Appendix B

Offender-based Tracking System

The offender-based tacking system (OBTS) is an automated case management system for criminal justice agencies. It is intended to allow agencies to trace an offender's movement and custody status through the criminal justice process from arrest to parole. The OBTS will also maintain criminal history records for each offender.

Development of the system. The state's effort to merge criminal justice system databases began during the 1980s. A study group of criminal justice administrators and information management professionals concluded the technology was not available at that time to build a global system and executive and judicial branch criminal justice agencies had not sufficiently developed their internal systems to allow for a successful and comprehensive merger of data. However, by the mid-1990s, technological advancements and improvements in the state agencies' databases made the project feasible.

The criminal justice agencies, the Office of Policy and Management (OPM), and a contracted information systems consultant developed a plan to create the OBTS. The "supra-system" is designed to store criminal history data and offender information including arrest, court disposition, and sentencing data and allow for immediate access by authorized users. It will link the 15 automated database systems currently maintained by eight state criminal justice agencies into one central repository. The Division of State Police will be the "keepers" of the repository.

The following is a summary of the development of the offender-based tracking system.

• 1996: judicial branch court operations data merged into the criminal history databased maintained by the state police's Bureau of Identification.
• 1997: an $8 million contract awarded to an information systems consultant (Maximus) to oversee project management and integration of existing database systems.
• 1998: a working groups of criminal justice agencies staff and the consultant was convened to identify the data to be collected in the OBTS and the points in the process that generate information (e.g., an arrest, a verdict).
• 1999: OPM requested bids from contractors to build the OBTS. The $10 million contract was subsequently awarded to Sierra in September, 2001. Also, in 1999, the legislature established the OBTS governing board (Public Act 99-14).
• 2001: Sierra working on transfer of information between agencies, building hardware for the automated system, and developing the program to process data.

On-line status. The initial operating system is expected to be on-line by September 2002. At that point, only the state police, criminal court, and correction department will have access to the OBTS.

By September 2003, the consultant is required to have installed all the necessary enhancements to allow access to the system by all criminal justice agencies and authorized users such as the public defenders. All 15 databases will be linked to the central repository and data sharing will begin.

OPM reported the system is designed to produce agencies' management reports based on the data. It will also allow for eventual access to aggregate criminal history data for statistical analysis purposes.

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