Social services Citysoftnet case management software costs the city of Bern more money again

As expected, the City of Bern's Office for Adult and Child Protection needs more money. The reason for this is the problems with the changeover to the new Citysoftnet case management software. The municipal council has requested a supplementary credit of 2.738 million francs from the city council, as announced on Thursday.

This credit is necessary to stabilize the day-to-day operations of the Office for Adult and Child Protection (EKS), the municipal council wrote in a statement. The introduction of Citysoftnet had led to an overload of staff and sickness-related absences.

The processing of the pending workload continues to this day, according to the statement. "In addition, the office has been experiencing rising case numbers with increasingly vulnerable clients for a number of years," said the municipal council.

The exodus of qualified staff from the social sector has also led to a shortage of specialists, making it more difficult to recruit suitable staff, it added.

In order to deal with the mountain of pending issues, the city had to hire additional staff on a temporary basis and call in external services.

The fourth supplementary credit

The additional credit is required for higher personnel and service costs and costs for measures taken by the task force. "The money is necessary to ensure that the EHL can fulfill its legal mandate and that employees have sufficient resources at their disposal during the ongoing transformation phase," said Reto Nause, the municipal councillor responsible.

An external investigation report published at the end of June strongly criticized the role of the city in the introduction of Citysoftnet. The municipal council already announced at the time that further additional credits would be necessary. The additional credit now requested is already the fourth in connection with Citysoftnet.

SDA