Although today’s public managers appreciate the power and usefulness of geographic information systems (GIS), they often recoil at its costs, complexity, and requirements for specialized staff. So, would it be possible to put a sophisticated GIS-based system on the desktops of 650 front-line human service caseworkers serving more than 98,000 customers? Could this be done in a way that required only a 90-minute learning curve for staff? The answer to both these questions is “yes,” as recent developments in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, clearly reveal.

If this fact sounds intriguing, you already have shown interest in the Mapping for Caseworkers project implemented in Cuyahoga County over the past 18 months. This project has been the result of an unusual partnership between the county and the Land Information Access Association, a Traverse City, Michigan, nonprofit dedicated to increasing citizen participation in community planning and development through the effective use of technology.

Cuyahoga County’s experience shows that the benefits of GIS technology can be delivered to workers without extensive training, and that agencies with very different missions can cooperate to share data. Like most successful innovations, Mapping for Caseworkers has been the result of both inspiration and perspiration.

The basic notion for the project was just the first step. Managers still had to work out a concise project description, build support for the concept internally, and then actively engage both caseworkers and other agencies in system design.

How “Mapping” Works
Imagine that a single mother without a car calls her caseworker in an effort to change daycare providers. As they talk, the caseworker enters the mother’s address, generates an on-screen map centered on the customer’s residence, and selects “child care” and “bus routes.” In an instant, the program overlays the map with child care icons and highlights the relevant bus routes.

When the caseworker clicks on the icon for a specific child care provider, a small photo of the location pops up in the corner, along with a text box describing the hours of operation, the number of openings, contact names, and phone numbers. This information is relayed to the customer. If the conversation takes place during a face-to-face interview, the caseworker can print out a copy of the map and text and immediately hand it over to the client.

Many similar scenarios have been played out, but they all have embodied a simple belief: when you can tell your customer not only the address of needed services but the fact that the site is “the building with the blue awning next to the drugstore,” your customer-service quality has taken a huge step up.

An Idea Is Born
The Cuyahoga Office of Health and Human Services is the parent organization for both Cuyahoga Health and Nutrition and Cuyahoga Work and Training. Together, the two agencies offer a wide range of human service and employment-related services. In 1999, for instance, the county was fine-tuning its implementation of national welfare reform. Many clients had needs beyond the help that either organization could provide, and a major caseworker responsibility involved putting customers in touch with other agencies and nongovernmental organizations with supplementary programs and expertise.

Before the project, these “diversions” were made by consulting hard-copy resources or caseworker memories—both of which were often out of date or lacking in detail. County human services managers wondered if a GIS system could be found that plugged this information gap and helped front-line staff provide better customer service. After all, caseworkers are essentially information brokers, and one of their most critical information needs is for the geographic location of services.

Managers had searched for but could not find examples of other public agencies that had put GIS in the hands of its nontechnical staff. The complexity of the popular GIS software then available made its use by most front-line staff impractical.

Fortunately, one county manager recalled a GIS presentation made to a session of the Ohio City Management Association (OCMA) Winter Conference a year earlier. Of the several applications previewed at the conference, the one demonstrated by the Land Information Access Association (LIAA) had a front-end, screen design that was remarkably simple.

Although LIAA’s chief focus was on publicly available land use data—not on human services information—this association had developed a stand-alone kiosk and a touch-screen interface with GIS data that any professional could use. With no existing models for the desired system available, managers wondered if LIAA could build one for Cuyahoga County based on the land use model. Exploratory phone calls revealed that LIAA was interested, and the project moved forward.

Refining the Concept
An important initial step was to define rigorously what an ideal GIS-based application would look like from the human services perspective. The application had to put all common, spatially referenced needs onto the desktops of 650 county caseworkers, of the reception staff at all 11 neighborhood centers, and of the administrative staff of two agencies. At a minimum, the system had to include:

• A searchable, curb-to-curb street map of all of Cuyahoga County.
• The locations of various agency centers.
• The Regional Transit Authority’s bus routes and schedules.
• The locations of all county daycare providers and of employers listing available jobs.
• The complete United Way resource directory, including some 3,000 shelters, food pantries and soup kitchens, education and training services, legal aid offices, and special transportation services.

Building Internal Support
After defining the concept more precisely, project advocates still needed to sell it to the information services department, which held project funds, and the agency director who had ultimate authority over them. To this end, the proponents formed a project steering committee composed of senior managers, front-line supervisors, and technology staff. If this group could not be made to see the project’s potential, it was never going to get off the ground.

LIAA gave a live presentation to the steering committee to demonstrate its stock-in-trade: user-friendly GIS-based systems. After the demonstration, the consensus was that LIAA’s interface could readily be adapted to human services needs. The demonstration achieved the critical core of support needed to move from concept to reality.

Over the following weeks and months, managers had to do still more selling of the system and had to surmount a number of administrative hurdles, including:

• Gaining approval for a sole-source procurement, based upon the uniqueness of LIAA’s application.
• Gaining the approval of Ohio’s Automatic Data Processing Board.
• Convincing the various boards that a small nonprofit organization could produce high-quality, innovative software at a reasonable cost.

Managers successfully addressed all these challenges and were rewarded when, in February 2000, the board of county commissioners unanimously approved a proposed contract with LIAA. Approval of the proposal was aided immensely by the fact that the board was firmly committed to doing whatever was necessary to make welfare reform succeed both from the client’s and from the county’s perspective.

With a contract in hand, managers then moved on to Phase 2 of building a system that would be easy to use, meet the real-life needs of caseworkers, and use existing data maintained by other agencies.

Caseworker Involvement
Engaging caseworkers was a critical part of the design process, and LIAA met with them on several occasions for development and design discussions, to:

• Learn the conditions and demands of their work.
• Demonstrate several examples of public-access systems that had been designed to supply citizens with GIS tools on “touch-screen kiosks” or on desktop computers.
• Conduct brainstorming sessions to discuss what information would be most valuable, and what type of interface would be most useful.

Agency Involvement
Pursuing its commitment not to create a monster, Cuyahoga Health and Nutrition formed important partnerships with the agencies that kept needed data. The county employment services office had a jobs-available database that was updated daily, while the county’s childcare services office possessed a database of registered daycare providers.

United Way could offer its First Call for Help databases, with information on a wide range of social services, and finally, the Regional Transit Authority maintained computerized route maps. All this information was essential, and incorporating it into the new system required time.

In general, the various agencies had no trouble with the concept of sharing their data, as long as certain confidential elements could be screened out (for example, the locations of domestic violence shelters). Somewhat harder was convincing partnering agencies that their existing systems were too sophisticated for use by most caseworkers.

Again and again, project managers stressed that caseworkers are highly trained professionals in human service casework—not in information technology. The emerging GIS-based system had to be an application that could be learned over a long lunch. Once this requirement had been accepted and understood, agency partners not only cooperated with the project but joined the ranks of its biggest supporters.

Final Implementation
Mapping for Caseworkers was implemented in November 2000, and now, 18 months later, all who have been involved view it as a distinct success. Clients now enjoy access to more timely, accurate, and useful information as they strive to establish their independence and to lead productive lives. LIAA provided the data conversion tools and training that have formed the basis for system updating and maintenance.

Cuyahoga Health and Nutrition has a time-and-materials agreement for support and is finalizing a proposal for Release 2 of the application. Most encouraging of all, the project has attracted a good deal of attention locally, and other agencies within Cuyahoga County are examining it with a view toward providing a similar GIS-based technology for their own workers. 

Patrick Gaunt is the program development administrator for the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Department of Health and Nutrition, part of the county’s Office of Human Services. Paul Smyth is a consultant working with the Land Information Access Association, Traverse City, Michigan.