MCP's Support of Iowa CJIS Helps to Make the Program 'Irreplaceable'

In Summary

• The State of Iowa Criminal Justice Information System (Iowa CJIS) is a system of systems designed to enable the integration and sharing of information between the state’s criminal justice organizations, seamlessly and securely, in real time.
• URL Integration, who became part of Mission Critical Partners in 2020, built the Iowa CJIS from the ground up and today, continue to support the program, which is providing incalculable benefits
• The program has increased the amount of information being shared across the state’s criminal-justice community and has improved the data of accuracy being sent, among other benefits

Background

Iowa CJIS was established in 2009 and performs about 400,000 data exchanges annually, serving 253 local police departments, all 99 county sheriff’s offices, 62 county attorney offices, 94 court clerks and numerous state-level agencies. The information integration and sharing is accomplished via numerous data exchanges that the state established.

The Opportunity

URL Integration, acquired by MCP in 2020, has supported the state since the beginning, first by building two data exchanges—one for filing citations between law enforcement and the courts and the other for sharing information regarding victim notifications. Since then, 25 additional data exchanges were built using the same architecture and technical approach.

Now, collaboration is achieved across agencies and from one jurisdiction to another, and anybody can share with anybody, at any time.

The Approach

Iowa CJIS contains a system architecture that automates data-sharing workflows and ensures that the data is routed to the proper jurisdiction. It also ensures compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements, and performs validations leveraging predefined business rules to ensure integrity and accuracy.

The Results

The Iowa CJIS program has increased the amount of information that is being shared across the state’s criminal-justice community exponentially, has improved the accuracy of the date being sent, has eliminated almost entirely pertinent data being lost and has reduced dramatically the amount of time needed to deliver data.

“It is relied upon by so many different agencies—state-level, county, and local—that at this point it has become irreplaceable,” said Tammi Blackstone, Iowa Division of Criminal Justice and Juvenile Justice Planning.

Learn more about the project by downloading the case study using the form provided.