Case USA69: How a State Child Welfare System Substituted Case Note Digitization for Enterprise Architecture Design

Sunil Dutt Jha
Aug 19
1 min read

Updated: Nov 3

Overview:

This case is part of a 100-diagnostic series revealing how US human services programs have mislabeled document digitization as “Enterprise Architecture progress.”

In child welfare agencies, a recurring pattern is treating the move from paper case notes to digital entry as an architectural redesign.

Caseworkers could log visits, incidents, and assessments from the field — yet the enterprise structure linking intake, investigation, service coordination, court processes, and compliance reporting was never modeled.

P1–P6 Insight Preview:

P1 (Strategy): Digitization was framed as a modernization win, but there was no architecture-led strategy to improve child safety outcomes or service coordination speed.

P2 (Process): Case documentation was streamlined, but referral, escalation, and inter-agency collaboration workflows remained ad hoc.

P3 (System): Digital case notes didn’t integrate behaviorally with court systems, provider networks, or law enforcement databases.

P4 (Component): Mobile apps, central repositories, and reporting modules operated under separate vendor and governance rules. P5 (Implementation): Rollouts focused on field usability features, leaving backend integration out of scope.

P6 (Operations): Business ops could log cases in real time, but tech ops still dealt with mismatched data, duplicate records, and manual compliance reporting.

Stakeholder Impact Mapping:

CEO/Agency Director: Feels P1 — modernization optics achieved, but child safety metrics are stagnant.
CIO: Feels P3 & P4 — integration gaps make data sharing slow and error-prone.
Sales Head (Program Grants & Funding): Feels P2 & P5 — difficult to prove improved service delivery to funding bodies.
Chief EA: Feels P1–P6 — digital entry without a modeled enterprise is just a new front-end for old silos.
Head of Field Operations: Feels P2, P3, & P6 — caseworkers enter data instantly but still chase updates from multiple agencies manually.