Taysols brings data management to NSW FACS ChildStory system

Taysols' Mark Taylor

Consulting, cloud and support services provider Taysols has landed a $3.8 million project with the Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) to continue to improve its access to information through building reports and dashboards. 

FACS maintained a decade old case management system, which was time consuming to operate, didn’t offer much value to FACS caseworkers and didn’t always have correct or comprehensive information entered for various cases, requiring additional resources to rectify the issues. 

The department recognised the need to improve its data warehouse requirements, reports and dashboards, which led to upgrading its corporate information warehouse (CIW) to work with its new Salesforce case management system. 

In 2016, FACS engaged with MuleSoft and Salesforce in the development of a $100 million upgrade to its child protection IT system called ChildStory. The system went live in 2017. 

In this particular project, Taysols is working with the department to help create a solution that includes creating reports and dashboards built in OBIEE, extract, transform, load (ETL) capabilities using Informatica and a data warehouse based on Oracle. The source data comes from Salesforce.

“It was important to work with an organisation highly experienced in OBIEE and data warehouse projects, and Taysols delivered a high-quality outcome. FACS continues to rely on Taysols for expertise focused on the delivery of CIW,” Department of FACS director of information Owen Griffiths said. 

The implementation process proved to be challenging, in part because the CIW project was run in parallel with the FACS implementation of the new source system. 

Data warehouses normally rely on stable underlying data structures, but because the source system was being implemented at the same time, it meant the data structure was constantly evolving, which had a flow-on effect to the ETL and data model development for the CIW. 

Despite this challenge, and after significant effort over several months, Taysols delivered the original CIW piece of work on time, four weeks after ChildStory went live. 

Taysols and FACS continue to work together to deliver new information, enhancements, and updates every eight weeks.

“Taysols is pleased to be part of this important project which, ultimately, is aimed at creating better outcomes for children in need. Access to better data and insights is an essential component of the ChildStory program, making the CIW mission-critical for FACS,” Taysols founder and director, Mark Taylor, said. 

“The strong working relationship between Taysols and FACS is a crucial element of this project’s success. With Taysols’ focus on delivering high-quality outcomes, we’ve been able to help FACS evolve their team on the ground with ongoing support along with system analysis, development, testing and deployment.”