Stewards of Change 4th Annual Conference
Human Services 2.0; Interoptimability
(National Conference 2009)
The fourth annual conference, “Implementing InterOptimability: from Theory to Practice,” built off shared learning from the prior Stewards of Change conferences, and from last year’s InterOptimability focus in particular. This year’s conference provided participants another opportunity to delve deeply into interoperability trends and discover ways to apply new concepts to their own organizational practices.
The 2009 conference highlighted agencies that have already launched interoperability initiatives or are in active planning stages. Conference participants learned about real successes and challenges faced by leaders engaged in this paradigm shift. Lectures and presentations provided illustrative examples from other industries that will challenge conventional thinking and current hypotheses about the large-scale impact interoperability can play in reshaping human services. Discussions and ideation sessions encouraged participants to share their own experiences, explore implications for human services broadly, apply principles within their own jurisdictions, and expand their networks of like-minded colleagues pursuing interoperability. Finally, participants worked together, using a graphic facilitation methodology, to create the InterOptimability Driver Roadmap which builds off the original
Human Services Vision Landscape.
The Roadmap incorporates best thinking and perspectives from health, education and human services to create a road map reflective of a consumer-centered, family-focused and technology enabled future. This graphically illustrated Roadmap articulates the core drivers and processes associated with creating interoperability across human services organizations. Link to roadmap pdf Because effective communications is an essential competency of leadership in general, and a key component of successful change initiatives in particular, the conference also explored how research-based marketing approaches can be used to drive change. A panel of national experts, from the public and private sectors, presented examples that illustrate communications strategies that can be used to effectively inform and educate policy makers about best and next practices. We also focused on how communications can be used to build public will among internal and external constituencies for specific issues. Using practical examples from child welfare, we focused on how national marketing and communications programs have been used to reposition child welfare and to enhance foster and adoptive parent recruitment.
The Roadmap incorporates best thinking and perspectives from health, education and human services to create a road map reflective of a consumer-centered, family-focused and technology enabled future. This graphically illustrated Roadmap articulates the core drivers and processes associated with creating interoperability across human services organizations.
Because effective communications is an essential competency of leadership in general, and a key component of successful change initiatives in particular, the conference also explored how research-based marketing approaches can be used to drive change. A panel of national experts, from the public and private sectors, presented examples that illustrate communications strategies that can be used to effectively inform and educate policy makers about best and next practices. We also focused on how communications can be used to build public will among internal and external constituencies for specific issues. Using practical examples from child welfare, we focused on how national marketing and communications programs have been used to reposition child welfare and to enhance foster and adoptive parent recruitment.