Opinion: Saving kids by computer

Florida children will suffer if lawmakers pull the plug on the state's bungled child-welfare computer system instead of insisting on a plan to fix it.

Florida lawmakers are right to demand answers about the state's child-welfare computer system. The project has been a breathtaking example of government bungling -- and that's putting it charitably. But lawmakers will only make matters worse if they shut down the project or slash funding to the point of crippling it. A lot more than state dollars would be wasted.

Children's lives may be lost as well.

Lawmakers in both Houses met this week to figure out why, after 11 years of failed attempts and millions of dollars already invested, the promised state-of-the-art tracking system remains far from complete.

"In this time of a budget crunch, [when] we're cutting direct services to pregnant moms and seniors, we can't be putting millions and millions of dollars into a computer program that doesn't show results," an understandably frustrated Rep. Nan Rich, D-Weston, told her colleagues on the House Child and Family Security Committee.

The urge to cut Florida's losses and run might make sense if the new computer were not so critical to the state's ability to protect at-risk kids. Once fully on-line, it will replace six unconnected and outmoded data systems the Department of Children and Families has used, with little success, for decades. Instead of rifling through masses of paper resembling phone-book yellow pages, DCF workers will be able with a few keystrokes to find out and record important information about each child. Investigators will know more about the child's history before investigating abuse complaints, and workers may better follow kids as they move through the system (while supervisors better track caseworkers). At the start of the 21st century, you might assume the state already had such capabilities, but you would be wrong.

Until recently, DCF could barely say how many children were in the system, much less track the full history and case plan of each. Though DCF is in the process of turning over many duties to community-based agencies, the new statewide system remains critical, especially since troubled families often move from one community to another.

Statistics out this week punctuate the need to speed up the conversion. Eighty percent of the 60 Florida children who recently died from abuse or neglect might have been saved had investigators been more thorough and observant, according to the State Child Abuse Death Review Team. The automated computer would have helped.

"If we could get this done yesterday we would," DCF Chief Information Officer Randy Niewenhous, told the Times. "Why? Because this is about saving the lives of kids."

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