The Western Intergovernmental Child Support Engagement Council (WICSEC) is a non-profit group consisting of public and private child support enforcement agencies, as well as individual professionals working with states, tribes, and territories west of the Mississippi River. The organization operates with several missions in mind, with an overriding goal of improving interstate and intergovernmental collaborations and promoting the exchange of knowledge between members to improve child support practices throughout the United States and around the world.
To this end, the organization has established various programs and events, including the annual WICSEC Conference. WICSEC 2025 brought together several pioneering figures in the child support space.
Session leaders included Mike Leach of the Leach Consulting Group, TipCo’s Greg Tipping, and Protech Solutions speakers Katie Morgan and Nisha Garimalla. Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, Protech Solutions has aided more than a dozen states with technical architecture and related program efforts under the leadership of president and chief executive officer Nagaraj Garimalla.
AI Takes Center Stage in Child Support Discussions
Sessions at WICSEC 2025 covered a wide range of topics, ranging from technology to policy. That said, many conversations led back to the same questions. Namely, can artificial intelligence (AI) really push the childcare space forward, and if so, toward what? Child support systems demand human guidance, meaning an over-reliance on technology and a hyper-focus on speed can have a negative impact.
People must remain the central focus, yet AI and other technologies have demonstrated the ability to support that focus.
Balancing Innovation With Human-Centered Outcomes
Nagaraj Garimalla and the rest of the Protech Solutions team followed discussions at WICSEC 2025 closely and came away with a few key findings. First of all, agencies and individuals active in the child support and childcare industries must never lose sight of the impact of empathy. Human-focused system design requires humans to listen to other humans, to hear their stories and appreciate their emotions and experiences. AI can provide useful data and illuminate patterns, but care providers and policymakers need to prioritize people first and data second.
Child support system workers must also remember that although many families suffer from outdated and broken systems, it is not the systems themselves that require dedicated passion and attention. By framing the problem correctly and highlighting the needs of families, providers can avoid the pitfall of optimizing AI systems purely for the sake of efficiency, without caring about the human outcomes. In some cases, agencies and caseworkers may even determine that AI is not a necessary part of the solution.
Where AI Fits—and Where It Doesn’t
On the other hand, AI can be an impactful tool when it comes to ideation. AI can support creative problem-solving and help humans flesh out innovative ideas. That said, human creativity remains vitally important, and child system workers should avoid letting AI tools narrow down broad ideas too quickly. In other words, AI should function as a brainstorming partner, but humans should always decide on what ideas best serve human outcomes and bring proper value to child support systems.
Similarly, AI is an effective partner during prototyping processes and bringing ideas to life. Prototypes help people get a better idea of how conceptual solutions might work in practice. However, AI creations should not function as finished products, and humans should carefully evaluate new ideas for usability and accessibility before developing plans to scale up. Furthermore, comprehensive testing can inform agencies and caseworkers whether solutions build trust and equity or simply pass AI checks for accuracy and efficiency.
Following WICSEC 2025, Nagaraj Garimalla and the Protech Solutions team came away believing that AI can expedite child system processes, but that people must remain at the center of all solutions. WICSEC will continue these discussions and explore more emerging subjects at WICSEC 2026. The conference is scheduled for October 26 to 30, 2026, at the El Conquistador in Tucson, Arizona. Interested parties can find information about registering for WICSEC 2026 at wicsec.org.