Automation and workforce displacement in New York's Early Intervention System

¶ … Intervention, Division of Department of Health Mental Hygiene to implement NYEIS

New York Early Intervention System (NYEIS)

The topic is the NYEIS and its subsequent elimination of rank & file employee positions as the automation of the system forces economic displacement in the form of > capital, < labor. The NYEIS, according to the New York State Department of Health, is "a centralized, Web-based, state-of-the-art system that electronically manages Early Intervention Program (EIP) administrative tasks and provides for information exchanges." (NYSDOH-NYEIS, 2011)

The expectation is there will be turnover i.e. attrition due to the nature of the new system and its ability to streamline operations and reduce excess waste. The excess waste in this case, is the administrative waste or bureaucratic processes, which are eliminated from the processes chain. The elimination of the basic function within the data entry position is the expected route when engaging a new technological system.

Businesses tend to hire specialists that have the administrative skill set in place to handle data entry and process intervention through the support service chain to address any situation that threatens the system's ability to run the EIP. "This system is designed to support EIP's service delivery, financial, administration, and management activities at both the local and state levels." (NYSDOH-NYEIS, 2011)

The NYSDOH intends the operation of the system as central to a managerial function of available skilled labor and resource capacity against system demand. The management of this system is contiguous to streamlining the EIS. The Early Intervention Official Designees (EIODs) ostensibly are the labor component to which the system actively engages to obtain data input to subsequently manage the data management process.

The system (EIS) manages a large number of services and activities. "These activities include initial intake, evaluation, eligibility determination, Individualized Family Service Plan development, service provision, and all financial aspects including insurance, claiming, payments, and Medicaid reimbursement. The Kids Integrated Data System (KIDS), which currently supports the New York State Early Intervention Program, is being replaced by NYEIS." (NYSDOH-NYEIS, 2011)

The system essentially becomes a labor department that would normally manage these support service activities and the chain of administrative managerial operations. The labor aspect of the implementation of the EIS and subsequent management of the Early Intervention Program (EIP) is via the NYSDOH staff to engage 58 municipal EIP's to provide services to the EIP-eligible children within communities serviced by the program (DOH Implementation Status, 2011).

Training & Strategic Reorganization

The estimated number of municipal EIP staff is 1,200, and 2,000 to be approved and contracted as EI service providers commencing the summer of 2010 (NYSDOH-Intervention, 2011). "Selected municipal staffs will participate in three days of face-to-face training, and selected service providers in two days of face-to-face training. Municipal and provider training sessions will focus on building skills and proficiency specific to the functional activities of each municipal and provider user role such as Early Intervention Official/Designee, financial users, service coordinators, data entry users, evaluators, and direct providers of EI services." (NYSDOH-Intervention, 2011)

The training is focused on converting these staff members into service providers whilst building the skills necessary to facilitate the system to manage the programs. Functional activities will be mastered as described above. In the past, these functional activities were performed by designated teams of human capital with specialized skills whom worked in a command and control, Taylorism environment. The system now internalizes this former aforementioned task by performing the work via computing power.

The strategic reorganization process commences with the strategic planning process of defining the internal and external environmental variables that will either help or hinder the organization to achieve its objectives. Certainly, the new system is identified as being able to successfully manage the many integral programs on behalf of the mother organization, which is the Department of Health.

The reorganization has ostensibly occurred as outlined by the New York State Department of Health within the aforementioned pages. Essentially, reorganization is about the following. "Recurring problems often seem to have little to do with the business's overall purpose and goals. However, any attempts at reorganizing may be just fine tuning, or tweaking, if not done with the long-term in mind. In fact, the recurring problems may be a symptom of the organization's not having clearly thought out what its overall purpose and goals are. Without visiting the overall purpose and goals, redesign is usually a highly reactive and very short-term fix. Carefully consider conducting a strategic planning process to guide you through reviewing your organization's purpose." (McNamara, 2011)

The New York State Department of Health has already completed this task and has decided to employ more capital and less labor in applying resources to address mission goals. The management of the NYEIS and EIOD staff is the labor component that is outside the management realm of the system. The EIS is an interactive system that engages the employee to assist in managing the many components associated with the operational management of the programs by the system. The trained employee is therefore responsible with interacting with the program as trained and as is necessary when operating 'live'.

Should the current organizational model require trimming, the ideal method is to evaluate the internal talent based on employee familiarity with computer systems, and any of the core functions that are integrate into the EIS. Additionally, if an employee displays a high aptitude to learn new and abstract concepts, these employees should be retained and engaged as well. The modality to ascertain the ability of these employees is a computer aided evaluation test that obtains data and renders a decision from employee input regarding whether said employee is a good fit for the NYEIS rollout.

When the employee base pool is greater than the number of jobs open, the salary of employees can be lowered to new market rate equilibrium. This new market equilibrium enables either more employees or a savings to the organization as there is an oversupply of trainable human capital. As the intended hiring number remains relatively fixed, the new market equilibrium rate will benefit the organization's ability to manage costs due to lower labor costs.

"Whenever a project is likely to give rise to significant job losses, it is important that the process is being handled in a professional, economically efficient and legal manner. The aim of this note is to provide clients who anticipate collective job losses with some guidance on the appropriate steps." (EBRD Retrenchment Guidance, 2010)

Key Points:

Reasonable notice of planned redundancies

Where redundancies are anticipated, reasonable notice is to be given to both workers representatives and national authorities. This often is required under the terms of national law and such provision should always be within compliance. The notice is to be sufficient in terms of duration to enable workers representatives to accomplish the following:

Assess the likely impact of the redundancies on the workforce and the community

The seek independent advice

To propose alternatives to mitigate the impact of the redundancies

To discuss these with the company

To put in place other appropriate actions

Source: http://www.ebrd.com/downloads/about/sustainability/retrenchment.pdf

Mentioned earlier was the selection criteria for retaining qualified candidates to run the system. "Where the redundancy process does not involve a complete closure of the workplace, it is important that the selection criteria ensure that the best employees are retained. Therefore, any criteria should be objective and related to the needs of the job. This has the added advantage of minimising the risk of discrimination." (EBRD, 2010) The typical factors that are normally included in selection criteria are the following:

Length of service

Skills assessment

Disciplinary record

Performance record

Absence record

Knowledge

"Some criteria may have disproportionate, but unintended, impact on one group compared to another. For example, selecting workers who are part-time or those with the shortest service will often have a disproportionate impact on women and should be reviewed to see whether there are alternative criteria or ways to mitigate this impact." (EBRD, 2010)

With the retrenchment plan explained and integrated into the pre-existing strategic planning process to enable the NYEIS, the roll-out of the pilot training a testing program is the next step. "Information gathered from the pilot training and testing will be used by Department staff to refine and finalize the NYEIS application. Additional NYEIS training will be provided to municipal EIP staff and their providers in an organized and sequential manner beginning summer 2010. Preparation for statewide training includes making modification/enhancements to the NYEIS application, updating the user manual, and pilot testing the application for launching of the application statewide." (NYSDOH-Implementation, 2011)

There will be approximately forty workers per municipal EIP. These workers are required to be trained to enable the optimal use of the system. Training is designed to enable the retained and recruited employee to utilize the system to manage the core functions of the administrative responsibilities. The EIOD's are also able to meet with families under the Individual Family Service Plan to obtain biographical and additional data necessary to facilitate the extent of enabling the completion of the mission as outlined by the New York State Department of Health. The services outcomes measurement is ostensibly what is used to measure the success of such a program.

The ability of the staff to streamline the processes and obtain critical data for the data entry process is the new way of doing business by having employees officially multi-task and wear multiple hats to accomplish organizational goals in a cost effective manner. Given the egregious economic and fiscal constraints that limit budgets and scrutinize expenditures, the ability for state governments to employ a large number of administrative staff without seeing real results is now essentially obsolete.