“I'd just like to thank you and all the other fine CMA staff for your superlative efforts in delivering Build 18. There's no question that your work as Project Build Manager contributed heavily to what has been called our most successful Build.”
- Fred Krough, Director, Bureau of Applications - OCFS-IT

The New York State Office of Child and Family Services (OCFS) is a large NYS Agency that serves more than 80,000 children and families of New York State. The agency provides a system of family support, juvenile justice, and child welfare services with annual budget of $3.6 billion for programs that support the safety and well-being of children and adults, has a workforce of over 3,800 employees.

CMA was contracted by the NY State Office for Children and Family Services to deliver a wide range of Project Managers, Business and Systems Analysts, Applications Developer/Programmers, and Technical Support staff to complement their Division of Information Technology (IT). This includes project managers and staff assigned to or leading teams performing requirements analysis/definition; application logical and technical design; application programming; unit, integration, system, and acceptance testing; business process reengineering and implementation support services; data conversion; data warehouse development; and network/database administration.

CMA has provided these professional services to directly support the redesign and development of the mission-critical CONNECTIONS child welfare/Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS). The CONNECTIONS system is designed to support functionality involving the collection and tracking of data related to child abuse/neglect intake cases, investigations, and other casework/fiscal functions including provision of services, foster care, adoption, payments and claiming. CMA has specifically played a key role in the development Builds 18 and 19 which implement extensive case and financial management functionality and many automated data interfaces to legacy systems in multiple state agencies. The two builds together involve the design and development of over 300 new screens, over 50 reports, and a dozen new interfaces, and when deployed will be utilized by over 18,000 state, county, and contract agency workers throughout the State.

One of CMA's PMI-Certified Senior Project Managers is the Application Development Project Manager for new development in the CONNECTIONS system. He has been appointed to the PMO team at OCFS. Another CMA Senior Project Manager provides project leadership serving as the project's Conversion and Interfaces and Application Technical Design manager.

The CONNECTIONS system utilizes an N-tiered client-server environment featuring a Citrix MetaFrame client tier, an application tier utilizing Accenture Foundation for Cooperative Processing (FCP), C code, MicroFocus COBOL batches, Data Access Modules (DAMs), Microsoft Visual Basic modules (with ASP and COM), and an Oracle database tier. Other software and tools include: Search Software America's SSA-NAME3 and SSA-IDS, Code-1 address validation, Brio SQR Reporting Tool, Crystal Reports, and Cognos business intelligence tools.

CMA is also providing GIS (Geographic Information System) specialists who are using MapInfo technology to generate a visual representation of service users and providers. CMA is supporting the delivery of reporting systems to the statewide network of counties that deliver social service benefits.

CMA is supporting the delivery of reporting systems to the statewide network of counties that deliver social service benefits.