Announcement: New ACORN Release Date!
Celebrations & Appreciations
We started our work with the Public Consulting Group (PCG) only nine months ago and we have come a long way! Our teams and partners have been collaborating on the various work-strands of this project and there are a lot of accomplishments to celebrate. Business requirements gathering, customization and design work for ACORN has all been successfully completed as of July 21. We have started User Acceptance Testing to finalize the layout and design of our new data system. We have also begun to migrate DMS data into the new ACORN database and have mapped existing data elements to the corresponding data elements in ACORN. Our teams are working hand-in-hand with the local provider systems that have existing Data Exchanges and file downloads to finalize this functionality in ACORN. Training content for ACORN has been developed and we will shortly be uploading the training materials and asynchronous training modules to our Learning Management Software (LMS). In collaboration with PCG, and with internal cross-teaming, we were able to provide our Introductory Overview of ACORN on June 27 and July 11, with over 800 users attending these sessions. None of these milestones could have been met without the full engagement of the State Interagency Coordinating Council’s Data Committee, focus group participants, community partners, internal and external leaders.
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Initial Launch Date Updated
With support from the Public Consulting Group, DCYF IT Leaders, and the ESIT State Leadership Team, we have evaluated progress made to date with key ACORN Migration milestones, reviewed and analyzed the remaining work yet to be completed on this critically important initiative. As a result, consistent with recent recommendations received from the State Interagency Coordinating Council’s Data Committee, we have moved the launch date to November 1.
ACORN Training Timeline, Rollout, from August 2023 through November 1, 2023.
With this timeline, we will be able to provide comprehensive ACORN Training Sessions to all Users and provide direct access to the ACORN training (sandbox) environment to support interactive, explorative, relational learning activities focused on the system and its functionality. Additionally, we will have the time necessary to effectively test and verify Data Exchanges and test and validate the migrated data and companion reporting functions.
Train-the-Trainers, Introductory & Comprehensive Training Underway
Our ESIT Data Systems and Analysis team recently completed the train-the-trainer sessions and our County Lead Agency partners were invited and engaged in these with us. We appreciate their time invested in the training session, as well as the valuable feedback they provided to our Public Consulting Group trainers. Feedback included the importance of participants having direct access to a sandbox training environment, and a full set of electronic training materials. As noted in the June 30 ESIT Weekly and celebrations above: after careful consideration of this feedback and in collaboration with our partners at the Public Consulting Group, we nimbly modified the initial registrations to offer initial Introductory training on a voluntary basis. The comprehensive ACORN Training Sessions will be offered at a later time, when access to the training (sandbox) environment has been established and all training materials are uploaded to the LMS for immediate access.
Questions, Feedback & Suggestions Welcomed
We continue to remain committed to a smooth transition from the ESIT DMS to ACORN. We plan to announce the comprehensive training dates and registration information in the near future. As always, we welcome questions, feedback and suggestions. Please contact the ESIT Data Systems and Analysis Manager, Kim Hopkins, at kim.hopkins@dcyf.wa.gov.
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