Texas WIC Moves to 'Microsoft Cloud Solution for WIC' to Firm Up Benefits, Improve Outcomes

The Texas Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) health and nutrition program is moving to the Microsoft Cloud Solution for WIC, an offering that is built with Dynamics CRM Online for Government and Azure Government Cloud, to improve the state's ability to provide nutritional benefits and education to mothers and children who are at risk of illness due to poor nutrition.

The Texas Department of State Health Services delivers the WIC program to eligible participants in all 254 Texas counties through 600-plus clinics, providing services to more than 875,000 women, infants and children each month.

The move to the Microsoft cloud should be welcome news to participants whose benefits have sometimes been put in jeopardy by delays in synchronizing data between IT systems. The state's current management information system was implemented in 1995 and has outlived its usefulness. Because the system is so old, it takes a long time to back up and sync data every day.

Consequently, participants are forced to wait for the information to sync before they can receive their benefits. But not only does this make it hard for recipients who are often unable to travel back to the WIC office numerous times a week, the outdated system has also led to gaps in benefit coverage during outages, according to Michael Donlan, vice president, US State and Local Government, Microsoft.

The new technology will give the Texas WIC staff members a real-time, person- and data-centric way to track and measure family progress and test the results so they can make more informed decisions about ...