GAC Meeting SummaryOctober 30, 2013

Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global)
Advisory Committee (GAC)
Biannual Meeting: Fall 2013

Hilton Crystal City at
Washington Reagan National Airport
2399 Jefferson Davis Highway
Arlington, VA 22202 (703) 418-6800

October 30, 2013

Summary Points and

Formal Recommendations

Operating under the guidance and support of the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA or “Bureau”), Office of Justice Programs (OJP or “Office”), U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ or “Department”), the Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (“Global” or “Initiative”)[1] Advisory Committee (GAC or “Committee”) held its fall 2013 meeting in October. The GAC is a Federal Advisory Committee to the highest-ranking justice officer in the nation—the U.S. Attorney General (AG)—on justice-related information sharing issues.

The GAC meets twice a year, in the spring and fall, in the Washington, DC, area. These events are open to the public and announced in the Federal Register, located at Interested justice colleagues and members of the public are welcome to attend.

The day’s program[3] contained the following discussion points, recommendations, and action items. In the interest of document structure and report comprehensibility, the order of events described herein does not necessarily mirror the agenda. However, the contentis reflective of meeting activities and resolutions.

The meeting took place at the Hilton Crystal City at Washington Reagan National
Airporthotel and was called to order at 8:30 a.m. by Mr. Robert Boehmer, GAC Chairman, Global member representing the National Criminal Justice Association (NCJA). Mr. Carl Wicklund, GAC member representing the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA), presided as Committee Vice Chair. BJA Associate Deputy Director J. Patrick McCreary presided as the Global Designated Federal Official (DFO).

GAC members, federal officials, guest speakers, observers, and staff provided roundtable introductions.[4]

BJA Leadership Welcoming Remarks

Chairman Boehmer introduced the Honorable Denise O’Donnell, BJA Director, who set the stage for a successful event and provided meeting momentum in her welcoming address. She noted that BJA’s commitment to supporting projects that impact the field and advance issues also prioritized by Global is evidenced in BJA’s 2013 justice information sharing (JIS) awards. These projects are tackling challenges and opportunities related to:

  • Use of state-of-the-art research and data to address justice business problems
  • Interagency information sharing
  • Offender management and reentry
  • Justice-to-health/behavioral health information sharing and continuity of care issues
  • Prison Rape Elimination Actstandards

Director O’Donnell concluded her remarks by noting, “The best way to advertise Global, and to create awareness of Global tools and solutions, is to highlight their application in the field. This will demonstrate how your work [around this membership table] translates in the real world.” This observation by the Director is a tenet that Committee leadership has incorporated into overall Global operations as well asGAC meetings by emphasizing the valuable benefits of peer-to-peer project sharing and storytelling. Chairman Boehmer reiterated a point made many times at prior Committee gatherings: documentation of JIS successes, particularly those that leverage Global recommendations, is something all justice partners are requested to contribute. This is certainly important for the encouragement provided during the biannual GAC events, but relaying success stories has a more far-reaching and permanent effect. Capturing the details and results of these efforts contributes to a body of data that can be evaluated to determine what is working, what needs improvement, and what can be reused, replicated, and mined for guidance as individual projects and overall Global efforts move forward. To that end, Committee members, partners, and observers can for more information and staff support in documenting project successes.

“Global in Action”—Success Stories From the Field

Continuing the theme and underscoring the value of peer-to-peer sharing of success stories, Chairman Boehmer introduced this topic by noting that attendees would have the benefit of hearing about two groups’ impressiveinformation sharing efforts. This standing “success stories from the field” agenda item provides practitioners and executives with an opportunity to share evaluative briefings on implementations in the field: what works, what could benefit from refinement, lessons learned for future adoption, and plans for follow-up activities, including possible touch points for Global collaboration.

BJA supports and provides guidance to programs that exemplify and advance the mission, vision, and goals of BJA and OJP for the betterment of the justice practitioners and ultimately the communities they serve. One such fundamental principle the organizations strive to perpetuate is the encouragement and promotion of local decisionmaking and innovation through national leadership. Examples of this local empowerment areillustrated by the Pennsylvania County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP, Association) and State of Maine JIS successes, highlighted as follows:

  • Ms. Rita Reynolds, Director of Technology Services and Telecommunications, CCAP, briefed attendees on the Association’s Criminal Justice Unified Case Management System (UCM).[5]This project is notable for many reasons, including being county-based. (DFO McCreary commended this unique factor, by stating, “BJA is proud of this accomplishment: we don’t often see applications from county commissioners. It’s a great example that leadership can come from anywhere, from any domain, and that’s credit to the Pennsylvania County Commissioners!”) In 2007, as a result of years of the legacy approach of nurturing stand-alone systems (in this case, separate case management systems [CMSs] for adult probation, jail, and district attorneys), Pennsylvania counties were facing the significant business challenges of inefficient manual data entry, data quality issues, difficulties in using data for management decisionmaking, and inefficient offender processing. Though significant BJA and OJP technical and policy achievements in the areas of data exchange, data quality, and national standards, federal leadership was able to provide support and guidance to the Association in leveraging existing solutions in the development of CCAP’s UCM. Recognizing that quality information is the cornerstone of sound agency decision making, the project first tackled data quality issues. By usingthe BJA-supported solutions, including the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), CCAP was able to dramatically improve the quality of fundamental data elements (for example, hair color) by 172 percent in the jail CMS, 200 percent in the adult probation CMS, and 232 percent in the district attorneyCMS. (The project won a 2011 “Best of NIEM” award for improving data quality.) Turning attention to streamlining efficiencies, CCAP again leveraged BJA-supported solutions, including Global technical and policy recommendations, to develop a centralized CMS which contains a single instance of core offender data, serving as the basis on which additional modules can be built for department-specific needs and requirements. The UCM data model enables automated data exchange among departments and agencies, and between the county UCM and statewide systems—such as the Pennsylvania Court System, Department of Corrections, and Pennsylvania Justice Network—to enhance officer and public safety. Beyond providing solutions to previouslylisted business challenges, from a financial perspective, the CCAP UCM has yielded costsavings, while simultaneously increasing functionality, and generated a unique way to offset county expenses through an optional for-convenience-fee offender Web portal check-in.

In her concluding comments, Director Reynolds statedthat a current business need related to inefficient data entry (and a source of frustration) is submission of information to the Interstate Compact Offender Tracking System (ICOTS), a Web-based system that facilitates the transfer of supervision for probationers and parolees from one state to another. Mr. Scott Came, Executive Director and GAC representative from SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics (SEARCH)and Global Executive Steering Committee (GESC) member, was able to provide the good news that Global efforts have already provided a technical solution to that business problem through the Offender Transfer Notification Service Specification, Version 1.0.

  • Ms. Glenda Winn, Systems Analyst, Maine State Police (MSP), and longtime contributor to Global standards efforts, shared the success story of MSP’s enhanced information sharing capabilities,[6] which began when two of the state’s justice agencies independently initiated pursuit of solutions to solve their respective business needs. The MSP wanted an incident-reporting process that law enforcement could use statewide; at the same time, the Cumberland County (Portland) District Attorney and the Maine District Attorneys Technical Services (MEDATS) office requested a technical solution to enable the county’s law enforcement agencies to electronically refer cases to the district attorney. Through involvement in the Maine Justice Information Sharing Architecture (MJISA) Steering Committee, MSP and MEDATS recognized the commonalities of the two projects and agreed to develop a common information sharing infrastructure. Because MSP and MEDATS agreed to collaborate and use the common MJISA infrastructure to complete both of their initiatives, Maine law enforcement agencies now have the option to submit incident records to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Data Exchange (N-DEx) national repository of criminal justice records, refer cases to their local district attorneys, or accomplish both tasks using the same electronic exchange and infrastructure. Each agency maintains responsibility for determining what data is shared, when it is shared, and with whom. This new process results in significant benefits to both district attorneys and law enforcement agencies across the state.For law enforcement, the new system means these agencies can now view incident reports from other agencies submitting data to N-DEx; for the district attorneys, this means that the amount of time required to enter initial case information is dramatically reduced (for example, Cumberland County reports saving ten hours of data entry per two-week arraignment period) and the likelihood of making data entry errors significantly decreased.

This state of Maine success story also underscores the valuable support that BJA training and technical assistance (TTA), available through the National Training and Technical Assistance Center (NTTAC) and Justice Information Sharing Training and Technical Assistance Committee (JTTAC), can bring to moving a project from planning stages to successful implementation.Specifically, to achieve Maine’s goals, MSP relied on TTA provided by Global- and JTTAC-member agency SEARCH. Mr. Camediscussed the TTA associated with this effort, noting that the MSP and SEARCH’s use of established promising practices and standards in IT architecture and design helped reduce implementation time and cost, enhance data consistency, and maximize the number of agencies that are able to leverage incident reporting data.

Chairman’s Message: Strengthening the Global/Juvenile Justice Partnership

Chairman Boehmer began his remarks by thanking attendees for their support of the Initiative, whether as appointed GAC representatives; hands-on Working Group, Council, or task team volunteers; practitioners implementingGlobal solutions; or, ideally, all of the above. He stressed that attendees not only contribute to successful GAC meetings but continue to play a vital role in Global’s ongoing and evolving work.

Fundamental Committee tenets include advancing collaborative, mutuallysupportive activities; leveraging existing solutions and recommendations for cost-effectiveness and greater likelihood of interoperability; and developing or strengthening partnerships with communities and organizations with similar information sharing priorities and complementary efforts, thereby increasing the opportunityfor cross-boundary information sharing success. One domain that Global leadership has looked forward to engagingis the juvenile justice community. Chairman Boehmer noted, “I believe the various justice businesses, processes, and communities supported by each GAC representative seated around the table touch—at some point—the juvenile justice enterprise.” He relayed that it was therefore particularly exciting to welcome Mr. Robert Listenbee, Jr., the newlyappointed Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP or “Office,” one of BJA’s sister OJP organizations) to serve as guest speaker during this time slot.

Administrator Listenbee shared his thoughts on the current state of the juvenile justice system, OJJDP’s road ahead, and the necessary components and activities for successfully achieving his vision and goals for the Office. The Administrator’s remarks emphasized his belief that the JJsystem must be reformed, including realigning priorities to include a developmental approach to crafting and implementing model programs and solutions to top JJ challenges. This reformation will rely heavily on the use of science and data (OJJDP’s partnerships with the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences were specifically mentioned) and evidence-based practices, training, and technical assistance. Priority issues for his Office include responding to the alarming statistics of children exposed to violence and the devastating effect of the sex trafficking of minors. The Administrator challenged attendees to recommend solutions to two specific JJ-related challenges:

1)How to share data from the range of associated treatment providers, agencies, and domains (such as education) to develop a “complete picture” of crossover youth (i.e., children involved in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems). Every day, our nation’s youth-serving professionals are required to make significant decisions about the next steps in the lives of at-risk and dependent juveniles. Unfortunately, these practitioners’ agencies and organizations face a significant challenge—no one system alone has all the critical information. As a result, system-involved youth often receive inadequate, inappropriate, redundant, or even contradictory services—particularly when plans are disparately developed for juveniles involved in multiple systems of care. GAC and OJJDP leaders pledged to continue this important dialogue to explore areas in which Global solutions might address this critical information sharing gap.

2)How to monitor youth once they enter the juvenile justice system, answering the question:What happens to these children throughout the process?

Chairman Boehmer thanked Administrator Listenbee for his time and willingness to personally and dynamically address the GAC membership. He commended the OJJDP Administrator’s additional measures to strengthen the Global/juvenile justice community partnership, including the inclusion of the Global Standards Package(GSP) as a specific grant condition in a recent Office TTA solicitation. This is truly an auspicious, concrete step in advancing exchange opportunities between the communities.

Global Business

  • Meeting Summary Approval—As is the standing practice, the previous GAC meeting summary (outlining the April 11, 2013, event)[7] was brought to the floor by Vice Chairman Wicklund for Committee approval.
  • Voting particulars:
  • Chief Harlin McEwen, GAC representative from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and GESCmember, made a motion to ratify the summary without revision.
  • Mr. Timothy Loewenstein, GAC representative from the National Association of Counties (NACo), seconded.
  • Resolution: The motion was brought to a vote; it carried unanimously.
  • Global Working Group and Council Briefings—Also, as is the standing practice, Global Working Group and Council leadersprovided updates on their teams’ recent activities. Highlights of these briefings[8]included the following activities, resources, and recommendations:
  • Thomas Clarke, Ph.D., Global Standards Council (GSC, “Council”)Chair and GAC representative from the Nation Center for State Courts (NCSC), provided the GSC briefing. Mr. Came serves as the GSC Vice Chair.

In addition to his Council update, GSC Chairman Clarke presented two GSC-recommended justice/human services Subject Contact information exchange services for formal GAC consideration: the Subject Contact Subscription Service (SCSS) and the Subject Contact Notification Service (SCNS).When employed together, these servicesfacilitate the bidirectional sharing of client interaction information between agencies and programs that bridge the criminal justice and human services domains to provide for better decision making in regard to supervision decisions and social support as they apply to clients, their families, and the community. Public safety, as well as the health and welfare, recovery, self-sufficiency, and well-being of the individual, family, and community, are paramount to the process.

The target audience for these services includes operations experts, security executives, decision makers, information technology practitioners, and associated business managers.

Voting particulars:

  • These services were presented in a single suite/motion by GSC Chairman Clarke. They have been reviewed and vetted by the GSC and its subordinate task teams and have undergone a thorough technical and business evaluation to ensure that each specification will achieve the desired business effect. Review and recommendation by the GAC members is the final important step in this vetting process.
  • The Honorable Tony Capizzi, juvenile judge, GAC representative from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), seconded.
  • Resolution: The motion was brought to a vote; it carried unanimously.

These, as well as the entire range of Global-recommended standards, are accessible through the Global Information Sharing Toolkit (GIST; visit

  • GAC Chairman Boehmer introduced Mr. Bart R. Johnson, Executive Director, IACP. He noted that although Executive Director Johnson has been a longstanding champion of the Global Initiative throughout his various intelligence- and law enforcement-related leadership posts at the state and national levels (including service as the GAC Vice Chair), at this meeting he was welcomed back to the GAC table as—once again—an official member, serving as the new Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council (CICC) representative. Executive Director Johnson was also appointed Chairman of the CICC/Global Intelligence Working Group (GIWG)in August, succeeding Utah Commissioner of Public Safety Keith Squires. Commission Squires will remain on the CICC, representing the National Governors Association (NGA). Mr. Vernon Keenan, Director, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, continues in his role as the CICC/GIWG Vice Chair.

During his update, CICC/GIWG Chairman Johnson highlighted two important resources recently recommended by the GAC via electronic voting. The following, as well a wealth of additional CICC/GIWG intelligence-related resources, are available through the GIST.