Milton Keynes goes straight to Phase 1B Compliance for ICS

Liquidlogic’s PROTOCOL Integrated Children’s System chosen for its fast go live delivery

Leeds, 24th March 2008 – Liquidlogic, a leading provider of collaborative software to the public sector has announced that its PROTOCOL Integrated Children’s System (ICS) has gone live in the Children’s Services Division of Milton Keynes Council, fast tracking the council to the second stage of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) ICS Compliance Phase 1B. Liquidlogic’s ErrorTolerant Search Module was also integrated with PROTOCOL ICS, ensuring that fuzzy logic is applied when searching for details of vulnerable children to remove the risk of duplicate files being accidentally created.

Implemented for Milton Keynes’ 250 care practitioners, the PROTOCOL ICS Solution improves collaboration between the Children’s Services Division and its partner agencies, such as the Primary Care Trust and the NSPCC. The solution improves the quality, availability and timeliness of information on vulnerable children, to ensure that practitioners have a holistic view of a child’s wellbeing. Liquidlogic’s integrated ErrorTolerant Search facility removes the chance of unnecessary duplication of case files, by identifying anomalies such as a surname and forename confusion – where John James, for example, can we swapped for James John and a duplicate file created in error.

David Merrett, Information Manager, Social Care at Milton Keynes Council commented: “One of the worst things that can happen in this job is creating duplicate records on a child. Duplicate files result in information being logged in different places, meaning a child’s vulnerability may not be escalated at the appropriate time, since only a partial view of the child’s situation might be detailed. We therefore needed to ensure that we chose an ICS system that could eradicate this problem and Liquidlogic’s system with its Error Tolerant Search facility was by far the best product that we reviewed.”

“Compliance was also a primary consideration for us when choosing a provider for ICS. At the time of our review, Liquidlogic was the only company with a fully compliant DSCF system that already had the system live in a large number of authorities. Liquidlogic’s expertise and the fact that they were ahead of the game certainly helped to take the pain out of compliance for us,” added Merrett.

The implementation kicked off in October 2007 supported by a pre-defined configuration document. A range of troubleshooting problems were subsequently presented to staff to focus attentions on what the required system configurations should be and define the type of implementation stages that the Council needed to go through. This process made the technical implementation at Milton Keynes much easier, as the IT team were thoroughly prepared beforehand.

Denise Harrison, Sales and Marketing Director as Liquidlogic, said: “Not only was it a smooth IT implementation, but Milton Keynes’ care practitioners also saw the benefits of the ICS system straight away, which enabled us to go live with the system within six months. The care workers could see past the initial pain of having to get used to working with a new system and recognised the immediate dividends brought in by having full visibility into the council’s case load on vulnerable children.”

Liquidlogic’s PROTOCOL solution was chosen over products from OLM and CACI.