Transforming how early childhood services are delivered in Connecticut

Summary

The challenge

OEC oversees a complex portfolio of early childhood programs. The programs touch nearly every aspect of a young child’s development and a family’s access to support. But the agency’s systems, tools, and delivery practices hadn’t kept pace. Families and providers faced fragmented digital experiences, outdated processes, and unclear paths to information and services.

The gaps weren’t just on the public side. Internally, OEC lacked modern foundations for digital delivery, procurement, hiring, analytics, and long-term ownership of its own systems. Staff relied on manual processes and disconnected tools. That made it hard to use data for decisions, respond to emerging needs, or sustain improvements once they were made.

OEC needed more than a set of isolated fixes. It needed a partner who could modernize priority services and build the internal capacity to sustain change over time. The goal: leave the agency stronger, not just better served.

The solution

The work focused on three connected workstreams. Each addressed a different part of the same problem, and together they left OEC better equipped to keep improving on its own.

We modernized OEC’s public-facing services. A redesigned web presence made it easier for families and providers to find essential early childhood resources. We simplified navigation, rewrote content in plain language, and organized information around what users actually needed. Alongside the redesign, we stood up a statewide web analytics capability across Connecticut’s digital portfolio. Leadership could now see how people interacted with state digital properties.

Stronger data practices changed how OEC made decisions. A streamlined enrollment reporting tool gave early care and education providers a single trusted way to submit data about the children in their care. It replaced fragmented spreadsheets and paper records. We also piloted lightweight interventions to lower barriers to affordable child care, which surfaced systemic process issues along the way. And we used data to improve support for families with young children experiencing homelessness.

The longest, hardest work was building OEC’s own digital capacity. We helped OEC stand up the in-house talent to own and evolve modern systems. That work included structuring, recruiting, and onboarding digital service experts, and authoring a Digital Talent Management Handbook to guide the practice. We developed playbooks for modern ways of working: an Agile Procurement Playbook, a Data Sharing Playbook, and content guidelines. We trained nearly 20 procurement officials in modern acquisition through the Digital IT Acquisition Professional Training — Executive Edition. And when COVID-19 forced a sudden shift to remote work, we helped OEC set up the tools and practices that kept the agency running.

Taken together, the three workstreams improved the experience for families and providers while giving OEC the systems, practices, and internal capacity to keep modernizing on its own.

The results

• Redesigned and launched OEC’s modernized web presence, making it easier for families, providers, and partners to find and access early childhood services
• Built a statewide enrollment reporting platform used by 508 users across 220 providers, giving OEC a trusted data foundation for funding and policy decisions
• Strengthened the agency’s internal digital capability across hiring, procurement, training, and delivery practices
• Trained nearly 20 procurement officials in modern acquisition practices, accelerating adoption of agile procurement approaches
• Enabled more than 200 professionals to work effectively in a fully virtual environment during COVID-19
• Established a durable foundation for sustained digital modernization across the agency — toolkits, playbooks, and internal capacity that OEC could own and evolve independently