiered Architecture provides stability and scalability as well as improved security and rapid maintenance. The web services were developed using Service-Oriented Architecture, which facilitates information sharing. The web services provide the common functionality, promoting reusability and standardization and reducing development costs. All web services and web applications run on fault-tolerant, load-balanced web servers that ensure availability and high performance.

However, for the electronic registries to be truly useful, all of the systems needed to be interfaced and integrated. Without this, there would be a lack of consistent reporting as a consequence of differing data collection methods. The key to overhauling MCFD’s systems was linking payments to services and services to clients. MCFD needed to be more accountable of the money it distributes. This was the main objective for creating the electronic registries for MCFD.

For a successful business, growth is inevitable. Large-scale registries employing web services allow businesses to grow comfortably, ensuring control, efficiency and flexibility in all areas of the business. MCFD is a prime example of an organization benefiting from integrated information technology, resulting in real-time business intelligence and improved service delivery to all its clients and stakeholders.