Arkansas canceled child welfare IT upgrade after two years, $12M

Arkansas ended a multimillion dollar effort to update its aging child welfare system after spending more than $12 million over two years of development, according to documents recently acquired by the Arkansas Advocate.

The Children’s Reporting and Information System known as CHRIS, was to be replaced by a system called ARfocus, but the project was abandoned after two years of setbacks. The state had hired the Chicago firm RedMane Technology in 2022 to give caseworkers and administrators more-reliable tools to track children in the state’s care, using mobile-friendly cloud software.

Last September, officials at the Arkansas Department of Human Services determined that the project was not meeting its budget, timeline or technical requirements, leading the state to end the contract.

“The project was terminated because a viable product could not be developed within the agreed-upon time, scope, and budget,” according to the final progress report.

Arkansas DHS spokesperson Gavin Lesnick said the department still aims to update the system, but will continue using CHRIS in the meantime. Though reliable, he said, the system has been in place since 1997 and lacks many of the features that ARfocus was meant to deliver, such as integration across agencies.

“CHRIS is “fully capable of meeting all our needs at this time,” Lesnick told the Advocate.

The failed upgrade leaves Arkansas behind other states, such as Pennsylvania and California, that have updated their child welfare systems in recent years to improve efficiency, reduce paperwork and give frontline workers more time to focus on their cases.