00:00:01 Introduction

All right. I think we are ready to go. Okay, so today I think what we're going to do, it's going to be a fairly short session, depending on how many questions everyone has. What I'd like to walk through is very simply: why use ActivityInfo for case management? Just share a couple of stories of people who are using ActivityInfo for case management, and then I'll give a demonstration of how the case lifecycle can work, how you customize the case forms, review statistics, we'll take a look at the audit log and, of course, address any questions that you might have. Finally, we'll look at things to be aware of when working with personally-identifying information that's important for case management, and we'll wrap up with questions.

00:01:06 Why ActivityInfo for case management?

ActivityInfo is a general information management system that's used extensively throughout the world for humanitarian relief, development assistance, but also increasingly working directly with beneficiaries for case management and beneficiary registration. So it is a general purpose tool, but it has several advantages when it comes to case management. The first thing is that it's very cost-effective compared to on-premise alternatives. So if you compare the cost of a cloud-based system to having an IT team set up a system, maintain that system over time, which usually requires a bit of development to customize it to your case, ActivityInfo has a much better return on investment. It can be activated immediately; we include support in the cost of the annual subscription. So it can be quite cost-effective and predictable for organizations of all sizes.

Secondly, I think this is very important, is that ActivityInfo is highly flexible. It allows you to customize the rules, the data entry validation, and the types of information you're collecting. It's very easy to customize that, and the people that are running the protection program or handling the cases that are closest to the beneficiaries, they're able to do that directly, so you don't need to send change requests to IT every time you need an extra field or need to adapt something. What we see with the organizations that we work with is that even within the same organization, field offices tend to have very different processes for working with either vulnerable populations or beneficiaries, and the flexibility to customize it to match your workflow is really important.

The third thing is, as I said, it can be set up and managed without IT support. So that not only reduces costs, but it means that the system can be more responsive to your needs as they change. And finally, ActivityInfo offers really best-in-class data security. We have 10 years of delivering the system via the cloud. Whenever you have an IT system, there are always going to be operational risks, even if you have a top-notch IT department within your organization. Mistakes can happen, things can go wrong, whether you're on the cloud or on-premise. And I believe that our track record here at ActivityInfo is something that I think our customers take a lot of confidence in.

00:04:13 Who uses ActivityInfo for case management?

On our website you can find we have two pretty good case studies of organizations that are using ActivityInfo for case management. One is for UNRWA. They have many field offices working with Palestinian refugees and use ActivityInfo as one of their case management systems, specifically for protection. The Danish Refugee Council also uses ActivityInfo. We have a great case study online about how they use it to support their work in the camps in Bangladesh. So if you're looking for more information or more detailed stories, those are both available on our website.

00:04:59 Demonstration: Case lifecycle

Now I'd like to walk through a demo. I thought quite a little bit about how to present a realistic demo for case management because, of course, we don't want to show you real data that's been collected, but it's helpful to see realistic data. So I've created a story around asylum seekers here in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is host to asylum seekers from all over the world, of course, from the Syrian crisis, from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia. And some of the organizations work with them and feature stories of those people on their website. So I've used a couple of their stories to put together a demo today and to kind of customize ActivityInfo for this particular use case.

I created a database for AZC, or Asielzoekerscentrum, the Asylum Seeker Centers here in the Netherlands, and I imagine that you have a team working in these centers, identifying protection issues among asylum seekers and ensuring that there is some action taken to support them. So for example, either providing them with information they might need or an internal referral within the asylum seeker center, maybe to a teacher, to education staff, to health staff that are there in the center, or an external referral to an organization that can help.

First, let's look at what this looks like for a supervisor. As a supervisor, I can open up my case files here. I've only entered two files based on some of the stories that are published on the website. You can see that they're in different states. They've been assigned case numbers; they're located to the specific AZC center. One is in Friesland and the other in Groningen. You can switch to the map view and see where those are located in the Netherlands. Each case is linked to a caseworker. I've chosen a few names so I can keep track of who's in my fictitious staff there. So we have Carol and Chidi as caseworkers. You can see the dates that they were opened, the number of days that they've been open, their status, and the current action that's required.

00:08:26 Entering a new case

Let's start by entering as a new caseworker. We'll go from Chidi's perspective. Here, he's maybe been sent a new case, and so we'll switch to his view here. Now, I'm logged in as Chidi on ActivityInfo, and you can see that I can only see my cases. I can't see the cases that have been assigned to Carol. Those rules are also customizable. You can configure that as you like, but in this case I've set it up so that Chidi can only view his own.

The story that's been referred to me is that of Elias. He is from Iraq and he has been in procedure, waiting for his asylum for a year, but the particular protection case that's been identified here is that he is a member of the Yazidi sect. He is concerned that the other Iraqis and other Syrians in the center would prevent him if his identity would become known. So, let's go ahead and register him. This can be done on a tablet or, if you're meeting with the client in your office, on a laptop.

I'm going to add the biographical information, so this is stored in a separate form so that you can hide this from certain members of the staff if you want only to show the case number and the details of the case, but not the information. Here I have fields for his full name and the V-number, which is like the registration number in the immigration service here in the Netherlands. You can attach passports or other sensitive documents here and store those. We'll save this personal information and go back to the main case record.

I'll mark the status as open, and let's say that he was referred to me by a health professional. Elias is 30 years old. He's male, he's single. He does not have a disability. And his specific vulnerability is called geographic exclusion. We'll categorize this as a general protection issue. I haven't included much information in this form just for demonstration purposes. You can add as many fields as you want. If there are specific aspects that you want to categorize, for example, to subcategorize the protection issue, you can have additional fields and customize that to your needs.

I'll note that he feels threatened if any of the other asylum seekers from his region would find out his identity. He has been keeping the secret, fearing that it will become known. He has given me consent; that's important to ask, of course. We're going to categorize this as medium because usually the risk levels—and again, you can customize these to your needs—have certain deadlines with them, and those you can also code into the rules. For example, maybe for the medium, you'd expect an action to be taken within two days. Maybe for high, you expect a response in 24 hours, and so forth. So I'm going to save that record while I confer with my supervisor.

00:15:35 Managing actions and referrals

Now, you'll see that this status is 'Action required'. It's been categorized. It's actually 'Referral required', right? So this means that I haven't filled out an action form. So the system knows that something has to be done and my supervisor knows that something has to be done. It's in the open status.

After confirming with my supervisor, it seems that the best thing would be to transfer him from this larger center in Tripoli to a different center where he is not going to be in danger even if his identity was to become known. So I'm going to move to the actions subform here so I can enter that today. We're going to make an internal referral. We're going to talk to Legal Aid and we have recommended that the client be transferred to a different center where he will not be at risk from those outside of his region.

I'm going to set a date to follow up on this referral, given that Elias is getting pretty nervous. And I'm going to say that by Monday, I really expect to follow up and make sure that the transfer is underway and things are moving forward. So now, you can see this full record of the case file, and if there are other actions that are taken, those will be listed here. In the meantime, I might have another conversation with Elias. I'll add a note that I met with the client and briefed him on the impending transfer. He was relieved; he is looking forward to a new, safer environment while he awaits a decision on his asylum.

That note is now part of the case file as well. Again, my supervisor can see that; you can see which records here have actions and referrals. And you'll also notice that the status has changed to 'Follow-up'. So now my supervisor knows that the follow-up is pending, but it hasn't yet come due. If the 5th of next Monday passes, then this will get flagged as 'Follow-up overdue'.

00:19:20 Supervisor overview and reports

I'm going to switch back to my supervisor view. I can see the new case for Jithin. I can see that it's waiting follow-up. So I know that's okay, but I can see that there is a case for Carol that was opened today but doesn't yet have an action, so I can take a look at the printed version of that and take a look at what is going on. Basically, this is a child protection case. The asylum seeker is concerned; their son is very seriously autistic. I can look at the history, for example, to see who's worked on this case. I can put a note here in the file visible to the caseworker suggesting an NGO that specializes in significantly autistic children that might be able to provide guidance.

Let's look at a couple of other features that are useful here. The first one is, of course, being able to filter by action required, or by any of these cases. The supervisors can really drill down to the things that need their attention. You can get a summary report. So I've created a summary table here that shows, for each caseworker, how many cases do they have and what's the status of those cases, and what are the different actions that are required from those cases. You can create custom reports here as well.

00:22:50 Permissions and the audit log

With case management, it's very important that the users first of all only have the permissions that they really need. So as a database owner, I can really limit the operations that each of the people that I work with have. This is maybe not necessarily because I don't trust them, but people can make mistakes. For example, maybe I don't really want to take the chance that a caseworker deletes a case file by mistake. It can still be recovered, but maybe I'll just say, 'If you want to delete a case, talk to your supervisor.' So I've removed this permission from the caseworker role.

In some cases you might be concerned about caseworkers taking data home with them or storing it on insecure devices. So you can also prevent them from exporting the records. That can help you to limit the scope of error. But the supervisors can, of course, make mistakes as well. Maybe I'm looking at this case and I think, 'Oh no, this is a duplicate.' So I delete it, and then Carol says, 'Wait a second, then my case record from yesterday is gone.'

One of the things is that nothing in ActivityInfo, as long as you keep the database active, nothing is really lost. So I can go to the audit log. I can see exactly all of the different actions that people have taken. And I can see that this user—in this case, just me—deleted this case record, and I can recover that, actually. Again, if you look at the case history, you can see that I was the one that deleted it, and then about 30 seconds later, I recovered it. All of that is present in the audit log.

00:27:19 Working with personally-identifying information

The last thing that I want to cover is just some notes and recommendations about working with personally-identifying information. I've already mentioned that it's important to restrict user roles to a minimum. Make sure that you really grant people the minimum that they need to do their job, so that helps to lower the risks.

The other thing I mentioned is that if you're working in a country where there are national data protection laws in place, for example, here in the Netherlands, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has effect. It imposes certain requirements on you as a data controller. As a data controller, if you create a case management database in ActivityInfo, you're considered by law to be the one that has ultimate responsibility. We, as the company behind ActivityInfo, we have a role as a data processor.

What's important for you as a data controller is to sign a separate Data Processing Agreement with us, in addition to the contract that we already signed. That really is crystal clear about our responsibilities to you, what you're responsible for. You need to obtain consent, or have another legal basis for capturing and storing personal information, and we have to be crystal clear that we only process that data and only work with that data at your request, on your instruction, which is tied to those legal bases. That allows you to demonstrate to the data protection authorities that you're storing your data responsibly; you chose a data processor that acknowledges their responsibility under this law and you verified that.

I mentioned the GDPR because it may apply if your organization has European headquarters, even if you're not capturing data for European citizens. But also, other countries are putting in place laws modeled after the GDPR. So there's one in the US for California; in Brazil they just passed a law that's very similar. That's something that we have experience working with and we're very happy to support you and give you the guidance that you need on complying with those laws.

00:30:48 Conclusion

That's my presentation. I hope it gave you kind of a picture of how case management can work in practice. We have an intermediate course coming up next week focused on monitoring and evaluation. We have two beginners' courses in November and December. That would definitely help you get started with case management. It doesn't cover case management specifically, but it would help you to get familiar with the software and know the basics so that you have a good foundation.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me at support@activityinfo.org or through our website. If you have questions or you're interested, we'd be happy to help you set up the system and get started. Thanks for joining us. Have a good afternoon, please stay safe, and I hope your families are doing well. Bye-bye.