This task team was formed, in part, in response to a document drafted by members of the Criminal Justice Technology Forecasting Group (CJTFG), supported by RAND on behalf of BJA, to support the following task approved by the GESC: Solve specific justice/health exchanges using consistent architectural approaches to minimize costs and increase interoperability.
Background: Information sharing between the criminal justice and healthcare communities has the tremendous potential to enhance both public health and public safety outcomes by reducing redundancies, enhancing continuity of care, and generating efficiencies in both domains. Examples of high-priority areas that will greatly benefit from increased exchanges between the justice and health communities include supporting successful reentry efforts and addressing the nation’s opioid abuse epidemic.
Certainly, a good deal of work to advance and prioritize justice/health exchanges has taken place or is underway. For example, with BJA support, IJIS, Global, and justice partners have advanced foundational recommendations, including the following:
• Global-recommended Prioritizing Justice-to-Health Exchanges Task Team Final Report
• Global-recommended Aligning Justice-to-Health Priority Exchanges Task Team Final Report
Also, IJIS, NCSC, and the Georgia Tech Research Institute – again, with strong support from BJA – have begun identifying consistent, repeatable architectural strategies for information sharing between justice and health organizations. The findings? Currently, the U.S. Department of Justice laboriously negotiates technical solutions for priorities such as Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) exchanges as one-off solutions. This strategy will not scale across the range of exchanges needed with health care and human services.
Responsively, Global and federal leaders agreed that there is a need to solve specific justice/health exchanges using consistent architectural approaches to minimize costs and increase interoperability. To that end, in late May, Global leaders—supported by BJA and valued partners at the RAND Corporation (through the auspices of the CJTFG)—formed the Global Justice/Health and Human Services Architecture Solutions Task Team.
This Global TT will identify high-value projects to build on BJA’s initial work by recommending development of technical solution gaps for prioritized justice/health use cases. Pending formal approval by the Global Advisory Committee, the TT’s recommendation package will be delivered to BJA for guidance and leadership in next steps toward solution development. (This may result in additional engagement with/work by the Global community or be remanded to partner organizations and agencies, as deemed most appropriate).
Efforts to Date:
TT members met virtually on September 21 and November 17. As a result of the excellent conference call discussions, TT members agreed to concentrate on the following four priority areas (including rigorous attention to cross-cutting factors that impact all issues) and one supplemental task:
o Priority Issue 1: Supporting successful reentry
o Priority Issue 2: Disrupting the school-to-jail pipeline
o Priority Issue 3: Tackling the Nation’s heroin and opioid epidemic
o Priority 4: Improving diversion
o Supplemental Task: Tactical literature review – This will allow for the factoring of excellent previous and ongoing projects and guard against duplicative activities.
Next Steps:
• TT members will nominate 3-5 promising project in each of the priority areas. These efforts will be further explored to determine where technology can address information sharing gaps and advance the project’s operations, improve efficiencies, and provide a model for transportability for other communities tackling the same challenges.
• The final compendium of high-value projects, identified technology gaps, and recommended next steps will be delivered to BJA for guidance and leadership in determining the way ahead for solutions development. (This may result in additional engagement with/work by the Global community or be remanded to partner organizations and agencies, as deemed most appropriate).
IIR staff support all aspects of this TT's operations including coordination with TT leaders, including arrangement of virtual meeting logistics, development of meeting agendas, follow-up of assignments and action items, facilitation of virtual meetings, documentation of meeting proceedings, and any other necessary follow-up.
Final Status Report: BJA and Global leadership determined that there is significant overlap in the interests, potential impact, and possible outcomes between this group and the CNIE Task Team. As such, to maximize resources and streamline efforts, the resources and expertise assembled by this task team will be evaluated against the final deliverable from the Global Critical Non-Traditional Information Exchanges (CNIE) Task Team. This group was tabled in its current iteration, and may be reconstituted with a refined scope and membership if it is determined the team’s excellent foundational work can address and advance the “next steps” recommended by the CNIE.
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