The county's law enforcement and public safety organizations are still working out just how to make it work, but since Sept. 11, law enforcement and the public have become painfully aware of the consequences of lapses in criminal justice information. Attention has gradually shifted from coping with the immediate threat of terrorism, to a fundamental re-evaluation of strengths and weaknesses in public safety infrastructure and planning. In that regard, the integrated justice information system is a key piece of the overall public safety picture. The necessities of homeland security have given IJIS renewed impetus and helped focus attention on removing some of the more persistent obstacles.
Tom Ridge, director of the federal Office of Homeland Security, acknowledged some of the problems and suggested that cooperation at the local and state level must occur before any national plan emerges. In an address to the National Emergency Management Association, Ridge said: "We cannot have 20,000 or 30,000 municipalities working independently, coming to Washington to try to fill their respective needs. It's only when we have the integration of 50 comprehensive [statewide] plans do we begin to see the outline of a national response mechanism. So - we've got to bring in the local officials, political and otherwise, nurture that communication, help drive that conversation - we need mutual aid, particularly among the smaller cities, counties and regions within your respective states."
Leadership
Maricopa County, Ariz., is on the leading edge of local government justice integration with its working model of local government mutual aid. Linden Thatcher, Maricopa's CIO, outlined critical success factors that helped to overcome obstacles, bring all parties to the table and produce agreement and concerted action.
Thatcher said a solid governance model -- which he defined as: "The framework that allows people to work together toward a common goal, and the practices that go with that" -- was one of the most critical success factors, not just for criminal justice, but for the county as a whole. The choices in regard to IT, he said, were either to put in a huge computer system that everybody uses, or go with a loosely coupled architecture that allows some independence of systems in individual agencies. Maricopa chose the latter option.
The county's governance model is made up of three levels: departmental; electronic community; and enterprise.
"If a department is the only one that uses a particular information system, then we give them broad latitude in the system they choose, because it has little or no impact outside their area," said Thatcher.
The electronic community is formed when several departments come together to work on something. If it includes all departments, then it is the enterprise level, according to Thatcher. An electronic community is formed when two or more departments share one of three things; computer systems, horizontal processes or information.
Finally, there is the enterprise, including anything that is enterprise wide from a technology perspective, such as the county network that comes under the purview of the CIO in terms of setting standards, policies, best practices and, in most cases, operational management.
Criminal Justice Electronic Community
Maricopa's project involved eight agencies, including the Superior Court, Clerk of Superior Court, County Attorney, County Sheriff and several public defense organizations. "We used the middle level of the governance model -- the electronic community -- to set up the framework for the community that we call criminal justice," said Thatcher. "So we took the five agency areas and we banded them together at two different levels." He added that, by virtue of the county's size, Maricopa County's influence impacts much of the state.
The first level was the business level; the county brought in key business leaders from each department, ideally a senior official such as the presiding judge of the Superior Court, the county attorney, etc. "We pulled them together, set them up as a policy group with their own charter, their own set of goals and what would become their own business plan." said Thatcher.
The second level was the senior technologist of each of the five areas, who represents the "electronic voice" of where the county was going. "So there is a technology group within this electronic community that represents the common vision and goals and direction in which all of the technologists in that area are going." Thatcher said.
Thatcher said that once the governance structure was in place, the next step was funding for an integrated system. "As part of a tax referendum for criminal justice we piggybacked 25 million technology dollars to build the system," he said. The money was approved, and assigned to the governing body.
The next step was to create a neutral agency, the Integrated Criminal Justice Information System Department, and give it its own director, staff and funding.
Convergent Architecture
"If you go before the business leaders and say, 'We need an architecture,' they will think, 'That's one of those techie things,'" said Thatcher. "But if I say, 'I need a technology model that will bring you all to a common point somewhere in the future,' then they understand that." He said the county hired consultants to investigate best practices across the country, and settled on an architecture that the entire criminal justice agency family would follow.
"When I say follow, that doesn't mean they do an instant migration or conversion," said Thatcher. "It means that when they hit the next migration or conversion window, that they would move in a direction to a single point on the compass."
According to Thatcher, Maricopa's keys to success rest on its governance model, funding and convergent architecture. The solid progress on integrated justice, he said, puts the county in a good position to move forward to acquire federal grants for the next phase, which gets into business-process reengineering and workflow using XML.
The third phase would extend the integration into jurisdictions beyond the county. The goal is to expand the reach of the system to include local law enforcement offices, along with state and regional agencies. Thatcher emphasizes that the integrated criminal justice information system is an ongoing process. "It's still an emerging system and not in full production yet," he said. "It's about 25 percent complete and we have many projects launched." Among those projects is an effort to develop a system to apply a common case number throughout agencies -- a process that might sound simple but, according to Thatcher, was a "huge deal."
Another challenge for the system is the need for both horizontal and vertical workflows. "It is a modernization effort that has two degrees of complexity," Thatcher observed. Also on the drawing board are plans to implement an online and IVR payment system for fines associated with all the agency partners.
"Our whole energy flow is focused at convergence," he said. "Every business and technology leader is aligned to the same polar star. The underlying methodology is that a modern horizontal business model precedes the governing model, which precedes the technology architecture model, which then precedes the build-out."
The payoff of this program will benefit all the participants in the integrated justice arena, including the public who will find more effective Information Age government. "I like to think that ICJIS is a place where good business management, good governance and good technology converge together to weave a fabric of modern, electronic business processes in the Maricopa criminal justice community," Thatcher said.
-- Darby Patterson contributed to this story.
