Wake County, North Carolina, is a progressive, socially aware human services environment with extensive experience in innovative approaches to service delivery and organizational change. It is recognized as a leader in the process of reinventing government and in outcome-based management techniques. Wake County Human Services was formed in early 1996 with the merger of the Mental Health, Social Services, Developmental Disabilities, Substance Abuse, Public Health and several other human services program areas. The resulting organization employs a staff of over 1,500 and encompasses more than thirty-five major program areas. Wake County initially sought WRMA's help in integrating the data from the more than 35 programs that had been consolidated into the countywide department of human services.
In October 1997, WRMA was chosen by the county to guide its comprehensive Services Integration Enterprise Initiative in a partnership with agency management and county administration. The engagement, which began with an initial strategic planning and analysis phase, became a multi-year project. WRMA's duties during the first phase of this engagement included both programmatic and technical aspects of services integration and business process re-engineering, as well as management-level consultation on such diverse topics as privatization, organizational capacity building and development, best practice, and information technology infrastructure issues. The first phase culminated in July 1998 with the completion of a multi-year strategic plan that presented various approaches for integrating the service programs and developing an organizational infrastructure that could support the services integration effort. After acceptance of the plan, WRMA was awarded an additional multi-year contract to help WCHS implement the findings and recommendations of the strategic plan.
One of the first activities undertaken by WRMA under the implementation contract was the design, development and implementation of an agency-wide performance measurement system in conjunction with WCHS staff. The system went operational within a year with quarterly and/or annual reporting against the outcome measures and indicators established by the service components of WCHS.
WRMA's implementation phase responsibilities included:
- Assistance in establishing an organizational entity, the Information Management Unit, with responsibility for implementing agency-required information systems capabilities,
- Executive coaching of the WCHS management team on a wide range of programmatic and organizational issues,
- Training the agency's Change Management Team on project and technical management practice, and
- Working to improve the agency's capacity to develop and implement new service models in the context of services integration.
It also included the development of a Master Client Index for all of the programs administered by the Human Services Agency.
