Oranga Tamariki clears hurdle to replace ageing child-safety IT system
Oranga Tamariki has Cabinet approval to move ahead with detailed plans to replace its 25-year-old case management system, under a $68 million first-phase overhaul that was first signed off by the previous government three years ago.
The approval of what's called a "detailed business case" — essentially a full plan setting out costs, risks and expected benefits — means the agency can now sign a contract to design the replacement system. Oranga Tamariki told RNZ it expected to do that the following month.
Getting to this point has not been straightforward. The original project was approved because the existing system — the software social workers use to record and track cases involving children at risk — was becoming increasingly unreliable. In 2024 the project had to be reset, and for over a year before Cabinet gave its latest approval, Oranga Tamariki told RNZ it had delayed a review of its detailed business case to "get the maximum value". Since the 2024 reset, public notifications of children at risk have gone up while months of planning the upgrade slipped by.
A March review rated the project "amber-green", which on the government's traffic-light scale means successful delivery is likely but the project still needs close watching. Chief social worker Nicolette Dickson said the rating meant ongoing attention was needed to manage identified risks. Oranga Tamariki said that since receiving funding in Budget 2024 it had been searching for the best case management platform, and that search was nearing completion.
The agency has aligned the overhaul with the government's "Digital Target State" — a framework introduced in December 2025 to cut costs and better coordinate public sector IT projects across agencies. The overhaul is also intended to line up with the Ministry of Social Development's own service upgrade programme, called Te Pae Tawhiti. According to a Treasury paper from 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. Future Budgets will need to provide additional funding. A 2024 Cabinet paper stated Oranga Tamariki could not fund further programme costs without cutting into the services it provides to children. The same paper noted that none of the three main benefits of the overhaul — improved safety for tamariki, reduced harm from youth offending, and better support for Oranga Tamariki staff — could be fully achieved until the entire programme was finished.
Budget 2026 provided $180m for Oranga Tamariki to improve responses to children, but did not mention technology as part of that allocation. That gap raises questions about how future phases of the IT programme will be paid for, given the agency has said it cannot absorb further costs from its existing budget.
In the meantime, 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 first emerged. 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 runs 24/7 and receives over 200,000 calls and e-mails per year, continues to operate on the ageing infrastructure the overhaul is meant to replace.
The broader context here is significant. 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 purchasing that has hampered previous public sector technology programmes. Whether that alignment leads to faster delivery or simply creates a wider set of interdependencies is 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.
