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Facing the Challenge of
Increased Expectations
ISD Corporation recognizes that the participating
agencies in the justice environment including law enforcement, prosecuting
agencies, defense counsel, probation, detention, and the judicial branch
throughout the nation, and at all levels of government, are facing a wide
range of challenges. These
challenges affect jurisdictions that have highly mobile populations and
densely populated urban areas as well as those with rural communities and
include:
- Increased
public demand for the accountability of elected and appointed
officials for the effectiveness and responsiveness of the agencies
they manage in meeting the needs of the community, particularly where
public safety is concerned.
- Increased
expectations on the part of the public for the identification and
appropriate handling of career criminals and individuals whose
behavior constitutes a high risk to the community.
- Increased
public demand for electronic access to information and services as
well as extended hours of operation.
- The
increased difficulties caused by a highly mobile and transient
population with people moving between communities, between states,
from neighboring nations, and from overseas.
- Increased
demand for the availability of timely and accurate information to
expedite the processing of criminal cases to alleviate jail
overcrowding and comply with mandatory headcount limitations.
- Increased
need for access to all information regarding matters for specific
individuals based on the growing recognition of the
inter-relationships between juvenile, domestic, custody, and adult
criminal matters.
- Increased
need to realize improvements in the timeliness and accuracy of
information as well as to control the costs related to the redundant
manual entry of information.
The ability to meet these concerns and expectations can
be enhanced through the effective exchange of information between the
justice agencies; however, the integration of information in the justice
community does not take place in isolation and the constitutional missions
and responsibilities of the agencies must be taken into account as well as
their functional needs and technology in developing an effective approach
for the integration of justice information.
What ISD Corporation is Doing
to Help
We understand that the ability to effectively exchange
information with other justice agencies at the national, state, and local
level is critical to meeting the challenge of increased expectations. We
also understand that the ability to more readily move information between
the information systems supporting a specific justice agency is also
critical. We know that not
only do our products have to be able to effectively exchange information
but that they also need to effectively exchange information with both
custom developed applications and “commercial, off the shelf” application
and middleware solutions from other product providers. We are thus rapidly developing and
deploying information exchange functions using the same open and
industry-standard protocols for information exchanges within the ISD
product set, as well as for third-party and legacy applications.
We have also designed our products to provide a high degree of
integrated functionality off the shelf including:
- A
Juvenile Court Case Management module that combines support for both
delinquency and dependency (status) cases.
- Electronic-filing
interfaces for prosecuting agencies.
- Interfaces
to statewide information systems including motor vehicles.
- Future
development plans include a scalable, middleware “data switch” module
for small to medium size counties to facilitate information exchanges
between justice systems.
Some of these systems may be “commercial of the shelf” (COTS)
products and some of them may be custom developed, but they are all
very different with regard to how information is gathered, edited,
mapped and stored.
Attempts to connect these separate information systems with
standalone interfaces can result in what a research firm has described
as “inter-application spaghetti” – a complex web of interfaces that
becomes increasingly more difficult and costly to maintain. ISD’s “data switch” will
enable Counties to avoid the trap of “inter-application spaghetti”
without incurring the costs associated with overly-complex solutions
that scale upwards but not downwards.
The Other Side of the Coin:
Ubiquitous Public Access
- In
addition to meeting the challenges related to effectively sharing
information with their partners in the justice community, agencies are
also being called upon to provide enhanced access and services to
members of the Bar and to the public. Here again, ISD can help. Two of the most critical factors in
successfully providing access to information and services are:
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Providing a highly common user interface for
individuals to access justice information through the Internet.
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Providing access to justice information and
services for those individuals who do not have access to the Internet.
For these reasons ISD supports access to case
information and services:
- Directly
through the Internet with our OpenAccess and ePay-It products. Both solutions are highly
rated by the public for ease of use and convenience. OpenAccess provides
direct access to justice information for Internet users, while ePay-It
is a hosted service provided by ISD Corporation that permits members
of the public to forfeit bail for infractions, putting Courts in the
vanguard of public access without incurring costly infrastructure
upgrade and security costs.
- Through
electronic filing service providers (EFSP’s) that provide attorneys
the capability to file documents with the Court. ISD’s eFiling Manager accepts
standard XML transactions from the EFSP, places them in a queue for
the Court to review, updates the ICMS database, and then provides a
notification to the EFSP that the filing has been accepted.
- Through
interactive voice response (IVR) technology that allows members of the
public who do not access to the Internet to similarly forfeit bail
and/or schedule proceedings.
Putting it all Together
ISD’s approach to integrated justice and ubiquitous
public access will continue to be driven by industry standards, “open”
technology and our two decades of commitment to the justice community. We will continue to develop and
deploy technologies that our clients need and that deliver on the promise
of integrated justice.
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