Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 21 June 2017
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs
Foster Care Services: Discussion (Resumed)
9:00 am
Mr. Fred McBride:
That is our national child care information system, NCCIS. Technology in Tusla began from an extremely low starting point. The infrastructure was not there. Several of our areas are still largely paper-based with bespoke databases in operation. However, I am pleased to report that we are making very significant progress in the rolling out of the national child care information system which will contribute to some of the issues we have been talking about today such as consistency of practice, sharing of information, ensuring that if a child moves from Dublin to Donegal, the information will follow him or her accurately and in a timely manner and so on. We are making significant progress in rolling that out. It is currently beginning to be rolled out to a number of areas. Again, it is work in progress but our experience of undertaking a transformation reform programme of this scale is that one cannot pull it off in three years. It takes a long time. My colleague reminds me that the NCCIS is due to be fully functional by March 2018, approximately nine months away. I am not sure if I have missed any other questions.