Minnesota earned national recognition as a finalist for the Optimal Experience Award for Research for Social Good. The international award is given to projects that protect research participants and result in delivering better outcomes. 

Using Optimal Workshop’s tools, MNIT conducted research for the Time Entry Transformation (TET) project, including testing prototypes to learn what time-tracking interventions would help the state’s child welfare workforce. Their work advanced a collaboration between MNIT and Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF) to modernize a critical administrative piece of the Social Services Information System (SSIS).

Why transform time entry?

Child welfare workers across Minnesota’s counties and Tribal Nations rely on SSIS to document their work with children and families. But the aging, Windows-based application became slow, prone to crashes and limited to Windows devices. Workers improvised with workarounds — drafting notes in Word, reentering work after system failures, and losing time they could have spent supporting families in crisis.

Every hour lost to failing technology is an hour not serving children and families.

The project replaces the case notes and time tracking portion of the 20 year old desktop system with a faster, accessible, responsive web application. Workers can now document from anywhere — on any device — and complete tasks in real time, without waiting to return to the office. The resulting time savings allow them to focus more on supporting families.

Collaborating with workers

We grounded this work in human-centered design and ethical research practices. More than 75 child welfare workers participated in interviews, usability tests, and on-site observations. Using OptimalWorkshop, we captured nearly 1,000 individual insights, creating a clear evidence base that informed decisions.

We protected participants throughout the process:

• Workers participated voluntarily with research scheduled around their caseloads.
• We excluded personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) from all research tools.
• We stored insights without linking them to individual workers or families.

Optimal Experience Award judges praised the team for protecting participants sensitive information and using their findings effectively to improve TET for child welfare workers.

Putting feedback to work

Case workers did not want to reinvent their workflows. They wanted reliable technology that supported the way they already worked. So, we preserved familiar fields and processes while modernizing the technology behind them.

Key improvements:

• Simplified login from three screens to one
• Eliminated typing delays and crashes
• Added autosave to prevent data loss
• Created a responsive, mobile-first design for use anywhere, including in the field
• Improved accessibility for all workers
• More than 1,150 agency workers have access to the tool.
• More than 650 workers across 80 agencies have submitted over 11,575 records.
• Mobile use is strong, indicating workers can access the tool seamlessly in the office or in the field.
• Workers report saving three hours a week — across 1,150 workers, that's almost 180,000 hours per year they can spend supporting children and families.

Delivering relief today and shaping the future

TET gives child welfare workers immediate relief while Minnesota continues to modernize its Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS). Instead of asking workers to wait years for improvements, Minnesota delivered a tool that makes their work easier today. 

The research methods, designs, and worker feedback that shaped TET will contribute to the broader modernization effort — ensuring Minnesota builds the future of child welfare technology with workers, not just for them.

Learn more

• Building Better Tools for Our Work Together