Overview
Eliassen Group helped a government agency transform their old online forms into a rules-based process that provides faster, better services.
The Challenge:
This state government agency was committed to providing the best possible services. They always had been, for they were responsible for protecting and nurturing the smallest, most vulnerable members of society: children who need supportive health care, safety, and nutritional services.
To better serve their community, the agency posted their forms online many years ago to be easily accessed by their citizens, staff, and other users. At the time, the ability to obtain specific forms without a trip to a local government office was considered a breakthrough. The basic online form could be printed out, completed, and submitted for paper-based processing. While it was rudimentary, it saved time.
Over time, the system became woefully outdated and inefficient. When the agency’s services related to child health, and early intervention in cases of neglect or child endangerment, any delay was considered problematic.
Agency leaders determined that an update to their forms was long overdue; they needed to accelerate and simplify processes to better serve their constituents.
Engaging an Experienced Partner
While state department employees were highly-skilled in their own specialized fields, they lacked the deep technical expertise required to revamp a labyrinthine backend system completely.
To perform the necessary analysis and redesign, they approached Eliassen Group, an organization known for its unique collaborative approach. Working together, the client and consultancy teams embarked on the modernization initiative spearheaded by a Eliassen Group consultancy expert in C#, Javascript, and SQL.
The Transformation
The Eliassen Group Application Development team was engaged to manage the project, with an experienced Systems Architect and four additional developers applying our system methodology for Architecture Best Practices.
We refactored the backend databases’ business rules engine to understand what rules the system already had incorporated into the online forms.
This refactoring of the entire backend as a configuration also created the ability to quickly implement and respond to new state-mandated evidence-based reporting requirements.
With their updated, configuration-driven system, the government agency could better report, maintain, and enhance their system, and thereby improve services to the agency’s users, overseers, and partners.
