NM Social Services IT Consolidation

19July2015

Here's my Jersey on Social Services consolidation.

WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?

It is now 2015 and CYFD is still spending 7 million dollars a year supporting a legacy COBOL fat client application and 8 million a year since 2005 trying to write a NM CRM, just for CYFD related services.  That's 80 million dollars on a new CRM and we still don't have a web application.  (while spending 70 million since 2005 maintaining the old COBOL legacy application - which is a flat file database, not relational.)  It also amazing that no one notices the 150 million spent by CYFD on IT Services.

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YOU WANT THE SOLUTION OR WHAT?

Here is the letter I sent to the New Mexico Governor on Jan 13, 2011 at her request to cut spending and to consolidate IT Agency Information per the the Executive Order 2008-011 for the establishment of the Department of Information Technology.

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Governor Martinez,

I am recommending the consolidation of all IT Services for all Social Services Departments.

Goals:

• This will eliminate all vacant IT positions in these departments.

• One Consolidated IT Staff instead of 13. A new organization structure would be needed.  This will consolidate all of our current state of the art IT knowledge and expertise in one department to lead us into the next decade.

• One selected CIO (instead of 6 or 7?) to lead the consolidation of all IT services for all departments.

• One Social Services Data Center in Albuquerque (CYFD or PERA building for DR ) and one in Santa Fe (SIMMS for Production) instead of 10?

• One state-of-the-art Customer (Provider) software application (CRM) that all Social Services Departments can share the same accurate and SECURED data.  This would definitely help in the current ACLU lawsuits with CYFD.  I would look at an CRM OTS solution that we could customize for our needs.  This would eliminate all departments of their current fat client legacy silo applications.

• One development team that departments could share development resources and the same training.  We (CYFD) have 16 classified developer positions and 7 outsourced consultants positions.  Some consultants (at 130k per year) have been on staff over 10 years, that’s right 10 years.  This would eliminate the need for most expensive consultants.

• One technology (hardware and software) direction for all Social Services Departments.

• One database vendor instead of 13.  Just imaging the IT support costs you would save here.  My hardware here at CYFD could possibly handle all data (information) on all databases throughout all Social Services agencies.

I could go into more detail with this recommendation if needed.

According to the DoIT Strategic Plan FY11-13 on page 46 there are 13 Social Services agencies that could benefit from consolidated information technology.

The following agencies were identified as core participants in SSA plan development:

• The New Mexico Department of Health (DOH)
• The New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD)
• The New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Services Department (ALTSD)
• The New Mexico Public Education Department (PED)
• The Children, Youth, and Families Department (CYFD)

Other stakeholders include:

• The New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions
• The New Mexico Worker’s Compensation Association
• The New Mexico Department of Veterans Affairs
• The New Mexico Department of Education/Division of Vocational Rehabilitation
• The New Mexico Developmental Disabilities Planning Council
• The New Mexico Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
• The New Mexico Commission for the Blind
• The New Mexico Health Policy Commission

Thanks In Advance

Thomas "Mitch" Mitchell

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IT Consolidation. Any more questions?

Ah, so there is a question. What do I mean by software consolidation, you ask?

Answer:

We need to select a CRM application to follow SHARE, known as the NM Sunshine Portal (which, BTW, was one of the best IT investments ever) and use all of the current in place hardware and software infrastructure currently in place (and already paid for by our tax dollars) that will integrate with our current PeopleSoft apps and data.  Wouldn't this immediately get rid of all the legacy FAT client applications across all social services departments? The same legacy FAT client that cost the state millions of dollars a year to maintain? Wouldn't social services then have more money to... do more social services? You gotta problem with that?

Wait a minute. Back up. It costs the state millions a year to maintain FAT client apps at 14 departments that could use consolidated social services CRM/ERP?

So yeah, it does cost the state millions a year, when that money could be better spent by it going to help people out instead. It just takes a little political courage, that's all.

Now that's how to do social services in NM. How 'bout youse guys?

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