What We Did for Kim Return   About Kim Kim is responsible for special projects for a large social service agency. One of her mandates is to maintain and increase the quality of services supplied. Her board of directors decided that being accredited by meeting or exceeding a recognized set of standards for social service agencies would help achieve this goal. She was charged with implementing these changes. What was done A standards accreditation system was built. At the heart of the system was the storage of the individual standards for two accreditation systems and the instant retrieval of all documents used in support of each standard. The system was built to be used (a.) by the staff of all departments on a day to day basis as an instant standard reference, (b.) by the Task Team charged with ensuring that all standards were met or exceeded, (c.) by the executive of the social service agency and (d.) by standards inspectors themselves via a restricted web access. From any Standard one can view the applicable departments, directors and documents. Similarly from any document listing one can view all applicable standards, directors and departments. Accreditation Tasks may now be defined and followed. From each department, the applicable people can now see the standards they are expected to meet and the documents that support them. The Result A system is now in place that gives ready access to standards and support information in real time. Further, as different standards and documents relate to different departments, the individual departments are not distracted with data other than that which is relevant to them. The System is available enterprise wide on a 24/7 basis. This is important as this organization works 24/7 Creation of the system has had the side effect of centralizing and organizing document storage for the whole agency. Followup This program was started during the fall of 2007 and and came on line in early spring 2008. As at current writing, November 2008, this program has been in continuous operation since that time. It is currently being used in preparation for the initial accreditation and being used as a standards and document reference by various departments. This organization has several database systems in place. I have been told that this particular program is getting the highest utilization of any of their systems. Since the initial launch, there has been no maintenance required. It is anticipated that when the initial accreditation inspections are done, that this system will cut the required inspection time in half. This represents a substantial cost saving to the organization. Followup 2 As at summer 2010, this program has been adopted by FOCUS, one of the accreditation authorities and is being actively used as an accreditation tool. A series of upgrade tools have been implemented so that an agency can progress from accreditation to accreditation seamlessly as standards change. Return