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The agency transformation process modernizes your child care agency’s approach to implementing a new licensing system with regulatory software. The transformation involves your agency moving through different levels of growth and development towards an optimal agency; the process of transformation enables your agency to better run, grow and adapt. And because your external environment always brings changes, agency transformation involves a continual evaluation of your system.
Agency transformation starts with your agency establishing the mission and vision for your agency. You also identify key stakeholders and gather feedback from your child care licensees. As you move through different phases of development, you gradually re-engineer your business processes—while supporting your agency’s workflow.
Your child care agency standardizes processes with technical assistance, promotes online self-service and embraces digital communication. Eventually, you move towards a model agency where your agency focuses on gathering and analyzing complex data and measuring performance on a regular basis.
Agency Transformation gives your agency a format for how to approach modernization. COVID highlighted the growing gap between the public’s regulatory needs and government service delivery. The pandemic also disrupted state agency office-bound, tenured-centered workplaces. The technology and experience to solve these problems exists today. Your agency needs a strategic approach to transform employee engagement, licensee satisfaction and the safety of children.
In Capacity Building, phase 1 of the agency transformation process, your child care agency establishes clear objectives, along with a mission to guide operations. You also evaluate your agency’s leadership capacity and staff performance. And you pinpoint your key project stakeholders.
Internal and external surveys during this phase give you valuable feedback from your frontline staff and licensees. Sam Hardin, Vice President of Business Solutions at GL Solutions suggests you ask your staff, for example, if they feel motivated by the mission and vision or your regulatory agency? “Surveys help you better understand how others perceive your agency too, including the public.”
When you finish building capacity, your child care agency benefits from:
In Process Standardization, phase 2, your child care agency defines and standardizes your processes. Consistent processes for your staff help your agency measure performance, improve continuously and build online services. In addition, these standardized processes ensure your agency adheres to federal and state law.
Process guides lead your child care agency through your business processes—one step at a time. These online guides keep track of your progress in a business process, even marking where staff leave off. These guides ensure that your staff finish each step in the process, improving efficiency and accuracy.
Process Guide Example
Interfaces to and from third-party applications support data exchange between your agency and third parties. Seamlessly exchange data for online payments, criminal record checks, information updates and exam scheduling. Interface with other applications with a documented API.
Ad hoc reporting enables you to report on anything you enter into your regulatory software system. Create a report on the spot for Freedom of Information Act requests, for example. Then save that ad hoc report for others to use.
Perhaps you need information for specific dates, for example, explains Hardin; “the ad hoc reporting tool lets you drill down into information.”
In phase 3 of the agency transformation process, Customer Service, your agency moves all child care licensing processes online. You transition to a modern, paperless office, offering 24×7 agency service availability.
By making the shift to online services you seamlessly support your child care licensees virtually. And by moving to online services, you also help support your staff to work virtually—and in multiple locations.
“People really expect to just go online—and apply for or renew a license, as well as file a complaint,” explains Sales Executive Michelle Shaffer, an agency transformation expert at GL Solutions.
Your customer service enhancements include online self-service portals for applications, permits and licenses—and for the easy upload of corrective action plans (CAPs) and required documentation. Your agency benefits from improved accuracy and completeness of the child care license applications and renewals processed. The citizen portal also enables licensees to easily update their contact information, such as a change of address.
Customer portals help support the following processes:
Along with processing child care licenses and renewals, your online system integrates with third parties to facilitate credential management. For example, when your agency needs to run a background check for a potential provider, you integrate seamlessly with third-party providers, like state and federal databases.
Examples of third-party integrations include:
In phase 4 of the agency transformation process, Integrated Service embraces digital functionality and communication. Your agency’s online customer portal provides an avenue for two-way communication between your staff and your customers. Your in-the-field surveys and child care facility inspections support working offline, with information uploaded later when you go online.
“Integrated services really mean seamless workflow—faster processing and efficient employees,” says Shaffer. “It’s all about communication management, whether with your internal staff, back and forth to the public, or with your licensee population, or those that you’re permitting.”
Child care cases involve a lot of back-and-forth communication between your agency and providers. Workflow management supports that flow of work, routing work efficiently. Configure your system to automate every step in your workflow process, from reviewing new child care applications to approving child care licenses, along with licensing requirements tracking, generating notices and managing and tracking complaints.
Work queues support the communication of all team members. With workflow management, work gets assigned to team members; when staff view their work queue, they see their assignments, along with due dates. When needed, managers add and assign new work items.
Document management capabilities enable your staff to capture, manage and share documents electronically. With document management, upload any type of document and store the document with a record, including original child care license applications, correspondence and supporting documentation, like photos or videos. Your agency saves money and time, freeing up important resources to better serve the well-being of children.
Within a document management system, documents can be manually or automatically uploaded to a document queue. The queue enables your agency to view those documents and then store them with the associated record.
The child care provider portal gives your providers a one-stop shop to interact with your agency—from asking questions, to applying for exceptions and renewals.
Your agency knows the importance of storing the emails to and from providers; email management makes the process simple, automatically tracking and storing email with the licensee’s information. Document retention helps meet your department’s document retention mandates.
In phase 5, Model Agency, your agency offers a model for others to emulate on their path to modernization. Your agency adds tools that measure performance, resolve and implement process improvements, and demonstrate value to stakeholders.
“A model agency is looking towards continuous improvement,” explains Shaffer. “Agencies ask themselves: how do we continually improve?” Some ways, she explains, include analyzing business processes, staff performance and data analytics.
Adding this analytics layer to your child care system gives your agency automatic data collection and insights. Other advanced functions like batch processing come online and continue improving during this phase.
Your agency’s performance center includes the following tools:
Your agency now tracks key performance indicators; these include tracking cases, like death, child abuse and serious injuries. You measure the time to process an application—along with other bottlenecks in your agency’s business processes. The analytics drive your agency towards continuous improvement.
With the scarcity of child care programs, complex reporting helps your agency understand where you need support. View a report related to bed availability, for example, to quickly connect individuals to available child care providers.
Configurable licensing systems enable your child care agency to adapt to ever changing needs and workflows brought on by legislative changes and safety standards.
Key Performance Indicator reports give you a snapshot of the performance of your agency’s staff and processes. When integrated with Business Intelligence reporting the KPI data appears in a visually rich way; drill into the data to track and improve upon indicators, like business process duration, project deadlines and staff productivity.
Use the following key performance indicator reports to gain insight into your processes and better protect the lives of children.
To learn more about the optimal child care licensing system, download our white paper, the Key Components of a Child Care Licensing System or visit our child care licensing solutions page.
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