Assessing Mobile Technologies in Child Protective Services: An Extended Pilot in New York City's Administration for Children's Services:

Assessing Mobile Technologies in Child Protective Services ACS – Manhattan & Staten Island 8/27/07 & 8/28/07
Borough	Address	Location	Time	Participants
Manhattan	150 William St.	Conference Rm. 8A-1	9:30am – 12:30pm	About 14-16 CPS caseworkers
Manhattan	150 William St.	Conference Rm. 8A-1	1:30pm – 4:30pm	About 14- 16 CPS caseworkers
Staten Island	350 St. Marks Place	3rd Fl Conference Rm.	9:30am – 11:00 am	About 9-10 CPS Caseworkers
Staten Island	350 St. Marks Place	3rd Fl Conference Rm.	11:30 am – 1:00 noon	About 9- 10 CPS caseworkers
Staten Island	350 St. Marks Place	3rd Fl Conference Rm.	2:00 pm – 3:30 pm	About 9- 10 CPS caseworkers

Facilitation Plan
Time	Questions
5 min	Introduction/ Hello. Who we are, Who is CTG, What is the assessment about, what we hope to learn
20 min	Icebreaker If there was only ONE thing you could say about using laptops in CPS work or about your experience – what would it be?
20 min	Location – Based Use Where do you keep your laptop throughout the day?- Explore why on each response. What locations did you find were best for getting work done? Where did you think you would be able to use your laptop that you didn’t or tried to and it didn’t work? What prevented you from using your laptop? (technology, environment, connectivity)
35 min	Documentation and Productivity What did the laptop enable you to do that you were not able to do before? How did having a laptop make doing your work different? Better? Worse? What work functions did you do the most while using the laptop? Why those functions? How do you think using laptops in the field make you more efficient at documentation? Or if it doesn’t – why not? Did having a laptop computer allow you to catch up on your work? (i.e. progress notes, closing cases, etc.) How so? Were able to spend more time in the field doing visits since working with the laptop?
15 min	Break
20 min	Job Stress and Satisfaction How does using a laptop affect your level of job stress? Is the same, different than before? What made it more stressful – what made it less stressful? Has satisfaction in doing your job changed since having the laptop? Do you feel that having the laptop has given you increased flexibility in the way you do your job? Have there been any barriers to using a laptop to do your work?
25 min	Reaching Full Potential Are there any other technical tools that you feel would make your work easier (i.e. digital camera, dictation device)? What will make using laptops better, more productive, easier? Can you imagine circumstances under which having a laptop would be more useful (i.e. having a car, long commute)? What impediments do you see to using this technology to its fullest potential? Prompts- policies, work practices, technologies, regulations, work style, capabilities, environment
15 min	General Impressions Would you recommend a laptop to your co-workers? Why or why not? If laptops were to be deployed to all CPS workers, would you change anything about their deployment (i.e. more or less training)? Were there any technical issues that made it hard to use the laptop for your daily work (i.e. connectivity, hardware problems, number of log-ons)? Were there any security risks that you noticed that you think should be addressed?
10 min	What else should we know that we didn’t ask?
5 min	Wrap – up

NOTE: You may also download PDF versions of the baseline survey and follow-up survey.