Business Case
As technology advances rapidly, it becomes simultaneously more difficult and more critical than ever to retain highly-qualified individuals available to take senior technical positions.
The CONNECTIONS project is an ongoing effort to provide the development, maintenance, and support activities on the New York State’s Automated Child Welfare Information System. This system includes the following components:
- Child Protective Services (CPS) Intake
- Child Protective Services (CPS) Investigation
- Resource Directory & Foster Adoptive Home Development (FAD)
- Case Management / Family Services (FSS)
This system is a complex and highly integrated application, which comprises several development and end user supported environments. These environments interface/interact with legacy applications and other 3rd party software.
ITS needed a strong consultant to fill their need immediately for expert support, guidance and hands on training on a variety of different technologies. The consultant needed to work on a variety of tasks related to design, development, performance testing and many other aspects of programming. This consultant needed to work with other developers and database administrators in support of the project, and to take a lead role where necessary. Moreover, this individual needed to be able to provide an effective means of knowledge transfer concerning the technologies in which he/she was an expert.
This position required such a uniquely broad set of skills that it was difficult to fill. ITS was not able to fill this need from within their existing pool of employees, so it was necessary to identify a suitable candidate through NYSPro.
The Solution
CMA submitted a highly-qualified consultant with ten years of experience focusing on the technologies that ITS most needed. As an expert in Oracle 10g administration and development, SQL Server, Oracle Applications Express (APEX), VBA and shell scripting, this consultant was selected from among all of the candidates submitted as the most cost-effective solution to ITS’s technical need relating to the CONNECTIONS project.
CMA’s Consultant is an innovative, self-motivated problem solver who rapidly acquires new skills and is equally capable of transferring his knowledge to others. Within one month of being introduced to a new software system, he was instructing instructors and supervisors on the software’s maximal utility and best practices.
The consultant offered by CMA combines a high degree of technical expertise with a significant aptitude for working in a mentoring capacity and training those around him and has a high level of proficiency with the systems used by ITS for the CONNECTIONS project.
The Results
CMA’s consultant offered critically important guidance, direction, insight and problem-solving skills on an ongoing basis on the CONNECTIONS application. His skills have enabled ITS to fulfill its responsibilities pertaining to the development, maintenance, and support activities on the New York State’s Automated Child Welfare Information System for OCFS, LDSS, and Voluntary Agencies.
Because of the work offered by CMA’s consultant, numerous technological builds have been put into production with a minimum of disruption and down time. CMA’s consultant has proactively worked to create tailor-made solutions to streamline the way that the CONNECTIONS application works, and continues to train ITS staff on best practices for developing on a varied number of platforms.