The 2018 IT Solutions Management (ISM) Annual Conference in Seattle, held Sept. 16-19, was full of opportunities to learn, network and share ideas. Tracy Wareing Evans, APHSA President and CEO, led the General Session with “Building Well-Being from the Ground Up.” A panel discussion followed with Ron Haskins, Robert Doar, Donna Pavetti and moderator Secretary Cheryl Strange on “Policy Perspectives that Make a Difference.”

So many inspiring breakout sessions followed, that I found it hard to choose which to attend. Topics ranged from “Unlocking and Crowdsourcing HHS” to “Building Successful Teams Through Imagination and Creativity” and “Youth Speak! Are We Listening?”

One of the highlights for me was attending “Future of Work and Service Delivery in HHS.” It focused on bringing together state and local IT leaders, federal partners, private sector industry experts, and thought leaders to discuss solutions that support the mission and vision of health and human services programs.

The Changing Role of Health & Human Services Professionals

As we all know, the role of health and human services professionals is rapidly changing. This is due to technology changes, ubiquitous connectivity and modernized workforces. These changes present new challenges and opportunities. One challenge is how to aggregate the multitude of data sets needed for social services verification. Alternatively, the opportunity is to provide a unified platform that provides a single access point for the plethora of data that HHS professionals use in order to deliver public assistance programs.

Additionally, state leaders weighed in with their perspectives. Jennifer Harp, Technology Lead/Executive Advisory to the Secretary, Commonwealth of Kentucky, said she saw cost savings after integrating her systems into a single platform. There was also a decrease in caseworkers’ workloads, while multiple departments could now access data in one unified interface.

Debbie Eastbrook, Deputy CIO of the Office of Information Services in Oregon, emphasized the need to talk to the end users before building a unified platform. She said you must understand how caseworkers use the platforms, interact with constituents, and do their daily jobs before you can build a more efficient system.

Equifax Offers a Unified Platform

Equifax is also helping automate eligibility verification throughout all stages of the benefits process with a unified platform that:

• is flexible
• uses a service-oriented architecture
• and integrates multi data elements to help verify identity and eligibility

Our demo session at the ISM Conference showcased this platform in action.  We went through a scenario of a case worker accessing the tool to verify the financial picture of an applicant with not only the most-up-date income and employment data, but also property data and financial assets. 

Visit the Equifax government website for more information or email us at Gov_info@equifax.com to schedule a demo. I look forward to next year’s conference in Milwaukee, WI. I hope to see you there.