When the Georgia Governor's Office charged a team of criminal justice stakeholders with accessing the efficiencies that could be gained from electronic court filing, statewide criminal justice stakeholders set out to find ways in which documents and information could be seamlessly shared between systems. The State’s goal to improve criminal-history disposition match rates quickly expanded to the realization that real, sustainable statewide improvements would significantly improve the flow of justice information from the beginning to the end of the criminal case lifecycle. At that time, the administration was determined to improve the performance of the state’s criminal justice system to better protect public safety and control spending.
The vision came to life with the Georgia Justice E-Filing Project, or CJEP, which was intended to enhance the criminal justice process by moving documents and information seamlessly between systems. The second goal was to improve the completeness of the state’s criminal history record repository.
The State turned to URL Integration, now part of Mission Critical Partners (MCP), for guidance building a roadmap of how data would flow through the entire criminal justice ecosystem. Instead of employing a connecter approach to integration, MCP convened a broad range of state and local practitioners, along with several vendors, to map out a simplified, integrated process flow, or a shared, big picture of an expanded criminal justice ecosystem supported by information that flows seamlessly through agencies and systems.
One might think that this type of system would require the procurement of new systems to realize improvements, however, that is not the case. Working alongside MCP, the State established standards that defined how data could be exchanged seamlessly without costly technology upgrades.
The four pilot counties that have been implemented to date have witnessed significant improvements in efficiency and data quality since the standardized exchanges have been incorporated into their local case-management systems. Among other benefits, staff are now able set up new cases significantly faster and spend less time correcting errors. Decision-makers have more complete, timely information available to them at every stage in the process. The next step will be to roll-out the solution across the rest of the state's 159 counties.
The advantages of the new architecture and supporting rules are unlimited for the State’s criminal justice and law enforcement communities, including the ability to facilitate information movement, enabling relevant information to be located, shared, and retrieved with minimal effort.
Once CJEP is fully implemented across Georgia, criminal case data will flow seamlessly through the justice system. The results will be faster case processing and more informed decision-making at every stage in the criminal justice process.
We would love the opportunity to speak with you about your data integration needs and—more importantly—how workflow automation can simplify data exchange in your organization. Learn more about MCP's data integration expertise here.