Web Enrollment Discussion Question 1
As you may have heard, some of us have been doing a bit of research on possibly finding an enrollment system that would allow for web-based data entry, eliminating the need for software installation. We're still looking, still thinking, and no firm decision has been made. However, in doing this, several questions are coming up, and I need to have some input from the folks who are actually going to be spending the most time USING it--that would be you guys! So, I'm going to post some "discussion questions" and I'd like to get some conversation going by using the comments feature of this blog.
The first question is about WHO does the web entry. Let's assume for now that we had two choices, all technical and privacy issues had been adequately addressed, and the functionality (reports, etc.) of the two was the same.
One of them was designed for information to be entered by county staff, with a staff-login site, adding information much the way we do now, just over the web instead of in a software package.
The other one allowed families to enter their own basic information over the web, with counties doing group enrollments and other editing to records as necessary. There would be controls in place that would not allow families to change project enrollment or whatever after county-specified dates, as well as fields that families would not see, but county staff would--like the checkboxes for health forms, for example.
What do you see as the benefits/drawbacks of each of these systems? Remember that we're not worrying right now about functionality or privacy or other things--the two options would be exactly the same except for whether families would enter their own data. What do you think? Let us know... share your thoughts... be polite, though... we're all friends here, even if we have different opinions. I figure we can all learn from each other!