Oranga Tamariki gets go-ahead to start replacing its struggling child-safety computer system

Oranga Tamariki — the government agency responsible for children's safety and wellbeing — has been given the green light by Cabinet to push ahead with plans to replace its 25-year-old computer system. The first phase will cost $68 million.

The system in question is what social workers use every day to record and track cases involving children at risk. It is 25 years old and becoming unreliable. The approval means Oranga Tamariki can now sign a contract to design a replacement. The agency told RNZ it expected to do that the following month.

Getting here has been slow. The project was first approved three years ago by the previous government. In 2024 it had to be reset. For over a year before this latest Cabinet approval, Oranga Tamariki told RNZ it had delayed a review of its full plan to "get the maximum value". During that time, public reports of children at risk went up while the upgrade kept slipping.

A March review rated the project "amber-green" — on a traffic-light scale, that means it is likely to succeed but still needs close watching. Chief social worker Nicolette Dickson said the rating meant ongoing attention was needed to manage risks. Oranga Tamariki said it had been searching for the best replacement platform since receiving funding in Budget 2024, and that search was nearly done.

The project has been lined up with a wider government plan called the "Digital Target State", introduced in December 2025, which aims to save money and better connect IT projects across government agencies. It is also meant to work alongside a separate upgrade programme at the Ministry of Social Development, called Te Pae Tawhiti. A Treasury paper from late 2025 said the first stage of Te Pae Tawhiti was on time and on budget, with the next parts running until 2032.

The $68m only pays for the first phase. More money will be needed from future Budgets. A 2024 Cabinet paper said Oranga Tamariki could not pay for further stages without cutting into the services it provides to children. The same paper said the three main benefits of the overhaul — better safety for tamariki, less harm from youth offending, and better support for staff — could not be fully achieved until the whole project was finished.

Budget 2026 gave Oranga Tamariki $180m to improve responses to children, but did not mention technology as part of that money. That raises questions about how the later phases of the IT project will be paid for, since the agency has said it cannot cover further costs from its existing budget.

In the meantime, there has been some progress. In May the agency launched a digital tool called All About Me, which had been used to make 1000 care plans, two years after a prototype was first discussed. Dickson said the agency had made a small number of improvements to its old technology and to social worker practice since 2024. The child safety hotline — which runs 24/7 and gets over 200,000 calls and e-mails a year — still runs on the old system the overhaul is meant to replace.

The wider context here is sobering. The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care released its final report in 2024. 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 along with its first self-assessment of how well it meets relevant standards. In June 2026 the agency responded publicly to the Independent Children's Monitor's 2024/25 report on outcomes for Māori tamariki, rangatahi and whānau in the care and protection system. Given all of that, the reliability of a system social workers depend on every day to track and respond to children at risk matters a great deal.

Whether lining this project up with wider government IT plans leads to faster delivery or simply creates more dependencies is the question for those watching Cabinet and the Treasury's long-term spending plans. With later funding still not secured and the agency unable to cover costs from its own budget, there is no fully funded path from the design contract all the way through to a working replacement system.