Success Stories

Stewards of Change Consulting assisted the U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in developing a cross-cutting leadership vision, strategy, and change-management roadmap to support the effective administration of the agency’s programs to achieve interoperability and improve outcomes for children, families and communities. Using the tools and approaches from SOC’s Human Services 2.0 InterOptimability model, the project team created an organizational vision with the senior leadership of ACF. SOC also conducted extensive research and a detailed organizational assessment to determine the readiness for change within ACF using quantitative surveys and qualitative assessments. The output from the readiness assessment provided the basis for the agency’s strategic interoperability plan.

The second and third years of this project included beginning to implement the roadmap and strategies developed in the first phase. During these two years, in partnership with ACF staff and engineers from Johns Hopkins University (Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Applied Physics Laboratory), SOC developed the National Human Services Interoperability Architecture (NHSIA) by leveraging and expanding the Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS).

SOC also designed and implemented a change-management process within ACF by creating the first Interoperability Innovation Team consisting of high-performing staff from all program areas. This team was designed to begin the culture and operations of all programs through an organizational change-management approach that utilized representatives as change agents for their program. Through extensive training and stakeholder engagement efforts, we created a foundation for organization-wide change efforts. An online community and information repository were built to support the ongoing.

In addition to the reference architecture and OCM work, we researched and developed training toolkits to educate the states about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The focus was to translate its regulations and policy so that human services and ACF programs could take full advantage of the increased funding and administrative flexibility to link to health care modernization efforts.

Three versions of the toolkit were created and published on the ACF website. An extensive communications and training plan was developed and implemented to publicize the toolkits, along with the technical requirements and opportunities. Meanwhile, SOC researched and developed another toolkit that addressed the legal, confidentiality and privacy issues associated with information-sharing.