Department of Child, Youth and Family Services

Department of Child, Youth and Family Services

Context

The two key roles of the Department of Child, Youth and Family (CYF) are:

• to be a provider of high-quality services to children who need care and protection or who offend and to support and assist their families to keep their children safe
• to facilitate and collaborate in the delivery of high-quality services by other service providers to children and young people who are living in circumstances where they are at risk of being in need of care and protection or committing offences.

The Department of Child, Youth and Family Services E-government Initiatives

• Website review
• Baseline Review recommendations
• New contracting system

Summary

Ready Access: CYF provides ready access to information through its website. CYF could create additional metadata to give people greater access to information via the government portal.

Alignment: CYF aligns well with most aspects of the E-government Strategy, especially the use of the Internet to provide information for the public. Improvements to internal information management will improve alignment with the Strategy.

Internet and Communications Technology

The CYF website provides general information including contact details, assistance, and funding. The website is tailored for various audiences, including parents, teenagers, caregivers, and social workers. CYF's website has numerous links to other relevant government agencies. Providing more description about those agencies' services on the CYF website would be useful.

A redevelopment of the website and intranet are currently underway and will comply with
e-government standards.

There are many challenges to increasing the use of the Internet to share information externally. A significant challenge is the digital divide that exists for many of the people CYF works with. Digital divide is a major consideration for CYF when planning information and service delivery channels, because many people that it works with do not have ready access to the Internet. Consequently, the Internet is complementary to other channels for providing information and services.

While one-to-one relationships are vital for CYF to achieve its objectives, greater use of the Internet to enable electronic information sharing would help reduce the reliance on individuals to share knowledge with other agencies.

At present, much of CYF's work is focused on improving internal information management needs to support business requirements. This includes helping staff understand and use technology, delivering technology solutions faster, improving internal access to information, and integrating internal systems.

Internally, CYF has a number of IT systems that are increasingly supported by Internet technology. These include a contracting system to manage approximately 900 contracts with social service providers, and a case management system called CYRAS.

The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) provides the internal infrastructure and networks for CYF. CYF is considering the potential of shared workspaces for internal use, similar to the High and Complex Needs shared workspace that CYF already hosts.

Ready Access to Information and Services

Metadata

The services that CYF is responsible for are partially covered by existing metadata records. However, additional metadata should be created in two main areas: Adoption, and Caregivers. Gap analysis suggests that CYF has 45 records out of a potential 63 records in Metalogue.

Existing records are of a reasonable standard, but regular reviewing is needed to ensure the standard is maintained. Additionally, the descriptions of the records (specifically services) could be written for a more general audience.

Website Assessment

Websites assessed during May 2004 included: www.cyf.govt.nz

Overall, the CYF website is of a good standard. The strengths of the website are in required government content and accessibility. In future, usability and information delivery on the site could be improved.

The information CYF is required to provide is readily accessible on its website.

Key issues noted during the assessment included:

• Good range and depth of content.
• More links to related content within the site would be useful.
• Contact details could be more specific and easier to find, to enable responsive handling of enquiries.
• Search function finds little of relevance, preventing easy access to site content.
• Many broken links prevent people from accessing certain content.
• Required email addresses are not available, restricting people's ability to contact the agency.
• Database-style URLs are more difficult to remember and type into a browser.
• Missing accessibility features, such as navigation skipping, access keys and style sheet problems may impede some physically impaired people's access.
• Many documents are in PDF only and some are very large, excluding people who are unable or unwilling to read this format.
• Some HTML does not comply with the Government Web Guidelines but it performed well on all browsers.

Alignment With E-government Goals

Convenience and Satisfaction

Information about CYF and its services is more accessible because of the Internet.

In addition to CYF's website, people can contact CYF through a call centre that operates 24 hours per day, 5 days per week. There is potential to share or combine call centre operations with MSD, and this would provide sufficient resources for the call centre to operate 7 days per week. Call centre staff have access to CYRAS and the contracting system to assist with calls.

Integration and Efficiency

Many of CYF's services are provided in conjunction with services delivered by Courts, the Police, MSD, the Ministry of Housing and the Ministry of Education. Although there is potential to electronically share information between these agencies, CYF social workers are often the sole point of contact between agencies. Except for email, the Internet is rarely used for inter-agency information sharing.

A recent review of CYF (the Baseline Review) identified the need to improve internal information integration and management. Therefore, CYF is focused on defining internal information needs and requirements before addressing integrated electronic information and services delivery with external agencies.

External electronic information sharing will require legislative changes, including developing alternatives to written signatures.

Participation

Consultation documents are available on the website.