How the Texas DFPS Streamlined its Operations to Processes Over 40,000 Requests Annually

Justin Compton and Heather MacLean are employees of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, a government agency that processes over 40,000 requests for records every year. With such a high volume of work, the organization has to be careful to ensure accuracy in its documentation. Having used several tools such as SharePoint, Microsoft Word, e-mail memos, and Excel spreadsheets, they realized that basic workflow software was insufficient for their kind of work. They sought something more effective, and SweetProcess came in handy.

Heather and Justin tell us how SweetProcess helped them to streamline their operations and become more efficient as an agency. Let’s learn more about the organization for context before we proceed.

Heather MacLean, Management Analyst III at Texas Department of Family and Protective Services

About Texas Department of Family and Protective Services 

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) is an agency focused on adult protective services, child protective services, childcare investigations, prevention and early intervention, and statewide intake. 

Established in 2004, the agency investigates charges of abuse, exploitation, and abuse of children, elderly adults, and adults with disabilities. 

The DFPS manages the records of people under its care over many years. These records are created, stored safely, and provided to law enforcement when the need arises. The agency processes over 40,000 requests for records every year. Since 2015, the DFPS has seen a 49% increase in demand for records process requests.

The DFPS also provides records to prospective adoptive parents, former foster youth, protective agencies from other states, and in response to legal proceedings to name a few other requesters besides law enforcement.

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The Biggest Pain Points

Processing over 40,000 records a year is a lot of work. The department created work manuals using tools such as Microsoft Word, SharePoint, and Excel, but all of these were inadequate in meeting the demands of the job. With bits of information stored in different places, there was a lot of back and forth that made their work complex. 

“We found ourselves in a place where we had three very large manuals. One was over 200 pages. The other one was about 100 pages…. This operation is complex,” Justin reveals.

Besides the issue of accessibility, they also suffered setbacks in keeping their information up to date. It took about a year to update some information such as the ETA—this was a huge problem for people who needed the agency to make quick decisions about childcare, custody, housing, restraining orders, etc.

“We,