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Committee hears plan to modernize child welfare data system; bill laid over
Summary
Vice Chair Representative Nelson presented House File 1169 to continue a multi-year effort to modernize the Statewide Social Services Information System (SSIS). Testimony described user frustration, technical instability, and a partial roadmap of recommended changes; the committee laid the bill over for omnibus consideration.
The Children and Families Committee heard testimony on House File 1169, a bill aimed at modernizing the Statewide Social Services Information System (SSIS) and reducing paperwork burdens on child-protection caseworkers.
Representative Nelson said the modernization work has been ongoing since 2019 and that counties and caseworkers spend excessive time on data entry rather than direct work with families. "Some of them up to 80% of the time working on the system data entry ... and somewhere around 20% of their time working with the individuals and families that really need their services," Nelson said.
County and state officials described longstanding technical and usability problems. Anne Broscoff, director of human services for Brown County, testified on behalf of the Minnesota Association of Social Service Administrators (MACSA) and said outdated systems and added documentation requirements have pushed caseworkers away from direct family work.
"Pieces of paper and clicks in SSIS don't keep kids safe. But the time intensive investments our staff spend with families and children is the not so secret sauce of better outcomes," Broscoff said.
Cynthia Schapolski, the CCWIS modernization supervisor at SSIS within the Department of Children, Youth and Families, provided a technical update. She said SSIS was built about 30 years ago and currently processes roughly 76,000 reports of alleged abuse or neglect annually, about 32,000 child-protection assessments, and child-protection case management for approximately 4,500 families each year. A department review produced 56 recommendations: 16 feasible pre-modernization changes, 9 already completed and 5 actively in progress; an interim, web-based out-of-home placement plan is planned to reduce the time caseworkers spend on that document.
"We conducted 12 formal listening sessions with input from 150 case workers and 50 policy staff," Schapolski said. "We discovered that nearly all of the child protection fields or documents within SSIS have some requirement, Federal, State or Administrative."
Committee members said the next hurdle is financing. Nelson and members discussed that federal matching funds may cover a portion of modernization costs; Nelson estimated about half might be matched federally. Members urged clear timelines and collaborative governance in procurement and design.
The committee laid House File 1169 over for possible inclusion in an omnibus bill to allow further fiscal and design work, including vendor bids and a funding plan.
