SEARCH Chair and Staff to Present at 2012 National Justice Information Systems Conference

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SEARCH Chairman Francis X. Aumand III, along with SEARCH staff, are participating in this week's 2012 National Association for Justice Information Systems (NAJIS) Conference, which features presentations highlighting state-level projects that involve SEARCH's participation.

The 2012 NAJIS Conference takes place October 9-12 in Portland, Maine. NAJIS is an all-volunteer organization of individuals who are responsible for acquiring, operating, and managing local, state, and Federal criminal justice information systems.

The NAJIS Conference Agenda includes these SEARCH-related presentations:

Francis X. (Paco) Aumand III
SEARCH Chair Aumand will present the keynote address on Thursday, October 11, on "Disaster Recovery and Continuity Planning—Vermont DPS After Hurricane Irene."

Mr. Aumand is Director of the Division of Criminal Justice Services, Vermont Department of Public Safety (DPS). During the summer of 2011, Vermont was struck by Hurricane Irene and the Vermont DPS suffered significant damage that disrupted day-to-day operations. Mr. Aumand will focus on the impact of this storm and the lessons learned to prepare for the unexpected.
Mark Perbix

Jim Douglas
SEARCH Information Sharing Programs Director Mark Perbix and Information Sharing Specialist Jim Douglas will present a session October 11 on "Electronic Warrant Management Best Practices." They will be joined by Mr. Jim Harris, Principal Court Management Consultant for the National Center for State Courts (NCSC).

Effective warrant management remains a challenge and implementing electronic exchange of warrant information between courts and law enforcement will make warrant execution more safe, effective, and successful. In this session, SEARCH and NCSC will present best practices and lessons learned from their work with state and local jurisdictions that have implemented electronic warrant solutions.
A session on Wednesday, October 10 will focus on "Global Reference Architecture Exchange Implementation in Maine—Sending Records Management System Data to Prosecutors and N-DEx (the FBI's Law Enforcement National Data Exchange program)."

In this session, officials from the Maine State Police (MSP) and Cumberland County District Attorney's Office will present a case study of how the MSP and Maine District Attorneys implemented a shared information exchange of local law enforcement incident data to support case referrals to the prosecutors and submit incident data to N-DEx.

SEARCH worked with the State of Maine on this multiple-year project to leverage its existing justice information exchange architecture, which is conformant with the GRA standard, to implement high-priority, critical exchanges. Through this effort, the MSP information exchange capability enables incident data to be shared among law enforcement, prosecutors, the FBI, and other justice users of N-DEx.

"The successful implementation of these information exchanges has improved regional data sharing, and provided greater situational awareness and increased investigative resources to law enforcement," noted Mr. Perbix. Meanwhile, the Cumberland County District Attorney estimates that the electronic charge referral process cuts the time to enter a case by nearly 50%—allowing more time for trial preparation, case review/evaluation, victim/witness contact, etc.
Another session on October 11 will address "Re-Entry of Offenders—The Hampden County (MA) Treatment Provider Portal." The need to share information between corrections and treatment providers improves offender outcomes and reduces recidivism. In Hampden County, the Sheriff's Department has created a portal for treatment providers to access appropriate offender data. In this session, county officials will demonstrate the portal and explain its benefits to offender treatment providers. SEARCH was involved in this project by providing information sharing architecture planning assistance to the county.

Now available!

2011 National Justice Information Sharing Survey: Analysis of Results

The National Justice Information Sharing (NJIS) Survey was developed and conducted by NAJIS with the help of SEARCH and the IJIS Institute. The survey was distributed and responses were collected from February to July 2011. The responses were analyzed with the assistance of SEARCH; the principal author of this analysis report is Mr. Mark Perbix, SEARCH Director of Information Sharing Programs.

The purpose of the survey was to comprehensively assess the level of information sharing occurring within the criminal justice and public safety communities.

The survey asked respondents to identify who they shared information with, what information was shared, and how it was shared. It asked the same questions for information that was both sent to and received from other criminal justice and public safety information resources.

While the survey results are nonscientific, they provide picture or "snapshot" of data sharing capabilities by criminal justice community in early 2011. This creates a baseline against which future surveys can be compared to identify trends and patterns of usage.

SEARCH's participation in the survey effort was funded by a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice.