L.A. County, IBM to Develop Data Sharing Portal for Child Welfare Investigations

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors is scheduled this morning to consider approval of a project that will develop an electronic portal for sharing data on alleged perpetrators and others within investigations of child abuse or neglect. The project will be done through a work order under the county's master services agreement with IBM.

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On May 2, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a project that will develop an electronic portal for sharing data on alleged perpetrators and others within investigations of child abuse or neglect.

The $850,000 project will be done through a work order under the county's master services agreement with IBM.

The portal is an outgrowth of a data sharing protocol that several L.A. County departments agreed to in 2015.

"The protocol envisioned that members of the multidisciplinary team would share data electronically through a portal to provide the [children's social workers] access to near real-time information on the alleged perpetrators," a May 2 board memo explains.

"However, there was no simple way to accurately identify the alleged perpetrator across the various county data systems and access the allowable, up-to-date information directly from each system. The establishment by the CIO of the Countywide Master Data Management (CWMDM) system allows for the development of this portal by matching the identity of the alleged perpetrator across the various data systems.

The county departments of Health Services, Mental Health and Children and Family Services are using CWMDM.

"Therefore, the CWMDM system would provide the foundational platform from which this electronic data-sharing platform would be built."

IBM also worked on development of CWMDM. The shared infrastructure was designed to improve client identity management across county social services. CWMDM is hosted at the county's data center.

The county agreed to the master service agreement with IBM in 2007.

This article was originally published on Techwire.

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