Future-proofing social services delivery
Connecting state and local government leaders
Los Angeles County's LEADER Replacement System takes the place of 17 legacy systems and automates enrollment, eligibility determination and benefit distribution.
As the country’s largest local social services agency, the Los Angeles County Department of Social Services works with one out of every three county residents. More than 4 million people receive some $4 billion annually in services related to employment, homelessness, health care, nutrition and child welfare.
LEADER Replacement System
Los Angeles County Department of Social Services
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To manage a system that large, complex and growing, the county built the LEADER Replacement System. LRS takes the place of 17 legacy systems and automates enrollment, eligibility determination and benefit distribution. It also monitors business processes and key metrics across multiple programs, giving the county real-time business performance metrics by office.
By consolidating and integrating multiple systems, the county was able to present a single web portal and mobile app to clients for accessing a variety of programs. The system supports self-screening, online enrollment, access to case information access and electronic communications.
In addition, caseworkers and supervisors now use a single system, which streamlines processes across multiple business areas and features a task-based solution to help them manage their workloads.
LRS has over 20,000 users and processes over 5 million transactions a day with a response time of 1 second to 3 seconds — about 10 faster than before. The system’s rules engine is designed to adapt as health and human services evolve, regulations change and automation increases.
Once LRS was up and running, the county terminated several contracts for legacy systems, which saved nearly $70 million in the system’s first year of operations.
LRS has been so successful that the state plans to migrate the other 57 California counties to an enhanced version of LRS, dubbed the Statewide Automated Welfare System.