REFLECTIONS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A STATE POLICY MAKER

From her perspective as Director of Systems Transformation, Minnesota Department of Human Services, and her role as planner and policy analyst in state agencies, this presentation briefly comment on the implications of the findings. Using thepory of disruptive innvoation, she will suggest next steps for these results.

Enterprise Business Process Management in the Public Sector: The Case of the Department of Human Services (DHS) Australia

Business process management (BPM) in the public sector is proliferating globally, but has its contextual challenges. Ad hoc process improvement initiatives across governmental departments are not uncommon. However, as for all organisations, BPM efforts that are coordinated across the organisation will reap better outcomes than those conducted in isolation. BPM education plays a vital role in supporting such organisation-wide BPM efforts. This teaching case is focused on the sustainable development and progression of enterprise business process management (E-BPM) capabilities at the Federal Department of Human Services: a large Australian federal government agency. The detailed case narrative vividly describes the case organisation, their prior and present BPM practices and how they have attempted BPM at an enterprise level, capturing pros and cons of the journey. A series of student activities pertaining to E-BPM practices is provided with model answers (covering key aspects of BPM governance, strategic alignment, culture, people, IT, methods, etc.). This case provides invaluable insights into E-BPM efforts in general and BPM within the public sector. It can be useful to BPM educators as a rich training resource and to BPM practitioners seeking guidance for their E-BPM efforts.

Record Linkage Reconciliation of Arlington Department of Human Services Administrative Data Using Potts Models

Situated at the nexus of federal, state, and local governments, the Arlington Department of Human Services (DHS) receives service utilization data from a multitude of different sources. Because of their “no wrong door” policy, customers can sign up for any DHS service from any DHS department. A practical consequence of this is that a single person can appear as multiple records from multiple databases with no unambiguous key between these records. Merging these records requires a probabilistic linkage approach. Classical approaches to record linkage, such as the method of Felligi and Sunter, consider each possible pair of records between databases and assigning link probabilities to each one. A drawback of considering pairwise links alone is that sometimes the transitive nature of links is violated. In order to better handle such information clashes, we propose a Bayesian linkage method that considers a large set of possible pairs at once. At the heart of this approach is a Potts model representation that tracks which records are assigned to the same individual. This allows us to assign probabilities to the various reconciliations of inconsistent linkage assignments.

Secure Welfare Services: Risk, Security and Rights of Vulnerable Young People in Victoria, Australia

The Victorian Children Youth and Families Act 2005 authorises the detention of children aged 10–17 years in Secure Welfare Services (SWS) if there is a substantial and immediate risk of harm. Children are generally on protection orders and administratively detained by the Department of Human Services. In 2014, the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Security Measures) Bill 2013 was passed uncontested in parliament. It codifies existing SWS practices including searches, seizure of property, use of force and seclusion. The Security Measures Bill and associated government discourse construct children as risk and security as a necessary precursor to meeting their welfare needs. These conceptualisations problematise the safeguarding of children’s rights.