Oranga Tamariki IT overhaul clears Cabinet as child safety notifications surge during delay
Oranga Tamariki has received Cabinet approval for detailed plans to replace its 25-year-old case management system under a $68 million first-phase overhaul, three years after the project was first approved by the previous government.
The approval of the detailed business case clears the way for Oranga Tamariki to sign a contract to design the replacement system, which the agency expected to do the following month, it told RNZ.
The milestone comes after a prolonged and difficult path. The original project was approved amid warnings that the existing case management system was increasingly unreliable. In 2024 the project had to be reset, and over a year before the Cabinet approval Oranga Tamariki told RNZ it had delayed a review of its detailed business case to "get the maximum value". Since the 2024 reset, notifications by the public of children at risk have surged while months of planning the upgrade slipped by.
A March review rated the project "amber-green", meaning successful delivery is likely but continued management attention is required. Chief social worker Nicolette Dickson said the rating meant ongoing attention was needed to ensure identified risks are effectively managed. Oranga Tamariki said that since receiving funding in Budget 2024 it had searched for the best case management platform, and that search was nearing completion.
The agency aligned the overhaul with the government's "Digital Target State" introduced in December 2025, a framework designed to make savings and link up public sector IT work. The project is also meant to dovetail with the Ministry of Social Development's service upgrade programme, Te Pae Tawhiti. According to a Treasury paper in late 2025, the first stage of Te Pae Tawhiti was on time and on budget, with the second and third parts running from then until 2032.
The $68m covers only the first phase. Other Budgets will need to be called on for later funding. A 2024 Cabinet paper stated Oranga Tamariki was unable to fund further programme costs without impacting the services it provides to children. The same paper noted that none of the three main benefits of the overhaul could be fully realised until the programme's completion. Those benefits were identified as improved safety for tamariki, reduced harm from youth offending, and better support for Oranga Tamariki staff.
Budget 2026 provided $180m for Oranga Tamariki to improve responses to children, but did not mention technology as part of that allocation — a gap that raises questions about how future phases of the IT programme will be resourced, given the agency's stated inability to absorb further costs from its own baseline.
In the interim, Oranga Tamariki has made some incremental progress. In May it launched a digital tool called All About Me, which had been used to make 1000 care plans, two years after talk of a prototype. Dickson said the agency had since 2024 made a small number of improvements to its old technology as well as to social worker practice. The child safety hotline, which operates 24/7 and receives over 200,000 calls and e-mails per year, continues to run on the ageing infrastructure the overhaul is meant to replace.
The broader context for this programme is weighty. The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care released its final report in 2024, which Oranga Tamariki described as a significant milestone for survivors. The independent monitor Aroturuki Tamariki has reported 24 more child deaths at the hands of carers. Oranga Tamariki released its fifth annual Safety of Children in Care report alongside its first annual self-assessment of compliance with relevant standards. In June 2026 the agency publicly responded to the Independent Children's Monitor's 2024/25 report on outcomes for Māori tamariki, rangatahi and whānau in the care and protection system. Against that backdrop, the stakes of a system that social workers rely on daily to track and respond to children at risk are considerable.
The project's alignment with both the Digital Target State and Te Pae Tawhiti signals an intent to avoid the fragmented, agency-by-agency IT procurement that has plagued previous public sector technology programmes. Whether that alignment translates into faster delivery or simply a broader set of dependencies remains the question for those watching the Cabinet table and the Treasury's long-term fiscal plan. With later-phase funding yet to be secured and the agency unable to absorb costs from its own baseline, the path from design contract to a fully operational replacement system is not yet funded end to end.
