PA County Integration Project
County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania
Technical Report
The County Justice Hub Solution
Leveraging technology to improve inter-agency
communication, coordination and information
sharing among local, state and federal agencies.
March 2002
Prepared by:
Frank J. Antonicelli, III
Stover K. Clark
Executive Summary
The timely availability of complete and accurate information is critical to the operating efficiency and effectiveness of the county criminal justice system. Currently, however, vital data regarding apprehension, detainment, arraignment and sentencing is frequently not readily available to county criminal justice personnel. The lack of quality data, combined with management responsibility of more than 70% of the Commonwealth’s offender population, has placed a significant burden on county executives, the judiciary and justice practitioners to deliver criminal justice services in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
Over the past 10 years, the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) and the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP) have led various county criminal justice policy, program and technology initiatives. Specific areas of focus have included:
• The development and deployment of departmental case management systems: county jails, probation departments, district attorney offices and juvenile detention centers.
• The development of a strategic plan and framework for leveraging technology to improve the county criminal justice system’s operating efficiency.
• Assisting counties in establishing criminal justice advisory boards to address policy, program and technology issues.
• Financial support for departmental and system integration infrastructure investments.
More recently, PCCD and CCAP have worked with a group of 26 counties to improve inter-agency communication, coordination and data sharing within a county as well as among county, state and federal criminal justice agencies via the PA Justice Network (JNET). This effort has led to the development of a single data integration platform solution referred to as the County Justice Hub. The County Justice Hub solution addresses long-standing institutional barriers that have previously impacted the operating efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice system. Specifically, the solution enables county justice agencies to:
• Maintain agency independence in the performance of its job function.
• Control who has access to the data, how the data is accessed and when it is accessed. • Ensure the security of the computer systems and the confidentiality of the data.
• Obtain greater access to other agency data as well as more timely access to the data.
County Integration Project Background
In 1998, PCCD and CCAP began collaborating with justice practitioners and information technology professionals representing 14 counties (Allegheny, Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin,
Delaware, Erie, Indiana, Lancaster, Montgomery, Snyder, Somerset, Warren, Washington and York). The group’s focus was to develop strategies to improve inter-agency communication,
coordination and data sharing within a county as well as among county, state and federal criminal justice agencies via JNET. This working group - collectively known as the County
Integration Project - meets on a quarterly basis and was expanded in 1999 to include an
additional 12 counties (Adams, Bucks, Centre, Chester, Franklin, Lycoming, Mercer, Mifflin,
Philadelphia, Pike, Union and Westmoreland).
In 1999, a subcommittee of the County Integration Project was formed and tasked with documenting the county criminal justice workflow and associated information needs, from the point of arrest through the disposition of a case. This effort resulted in the identification of four distinct case processing events that were common throughout the county justice system. Specifically, county justice practitioners needed the capability to perform the following functions in a real-time manner:
• Query criminal justice data stored in existing criminal justice computer systems. • Receive a notification or message when a change in the case status occurs. • Share photographs, fingerprints and image documents when processing a case. • Exchange relevant criminal justice data with other agencies when processing a case.
Please refer to pages three and four for an overview of the PA Criminal Justice Process and a county criminal justice information workflow illustration – Law Enforcement Investigation.
In 2000, following the completion of the workflow task, industry-leading technology firms were invited to present potential county justice integration solution(s) to address the four criminal justice functional requirements identified above. The firms that elected to participate in the two day session included: the Andersen Consulting and Correctional Development International team, Deloitte Consulting, KPMG, Metro Information Systems, RBA and the Cross Current and CBIZ Trilinc Consulting team. At the conclusion of the session, the Cross Current/Trilinc team’s County Justice Hub single platform solution was selected for further development and evaluation in a typical county justice environment.
The following is an overview of the PA Criminal Justice Process. An information workflow illustration -Law Enforcement Investigation - has also been provided on the following page.
PA Criminal Justice Process
Law Enforcement Investigation Handled Informally Charge(s) Unfounded
Charge(s) Filed before District Justice Preliminary Arraignment
Pre-Sentence Investigation Subject
Booked & Charged
Bindover to District Justice Preliminary Hearing
Bindover to Court of Common Pleas Formal Arraignment
Common Pleas Court Guilty Plea
Common Pleas Trial
Not Guilty Verdict
Case Dismissed Guilty Verdict
Subject Sentenced Outcomes 1. Charge(s) Dismissed 2. Released w/Bail 3. Diversion Referral, or -4.Detained Offense Committed Subject Arrested Appeal Process Upheld Overturned Pretrial Motions & Conference
County Address
Info
Incident Info
Police Attorney (DA) District District Justice (DJ) Private Complaint J.Q. Citizen District Attorney’s Office Common Pleas Courts Courts (Clerk of Courts) Grand Jury Subpoena Wire Tap Requests Criminal Complaint Probable Cause Document Search Warrants County Control NCIC/CCHRI/ CPIN via PSP/CLEAN Coroner/ Crime Lab
Warrants Criminal History Check Investigative Queries Line-Ups Victim Services Investigative Grand Jury
Notice Facing Adult Juveniles Charges Probable Cause Notice Notice of Investigation Criminal Complaint County Juvenile Probation County Adult Probation and Parole
County Justice Hub Solution Overview
The County Justice Hub (Justice Hub) solution, developed by the Cross Current/Trilinc team, is designed to address the long-standing challenge of providing county justice practitioners with a single data integration platform to support communication and information sharing needs, i.e.,
query, notification, imaging and data exchange. Based on a conventional hub and spoke design
concept, the Justice Hub solution integrates off-the-shelf software tools and technologies into a common platform to enable real-time communication and information sharing within a county as well as among county, state and federal agencies via JNET. The Justice Hub architectural design provides a single data integration platform for the exchange and conversion of data across the criminal justice applications connected at its spokes. Adapters form connections between the hub and the existing computer systems (e.g. police, clerk of court, district attorney, jail,
probation, JNET etc.)
The Justice Hub technical architecture is comprised of three key components: the business-to-
business (B2B) platform that performs the data mapping, data conversion and data integration
functions; the application adapters that provide the open systems interfaces and format (extensible markup language or XML) for transporting the data; and the common or graphical
user interface (GUI) for presenting and viewing the data. The diagram below outlines the
relationship between these components and existing justice applications.
County Justice Hub Architecture
Existing Justice Application County Justice Hub B2B Workflow and Integration XML ODBC, MQ, APIs Adapter Link and Translate Common User Interface Web Application Other Justice Hubs
The Justice Hub design enables justice practitioners to perform the following functions in a real-time manner:
• Query criminal justice data stored in existing criminal justice computer systems. • Receive a notification or message when a change in the case status occurs. • Share photographs, fingerprints and image documents when processing a case. • Exchange relevant criminal justice data with other agencies when processing a case.
While enabling these functions, the Justice Hub architecture design and framework also permits county justice agencies to locally manage information by:
• Maintaining agency independence in the performance of its job function.
• Controlling who has access to the data, how the data is accessed and when it is accessed. • Ensuring the security of the computer systems and the confidentiality of the data.
• Obtaining greater access to other agency data as well as more timely access to the data.
Justice Hub Proof-of Concept
To evaluate the functionality and cost effectiveness of deploying the Justice Hub solution in a typical county justice environment, the County Integration Project participants selected two justice processing business issues proposed by Cumberland and Somerset counties. Solutions for the business issues were developed using the Justice Hub platform and were ready for deployment within 100 days of the project start date.
Somerset County Pilot
In Somerset County, the ability to cross reference offender information stored in multiple agency computer systems was critical. Specifically, it was important that adult probation and clerk of court offender identification and location information was available in a real-time manner to the county 911 personnel.
The Justice Hub offender status application enables authorized personnel in the three agencies to perform real-time cross system offender queries based on four searchable fields: first name, last name, date of birth and social security number. From a common user interface, authorized users can access this data and also have access to offender images stored in the imaging system.
Cumberland County Pilot
In Cumberland County, adult probation requested real-time access to clerk of court and jail offender information - updated case information, new case information and/or bail information – to better manage and track the status of their cases.
The Justice Hub offender status application enables authorized personnel in the three agencies to perform real-time cross system offender queries based on four searchable fields: first name, last name, date of birth and social security number. An offender notification - that automatically sends an email to the requesting user of a new offender and/or change in offender status - has also been developed and integrated into the solution.
Summary
The County Integration Project participants endorse the Justice Hub solution as a full-function and cost effective solution to address the communication and information sharing needs – query,
notification, imaging and data exchange – within a county as well as among county, state and
federal criminal justice agencies via JNET. Specifically, the Justice Hub provides counties with a solution that:
• Is open systems and standards based.
• Integrates off-the-shelf hardware and software technologies to provide a single data integration platform for the construction of integrated criminal justice solutions.
• Supports multi-vendor hardware and software platforms that exist within the counties. • Can be customized and deployed to a county in less than 120 days.
• Is cost effective to deploy and maintain in their existing technology environments.
Future Plans for Deploying the Justice Hub
The proposed Justice Hub deployment strategy will enable the rapid and cost effective deployment of the Justice Hub solution to eight additional counties over the next 12 months. The deployment strategy emphasizes the following:
• Use of the Justice Hub technical architecture “blueprint” design as the development platform for future county justice data integration efforts.
• Rapid deployment, one county per month, of the Justice Hub (initial application and
adapter structure) to eight additional counties.
• Immediate gains in work process efficiency resulting from more timely access to county criminal justice information with integrated metrics providing statistics.
• Significant cost savings and cost avoidance derived from a collaborative integration design, development and deployment effort.
Business Case Justification
It is estimated that $580,000 of the $1.1 million initial Justice Hub development and deployment evaluation investment will be reused for each additional county participating in the project. Reapplying the initial investment to the eight new counties will result in a cost savings or cost avoidance of $4.64 million alone. This figure does not reflect the $240,000 investment value of the county team building and Justice Hub architecture “blueprint” design efforts. It also does not
Justice Hub Phased-Deployment Roadmap
Phase I – Initial Development and Proof-of-Concept
Phase II –Deployment to Additional “8” Counties
Phase III –Statewide Deployment
Applications • Offender ID Application: Pilot - Query and Imaging
• Offender Notification Application: Pilot - Query and Notifications
• Offender Status Updates to Prison and Parole:
Pilot – Data Exchange
• Bring together offender proof-of-concept components into a more comprehensive Offender Integration Application
• Build on three proof-of-concept applications
• Deploy usage performance reporting
• Additional applications as determined valuable by the user group and business review
• Distribution of current application to tier two counties and beyond
Adapters • InfoCon Clerk of Courts, AS/400 DB2
• CDI/DSI Adult Probation DOS based
• CDI/DSI Jailhouse Windows based
• RVI Imaging, AS/400 DB2
• Provide JNET MI adapter
• Reuse existing applications for similar instances on same platforms
• Modify existing applications for similar instances on new platforms
• Substantial reuse of adapter library
• New adapters as necessary
Deployment Counties the Justice Hub solution
• Somerset
• Cumberland
• Berks
Counties targeted for Justice Hub - one per month starting with Month #1.
• Dauphin • Delaware • Indiana • Lancaster • Montgomery • Snyder • Warren • Washington
Counties targeted for Justice Hub
• Remaining three counties for tier-one
o Allegheny o Erie o York
• 14 Tier-two counties
• Available to remaining 39 countries
Benefits • Project consensus and team building
• 100 day rapid install methodology
• Technical Architecture documentation
• Endorsement of technical architecture based on proof-of -concept
• Standard hardware/software configuration and installation guide
• Framework for budgeting and cost-benefit
• Demonstrate return on investment
• Brings user group to a total of 11 counties
• Introduction of off-the-shelf Web-based Justice Hub Toolbox Groupware:
o Manage the Libraries of documents
o Manage the library of software (adapters and applications) o Communication through
threaded discussions o Provide posting of ideas o Provide posting of status
Centralize project management
• Expand user base
• Establish expertise throughout counties
• Apply architecture to other county needs
Phase I – Initial Development and Proof-of-Concept
Phase II –Deployment to Additional “8” Counties
Phase III –Statewide Deployment
Estimated Cost • $950,000 for 3 counties o $200,000 per proof-of
concept including: design, development, installation, hardware and software o $150,000 Teambuilding and
architecture
• Average $158,875 per county
• TBD ($1,255,000 for 8 counties) o $150,000 offender integration
application enhancement o $25,000 per 10 new adapters o $15,000 per 5 enhanced adapters o $50,000 per county rollout o $100,000 technical project management o $40,000 CCAP administrative support o $30,000 hardware/software per county • TBD ($1,725,000 for 15 counties and new applications)
• Average $75,000 per county for core applications including new hubs
• New applications $400,000
• Expansion of functionality to existing hubs $200,000
Estimated Cost Avoidance Resulting from Reuse •
$60,000 - Some adapter reuse • $4,640,000 for 8 counties
• $580,000 average reuse per county
• $400,000 Application reusability per county
• $60,000 average hub reuse per county
• $100,000 architectural design and hardware/software specifications
• $20,000 training and installation reuse per county
• $12,150,000 per 15 county
cluster
• $810,000 average reuse p er county
• $600,000 application reusability per county
• $80,000 average hub reuse per county
• $100,000 architectural design and
hardware/software specifications
