Poster
Client Context
The Office of Family Independence (OFI), a part of the Department of Family & Children Services in Georgia, faces challenges with a significant backlog of over 430 thousand unprocessed benefit applications, exacerbated by a decline in employee retention and increased demand since January 2020. Staff shortages at busy locations, like Gwinnett, result in applicants being turned away after noon due to insufficient assistance. The root cause lies in the data management system, Gateway, maintained by Deloitte. Survey results from 1,500 OFI employees reveal issues with daily task quotas and prioritization, leading case managers to focus on easier tasks rather than critical ones.
Project Objective
The objective of the project is to propose revisions to the OFI's task allocation system, task prioritization system, and provide recommendations to office layouts, data management.
Design Strategy
As part of the project design strategy, the team interviewed several case managers and sent out two surveys to understand case manager struggles. The team also visited the Fulton and Gwinnett County OFI offices and performed time studies to understand what issues customers face. The team performed quantitative analysis to find data-driven recommendations to the client's task allocation and prioritization systems. To assess the impact of the proposed revisions, the team conducted several simulation's of the current and revised systems.
Deliverables
The project deliverables are the revised prioritization logic, the recommendations to the task allocation system, and a report that proposes revisions to the system based on the team's qualitative observations.
Value and Impact
The insights report aims to provide qualitative value and guides organizational changes. The team estimates that the task allocation improvements will result in a projected 5.40% decrease in tasks completed after deadlines and a 31.65% reduction in the backlog, facilitating quicker approval of applications and issuance of benefits. The team estimates that the task prioritization algorithm leads to a 34.00% decrease in missed interviews and a 29.24% decrease in unacted tasks after VCL completion, freeing up time for case managers and addressing urgent needs promptly.
Project Information
Student Team
Summer Chen
Richa Bhome
Brandon Kali
Suzanne Kalkstein
Krishna Kumar
Kriti Nagunoori
Chris Seo
Amie Yang
Faculty Advisor
Faculty Evaluator
