Big Brother

Public health and security issues are beginning to attract significant attention both due to the enormous cost, but also as major political issues. Homelessness, disease surveillance, community justice, depression in the workplace, addictions management, child welfare, disabilities management and so on are now front page issues and billions of our tax dollars are supporting organizations trying to deal with these issues without a comprehensive record of outcomes. Government has woken up and wants to know where the money is going and the only way they will ever be able to make sense of this is through the right mix of technologies.

This new focus on social services technologies (case management, decision support, human services auditing applications, etc) brings as much opportunity and it brings complications for social privacy. While the Big Brother issue is a concern, and to a certain extent a possible reality, it is my belief that if social services organizations and the non-profit sector as a whole could take advantage of the new technologies and structure these technologies to work for them first, they will have the jump on Big Brother. The non-profit sector has the ability to define how these technologies will apply within their fields before government determines their use. Time is ticking however.

Governments are becoming increasingly involved in the development of case management technologies which are aimed at tracking the activities, services acquired and outcomes of service delivery related to social services clients via organizations government funds or partially funds. The relationship between community based non-profits and government will become defined through the data demands of information technologies. The social services sector however has an unprecedented opportunity to set the standards now for how they and their clients will be accounted for and treated; but if they wait, the decision will be made by Big Brother.