P&P August 2015

Innovative Approaches to Improving Child Welfare Outcomes

hild welfare (CW) agencies are increasingly driven to improve operational efficiency, increase information-sharing, and better By ruthie seale and william saunders C integrate processes across operational and jurisdictional boundaries—all with the goal of providing seamless, superior services to families that need help protecting and caring for their children. Recently, the concept of cloud computing has captured significant attention as both a business and computing model that enables government agencies like child welfare to achieve these daunting objectives. The current buzz within the information technology industry involves customers “moving to the cloud.” But defining the cloud and showing how child welfare agencies can take advantage of its efficiencies as the private sector is doing remains a challenge and opportunity for many public-sector organizations.

Photograph via Shutterstock

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August 2015   Policy&Practice