Background

Case management is the work involved in the processing of data, procedures and related content that comprise a case. This is especially important for organisations, including many non-profits in Singapore, who work with various clients, where storing of information and events are key in effective monitoring of a case. In order to review effectiveness of their interventions and report their work to the National Council of Social Services, these nonprofits need to organise their data well. However, storing such information without proper tools can be very administratively challenging.

Thus, our case management system (CMS) helps our partnered organisations streamline their case tracking activities, and consolidates all case information into a central repository to provide up-to-date information on ongoing cases. This gives them a bigger picture of the effectiveness of their services and pinpoint problems more easily.

As can be seen from past years projects, CVWO has a long history of working with case management systems. Our system was built in 2014, which was rolled out to Care Corner Counselling Centre in 2015. Since then, we have grown in the number of partner organisations we work with, as well as the features that have been added into the system.

This year, our team served Care Corner Centre of Co-parenting, Care Corner Counselling Centre and Lions Befrienders Service Association, who were onboarded onto our system previously. On top of that, we have successfully onboarded Children’s Aid Society onto our CMS.

Care Corner Counselling Centre consists of two centres, Carecorner Counselling Centre (CCCC), and Care Corner Centre of Co-parenting (CCP). They are one of the largest Social Service Organisations in Singapore, and provide a range of counselling services to various communities across multiple touch points.

Lion Befrienders Service Association (LBSA) provides friendship and care for seniors to age-in-place. One of the services that LBSA offers is Cluster Support. They target clients with little family support, and aim to provide social support through monitoring, casework management and counselling services in order to facilitate better coordination in provisioning care and support services.

Established in 1902, Children’s Aid Society is among Singapore’s oldest, secular philanthropic organisations. They provide a holistic range of residential care, counselling, and other specialised therapies to support disadvantaged children, youth and families through circumstances of violence and child neglect.

Project Objectives

On top of general maintenance and minor enhancements, our team had the following objectives:

  1. 2FA to be rolled out across all CMS
    • Second-factor authentication was requested to tighten the access to the sensitive data stored in the CMS, so as to prevent data breaches. This year, we have implemented two main methods of 2FA for CMS - email OTP, and time-based OTP (e.g. Google Authenticator). On top of that, we have also added a NRIC masking feature which unmasks upon successful authentication through 2FA.
  2. Rollout of CMS for Children’s Aid Society
    • When onboarding a new centre for CMS, it is important that we understand the business flows of the centre, to ensure that our services cater to their flows well. The team went through the business requirements carefully and developed some enhancements that cater specifically to Children’s Aid Society, like a specialised documents tab, and Working Authority tag.
  3. CCP Centre Integration
    • To onboard a new Woodlands Centre for CCP, the team added the major feature of being able to have multiple centres under the same CMS. Employees will only be able to view cases within their own centre, and a user who has been granted access to multiple centres can monitor cases across the centres effectively.
  4. LBSA Cluster Support
    • This year, we further looked into the flows of the Lions CS team and polished up the flows of creating a case contact. In order to give them a high level view of each case, the team has developed a calendar view that reflects the case activities (i.e. case visits, case reviews, suspension). At one glance, caseworkers are able to see if a senior has missing case visits in a particular month, and can monitor the cases more effectively.
  5. Miscellaneous new reports for CCCC and CCP, and bug fixes

Project Process

Codebase Familiarization and Gathering Requirements

The team began our work by studying the codebase and understanding the architecture. We started off with a refactor job, to clean up the codebase and constants to be more extensible. While that was being done, we held meetings separately with our various stakeholders to gather and understand their requirements for the summer, including a long discussion with Lions Befrienders Cluster Support on their flow of creating a case visit, and another one with Children’s Aid Society on their flow of managing a case.

Halfway through the summer, we confirmed our requirements to implement 2-Factor Authentication and NRIC masking for our system as well.

Building Features

After taking the time to understand the workflows of each client, the teams took the time to plan for our major features, including the discussion of new schema, so that we are clear on the tasks to be done. This also included the action plan for our features, gantt charts and operations plan for rollout.

Subsequently, the team dedicated a lot of time to building their respective features, as mentioned in the above project objectives. There was also a need to ensure that all data for our onboarding client was smoothly migrated over. The data migration tasks were tedious and the team needed to take extra care to ensure that the data was migrated with high accuracy. Nevertheless, the team managed to complete it and learnt a lot as well.

Testing and Deployment

Our User Acceptance Testing (UAT) kicked off two weeks before our final deployment to production, for our users to ensure that the system was working as expected before going live. Bugs were fixed promptly as per user feedback.

Screenshots

2FA (Email)
Available Reports Multi-Centre Support (Case) Multi-Centre Support (Reports)

Project Team

CMS 2022 Team
  • Yang Hui Ting (Project Lead, Year 4)
  • Eko Widianto (Project Lead, Alumnus)
  • Chloe Lim Xinying (Deputy Project Lead, Year 1)
  • Qiu Jiasheng, Jason (Deputy Project Lead, Year 1)
  • Lee Jia Wei (Deputy Project Lead, Year 1)
  • Goh Jun Yi (Deputy Project Lead, Year 1)
  • Leong See Leng (Deputy Project Lead, Year 1)
  • Yap Zhi Heng (Deputy Project Lead, Year 1)
  • Tan Chee Heng (Developer, Year 1)
  • Linus Lee Hong Feng (Developer, Year 1)
  • Pontakorn Prasertsuk (Developer, Year 1)
  • Phillmont Muktar (Developer, Year 4)
  • Ryo Hilmawan (Developer, Year 1)
  • Muthukrishnan Santosh (Developer, Year 1)
  • Cui Shen Yi (Developer, Year 1)
  • Tai Tze Kin (Developer, Year 1)
  • Zhang Yue (Developer, Year 1)
  • Lim Zhe Rui (Developer, Year 1)

Afterthoughts

Humbled by the amazing work done here, yet again :) Thankful for the opportunity to serve!

– Hui Ting

Awesome experience!

– Eko

In CVWO, I was presented with a valuable opportunity to learn software engineering skills and help voluntary welfare organisations at the same time. I gained experience on how to gather user requirements and to solve them in the most optimal way. I am very grateful for the opportunity to intern in CVWO.

– Chee Heng

This past summer has been truly one of the most fulfilling and unique experiences! I’ve learnt so much about good software development, and am thankful for the opportunity to give back to the community. While CVWO pushes you to your limits, the support you get from your teammates is incredible! :)

– Chloe

Working at CVWO was a fruitful and humbling experience. Besides sharpening my technical skills, CVWO was a wonderful opportunity to serve the community using technology.

– Jason

CVWO is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It was challenging having to juggle so many balls at one go, but this is exactly what helps us to grow and learn :)

– Jia Wei

CVWO has showed me the challenges and complexities of software engineering, and these are what makes the field exciting. It was a great experience taking this opportunity alongside new friends.

– Jun Yi

Learning about software engineering while helping VWOs is a unique experience that is hard to come by.

– Linus

CVWO has been a fulfilling experience. We got to contribute to society using our software engineering skills and improve them at the same time together with like-minded people. Truly a phenomenal opportunity to be here.

– Pep

CVWO is a unique opportunity for aspiring software engineers to work on software that actually touches people’s lives. Is there a greater purpose than this?

– Phillmont

As a first-year student, CVWO has been an amazing opportunity to participate in developing software with a meaningful social impact. Throughout the programme, I’ve worked with very capable people, and thoroughly enjoyed the time I’ve spent coding and learning with them.

– Ryo

CVWO has been a really great opportunity for me to learn more about software development while tackling meaningful real world problems. I am very grateful for this learning experience working together with such like-minded and driven teammates and amazing team leads!

– Santosh

CVWO has made my summer unique and meaningful. By collaborating with others on real-world software for VWOs, I got to hone my web development and communication skills. It can be tough, but it is through the shared struggle that the strongest friendships are forged! :D

– See Leng

“CVWO is a trial by fire. It’s extremely tough and demands a lot of work but you’ll definitely come out of it smarter and stronger than before. It’s also rewarding that your work contributes to the wellbeing of others in your community.”

– Shen Yi

CVWO gives you the opportunity to develop your skills as a software engineer and practise collaborating with others, all while working on projects that have a real impact on VWOs. I can safely say that CVWO is a greatly fulfilling experience that will be hard to find elsewhere!

– Tze Kin

CVWO is a remarkable experience where you can pick up a multitude of technical skills and soft skills. The excellent and supportive people I’ve met here makes the journey all the more worthwhile!

– Zhang Yue

CVWO has been an extremely meaningful and memorable experience. I’m very grateful to have been given this opportunity to learn not just technical skills but also vital soft skills, and to have made such amazing friends along the way.

– Zhe Rui

Opportunities to develop software for social good come by very rarely. I am very glad that I was given the chance to join CVWO and build meaningful tools for the social services in Singapore! Besides, there’s lots of things to learn, ranging from working together with a team to understanding the needs of the users using the software, and these are very valuable lessons for all who chooses to pursue a career in tech.

– Zhi Heng

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the following people who have been influential and supportive during our project:

  • Prof Ben Leong (NUS) for his patience and guidance
  • GIC for their generous support for the programme
  • Our partners and clients for their co-operation and support for the programme:
    • Care Corner Counselling Center
    • Care Corner Centre for Co-Parenting
    • Lions Befrienders Cluster Support
    • Children’s Aid Society