In this episode, Nathan Sirois from Balsam Technologies talks about managed IT for social service agencies. He covers secure access for mobile caseworkers, confidential data sharing with community partners, outage prevention, and technology planning around grant funding and government contracts.
John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher, and I’m here today with Nathan Sirois, Support Engineer at Balsam Technologies, a managed IT services company based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, offering cybersecurity, IT infrastructure, network support, cloud migrations, data backup, and more. Today we’re talking about managed IT for social service agencies. Welcome, Nathan.
Nathan Sirois: Thanks for having me, John.
Managed IT Needs for Social Service Agencies
John: Absolutely. Nathan, what makes the IT needs of a social service agency different when case managers and social workers handle sensitive client information while coordinating services from offices and homes and field locations?
Nathan: What makes it critical when handling those situations is having a really good handle from an outside managed service provider on both your security posture and also your organizational structure. We understand at Balsam Technologies that social service agencies need high mobility, and your caseworkers are going in between offices, going to client sites, assisting patients in some cases. And it’s really essential that you have that company in your back pocket, that can really assist you with security when the need arises for either compliance or just protecting your end users.
Secure Case Management Access for Employees
John: And how can agencies give employees secure, convenient access to case management systems and client documents without expecting social workers and office administrators to become technology experts?
Nathan: It’s really essential in those situations that you have a clear organization of your employees and what access they should have to systems to start off with. Having secure platforms where you can manage both the documents that people are engaging with, as well as the resources that they have access to as far as your applications go, and just administrative access to systems that they might need access to or might not.
Putting systems in place like a multifactor authenticator for either your end user devices, your Microsoft platforms, or any other security-minded platform that you have in place. Just making sure that there’s secure access to whatever systems your organization uses is really essential for people of every level at your organization, whether it be the lowest employee on the entire organizational chart or your CEO. It’s important that every single person is secure and that no loopholes are left open for hackers to come in and try to harm your organization.
And training your employees on how to use these systems in a way that’s convenient for them is really important to make sure that your workflows are streamlined and your services are provided in a way that is efficient and effective, regardless of any security platforms in place.
Sharing Client Data with Community Partners
John: So social service agencies have to securely exchange information with government departments and healthcare providers, schools, and other community partners. How do they do that while still maintaining control over confidential client data?
Nathan: Well, gone are the days of just emailing files amongst your employees and sharing files outside your organization simply. Unfortunately, in this day and age, you require a lot more secure platforms for doing those sorts of things. And navigating a setup of some sort of document sharing platform that works for both your internal employees, and people outside your organization, is really important to set up correctly.
And it can be difficult and intimidating for a lot of social service agencies to figure out how to do that correctly. Having an outsourced managed service provider in place to walk you through that and help your organization think over the steps that you may not have thought of to securely protect your environment is really important when you’re thinking about file sharing and workplace platforms for your IT environment.
Reducing Outages That Affect Agency Services
John: And what effect can an outage involving email and phones and shared files or case management software have on the people an agency serves, and how can proactive IT support reduce those interruptions?
Nathan: In those situations, we know at Balsam Technologies that a lot of social service agencies operate with pretty time-sensitive cases, or just directives in mind, that you don’t have time for IT mishaps getting in the way of. Downtime can mean losing service to somebody that really needs it for your organization, and having a proactive system in place from a managed service provider to both keep your systems running at a hundred percent capacity at all times.
And also knowing how to quickly and effectively troubleshoot issues for your social service agency is really important for both the assistance of your caseworkers, of your employees, and also ultimately the people that you serve through your agency.
IT Budgeting for Grants and Government Contracts
John: Okay. And how should grant funding, government contracts, and the need for predictable expenses influence an agency’s technology priorities and long-term planning?
Nathan: Budgeting is often really an important thing for a lot of social service agencies that we work with. And having a comprehensive plan in place for most organizations is really essential to keep the best and greatest IT up and running. If you don’t plan correctly, your systems could become obsolete and you’ve run out of budget for the upgrades that you know you need.
So having a standardized five-year plan is what we recommend for most service agencies. And if you need assistance with forming one of those, a managed service provider like Balsam Technologies or a similar organization is really important, to understand both the full scope of the IT that you have in place and the vision of where you want to go as an organization.
And regardless of grants or budgeting issues, that should never get in the way of your technical upgrades and making sure that your employees have the tools that they need to enable them to provide the best service possible.
John: All right, well, that’s really great information, Nathan. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Nathan: Absolutely, John.
John: And for more information, you can visit the Balsam Technologies website at balsamtechnologies.com or call 978-281-3339.
