California Administrative Office of the Courts Moves Forward on Criminal Justice Data Sharing Project

The California Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has chosen Crossflo Systems to provide Information Exchange Package (IEP) development services. Crossflo will assist the AOC Data Integration Group's efforts to standardize existing exchange specifications to a federally mandated data standard and develop additional information exchanges required by the nation's largest state court system. The project will focus on criminal/traffic, family/juvenile and second generation e-filing exchange specifications.

The AOC Data Integration Group initiated its Criminal Justice Data Exchange Project to support development of the California Case Management System V4 (CCMS V4), a single case management system handling all case types for all of the state's 58 Superior Courts. Crossflo will develop the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) -- conforming information exchange packages and related Information Exchange Package Documents (IEPDs) necessary to provide easily understood specifications for AOC's CCMS V4 exchange partners.

The project includes creation of an AOC Data Exchange Specifications library to maintain and publish IEP Use Case documents, along with artifacts describing the business and technical requirements associated with each exchange.

IEPDs are created to establish the definitions, descriptions and rules for how a specific information exchange will be governed. The IEPD includes both the technical description and specifications for a specific exchange of data, as well as the rules that govern the exchange of information between the exchange partners.

Crossflo has developed a methodology to improve the efficiency by which IEPDs are created between exchange partners and the ability to effectively reuse those IEPDs for other exchanges. This has proven to be effective between exchange partners including private, public, federal, state and local.

The IEPDs ensure that all participating exchange partners understand the parameters, security, format and content of the data being exchanged today and how it will happen in the future.

NIEM, a federally mandated, public sector data sharing standard, was designed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to create a foundation for consistent national-level interoperable information sharing. The IEPD is viewed as a prerequisite to NIEM-conforming data sharing, because it can help assure the consistent use of the standard across all government domains. This standards-based approach will streamline data sharing within the AOC and among collaborating agencies, improving accuracy and speeding up data access, while tightening user control.