Did you know that 250 of the 254 counties in the state of Texas are running on the same juvenile case management system? Common data collection, reporting, and management of juvenile justice programs is arguably more efficient and cohesive than ever before.
With 98% of Texas counties running on the same system, the focus has shifted to enhancements, including integrations to court case management systems like Odyssey and TechShare.Court.
What’s Next: enhancements in 2015
Before we dive into the plan for court integrations, let’s first touch on system enhancements on deck for development by the end of the year. Because TechShare.Juvenile was built to be an evergreen system, we’re in the business of making updates to it as we receive feedback from users, and lot’s of it. In fact, the TechShare methodology for developing software mirrors that of an agile approach. You can learn more about that here, otherwise, let’s keep talking enhancements.
As we move through the last quarter of 2015, Product Owners in the TechShare.Juvenile program recently prioritized a list of features for development. What you see below is not listed in any particular order and, in fact, it’s an ongoing backlog that’s worked month to month throughout the year.
- Institutions: Ability to track Detention Events, enhanced management of Visitors, Room Lists, and Meal Rosters
- Notifications: System generated notifications to users about important events for juveniles under their supervision from the Home screen
- Photo Lineup: Ability for a user to generate either an individual line-up or six-person line-up
- Ad-Hoc Reporting: Increased fields to allow local counties more robust reporting options
- Secondary Officer Caseload: Realignment of this feature to display (and function) similar to primary officer caseload
- Prosecutor Case Management: Additional features for maintaining complainants, editing offense dates, status information for cases pending on open petitions (not adjudicated), and more
Stop, collaborate and…integrate?
TechShare was conceived out of an idea to foster collaboration across counties when it comes to technology solutions. Whether that be issuing an RFP, developing the software in-house, or providing a team for training and implementation, we’re focused on delivering a technology experience that works for two or more counties.
Since rolling out TechShare.Juvenile, a number of counties have expressed a need to integrate with other systems, specifically court case management systems. At this point, meetings have been conducted to identify three things:
- Scope of the effort
- Standard business practices
- Potential interface points
Under Collin County CIO Caren Skipworth’s leadership, development is expected to begin in 2016. In the meantime, efforts are being made to forecast the costs associated with integrating to a court case management system, whether that be Odyssey, TechShare.Court, or another key player in the market.
For more information about TechShare.Juvenile, contact Rebecca Lewis at rlewis@cuc.org.