Florida Law Enforcement Exchange (FLEX) Program Highlighted

In their June 4, 2007 edition, Government Computer News published an article on the Florida Law Enforcement Exchange (FLEX) program that is using NIEM standards and technology to link justice agencies.

CTC-10 Educational Sessions Posted

The 10th Court Technology Conference education program has been posted on the conference website at www.ctc10.org.  The program highlights public access technology program, data sharing, disaster planning and recovery, as well as many other topics of interest to the court and justice community.  The always popular Hi-Tech Courtroom sessions are listed as well as a new track focused upon law firm and attorney related technology.  See you in Tampa, Florida, October 2-4, 2007.

California and National Information Exchange Standards

Christopher Smith from the California Administrative Office of the Courts sends us this update on their GJXDM related activities:

Today, California courts have a myriad of interfaces in place using different standards and protocols. This is a result of local integration solutions being developed over time as technologies and practices changed. California, however, now has an opportunity to standardize how courts exchange information with their partners. This is particularly important as a critical part of the success of the California Case Management System (CCMS) will be the ability for courts to continue interfacing with their state and local justice partners. The California AOC’s Data Integration Program has developed a strategy to achieve this goal. This strategy addresses three key factors—standards, development, and deployment.

The branch has developed 17 Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) based criminal and traffic data exchange standards covering 71 different scenarios and 4 similar standards for family and juvenile interfaces. The branch is also participating in the California Department of Justice’s effort to develop additional standards, including for juvenile delinquency. GJXDM-based interfaces are also being defined to allow courts and the state department of child support services to exchange information.

But while these standards are now available, many of the interfaces in use today pre-date them, and therefore, are not conformant. Many courts today use interfaces designed on legacy systems, long before XML even existed. Other courts have XML interfaces based on previous national or state standards or one-off solutions. This would include, for example, the courts who are using California’s Second Generation E-Filing Specifications for civil e-filing. Now, with the development and rollout of CCMS, California has the opportunity to institute a uniform framework for information sharing that reuses standards and tools across all case types so that any document that can be filed with the court can be filed electronically—whether by government agency, attorney, or a self-represented litigant.

Through the Data Integration Program, California will migrate all of its branch information exchange standards to the national information exchange standards—either the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) or the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). This includes transitioning our Second Generation E-Filing Specifications for civil e-filing to the national models as well as revisiting our existing GJXDM-based criminal/traffic and family/juvenile data exchange specifications to ensure they meet the needs of the courts in a CCMS environment. By conforming to the national standards, California can have a single, uniform branch data dictionary that will assist in the development and deployment of additional exchanges in the future.

With these uniform standards in place, California will be able to standardize the architecture for information sharing. This architecture will drive all interfaces through our Integration Services Backbone (ISB), a suite of tools and service for integrating applications, where we can reconfigure and manage exchanges without having to do core development work to CCMS. This is particularly important as many jurisdictions have local extensions to the core standard exchange and it would be cost prohibitive to manage this within the core application. The ISB will also play a key role in civil electronic filing and sharing information with the public.

The final element of the strategy is to assist courts in the deployment of the CCMS and ISB, including ensuring required interfaces with justice partners are available to them. Even though CCMS will not be completely deployed for a few years, the Data Integration Program will begin evaluating courts integration requirements this year. This is so courts can become familiar with the new standards and architecture and their partners have time to plan for these changes. This will also give us time to develop and configure any additional data exchange standards needed by our courts.

Even though the family and juvenile modules are still being developed for CCMS, courts have already begun to benefit from the use of standards and the Integration Services Backbone. In Sacramento, the court is able to do its monthly interface with the Employment Development Department. In San Luis Obispo, court clerks will be able to review and accept or reject criminal complaints when that court goes live on the criminal and traffic module of CCMS. A number of other courts have used our standards to design public interfaces for sharing calendars and registers of action. And, soon, the courts will be able to interface with the credit card authorization agency from CCMS through the ISB.

In Orange Superior Court, the use of standards has already been used to improve information sharing. They are implementing, or have implemented, a number of GJXDM interfaces with local justice partners, including: initial criminal filings with the District Attorney, child support filings with the Department of Child Support Services, and citation data with local law enforcement to name a few. Other courts will soon deploy similar standards based interfaces as they deploy to the CCMS.

CTC-10 Education Program Posted

The initial CTC-10 education program has been listed on the CTC10 conference website. Click on the "Program" button on the menu bar to navigate to the program. In addition, information on the keynote speakers, Jack Ford and John G. Miller and their program has been posted.

NIEM "Harmony" Released

A recent newsletter from the NIEM project stated:


"The new release of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), version 2.0, also known as the “Harmony” release, was driven by practitioner requirements through a well-defined collaborative process and brings many great features. Some of the highlights of NIEM 2.0 are:

• Improved semantic quality (harmonization) of the NIEM Core model (Universal and Common) as well as some specific components from the individual domains.
• Remodeling to remove duplication, complexity, and ambiguity.
• Simplification of Universal and Common components to make it easier to understand and use the model, while maintaining their identity of Universal and Common in metadata.
• Domain version independence.
• Integrated ~30 NCCT issues resolved by NBAC/NTAC.
• Addition of five new code lists and types, and updates to existing code lists.
• Migration tools, both for those using NIEM 1.0 as well as those using GJXDM 3.0.3."

For additional information see the full announcement at: http://www.niem.gov/newsletter1.php#1

Court GJXDM/NIEM Projects in Progress, May, 2007

We have recently heard from several courts that are working on data sharing programs.

Thom Edwards from the New Hampshire Administrative Office of the Courts reports that they currently have a project called J-ONE underway that will use the GJXDM as the standard for information exchange.  He also reports that the J-ONE project will provide transformation services to connect to their new court case management system.  They are also considering exchanges with other state agencies. In particular they are looking into exchanges in the area of Child Support orders and the federal IV-D program.

Kankakee County, Illinois issues RFP for Court CMS

Note: This article has been edited on June 11, 2007 to reflect the extended response date. 

We received the following announcement:

The mission of this RFP is to obtain a CMS that will provide unity and cohesiveness within the various offices of the Kankakee County Court System. The core is the Clerk of the Circuit Court, with the integration of the States’ Attorney, Public Defender, Probation, Judges, County Sheriff, and local law enforcement agencies. Other Court Support Services will also be incorporated to facilitate the Court Processes.

The Kankakee County project manager and sole point of contact for purposes of this procurement is:

Becky Farmer, Project Manager
Phone: (815) 937-2905
rfarmer@k3county.net

The RFP, attachments, Kankakee County contact information and Kankakee County demographic information is located at http://www.k3county.net/bidsnrfps.html

To be considered, all proposals must be received in the issuing office no later than 2:00 p.m. Central Time on June 18, 2007 July 9, 2007. Proposals received after this time and date will not be considered.

BJA Regional Information Sharing Conference in Jacksonville, Florida

SEARCH Group and the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance sent us the following press release: 

It’s time to act fast if you don’t want to miss the last of four BJA-sponsored conferences to be held at the Hyatt Regency-Jacksonville Riverfront June 4-6, 2007. The cutoff date to reserve your hotel rooms is May 12.

Register now at:  http://www.search.org/conferences/2006reginfosharing/

Can your organization afford to lag behind in the critical area of planning, managing, and implementing technology solutions for your information sharing systems? If not, now is your chance to take advantage of this great opportunity to:

• Hear success stories from justice and public safety practitioners from your region and across the nation as they discuss pitfalls to avoid, lessons learned, and what has worked for them.
• Learn how to use the latest developments in policy, privacy and security, technologies, and standards to solve your information sharing challenges.
• Participate in daily breakout sessions tailored specifically for executives, managers and implementers
• Benefit from sessions that focus on strategic planning, best practices, information exchange modeling, knowledge management, partnership building—and more!
• Network with fellow practitioners from local, state, and federal agencies.

Some recipients of this email may already have attended one of the earlier conferences, and we are glad to have met you.  We have included you as a recipient so that you may encourage others in your organization to attend this last conference.

Sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, in cooperation with SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, and the GJXDM Training and Technical Assistance Committee.

NIEM 2.0 Beta1

The NIEM 2.0 Beta1 is available for review and comment. It can be downloaded from http://niem.gtri.gatech.edu/niem/2.0beta1/niem2b1.zip. The release package includes a document with release notes that detail changes and the planned timeline for the 2.0 release. Please direct any questions or comments to Scott Fairholm at sfairholm@ncsc.dni.us. The deadline for comments is May 15.

Global Justice Information Sharing Conference Announced

The US Department of Justice has announced their upcoming Global Justice Information Sharing Conference to be held from August 21-23 in Chicago, Illinois.  The conference website states that (t)he U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance, has collaborated with various local, state, tribal, and federal partners to develop the best possible resources to support nationwide information sharing implementations. The Global Justice Information Sharing Users' Conference will highlight best practices and lessons learned and will feature new implementation projects. The presentations will highlight both the development of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and the many projects supported by DOJ's Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM). Additional information regarding NIEM can be found at www.niem.gov, and additional information on GJXDM can be found at www.it.ojp.gov.