In 2008, the Indiana General Assembly passed, and Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law, HEA 1001, a bill designed to provide property tax relief that also made sweeping changes to how payments are processed for juvenile services throughout the state. There have been several articles in the Indiana Court Times reporting on the effects of this bill on Indiana’s courts and probation departments. But there is another, behind-the-scenes story about how the agencies involved have managed to comply with the law, how separate branches of government collaborated, and the crucial role JTAC has played in the effort.
The Problem. House Enrolled Act (HEA) 1001 was as an effort to relieve the property tax burden on Indiana homeowners, but for Indiana’s courts and the Department of Child Services (DCS), it was a directive to make major changes in the processing of payments for juvenile services and placements.
Under the old system, a county’s property tax included a family and children’s fee to pay for the juvenile services that were not reimbursed under federal law. Title IV-E, under the Social Security Act, establishes Federal-State programs for foster care, adoption assistance, and independent living. Probation officers collected and delivered information —on paper forms—about the children being served to local DCS caseworkers for data entry into the Indiana Child Welfare Information System (ICWIS). Regional coordinators at DCS approved or denied services that counties paid for from local funds and processed any eligible Title IV-E reimbursements. Counties often waited months for the reimbursement of those funds. And, because the paper process was so burdensome, Title IV-E eligible children might pass through the system without their cases ever being processed for reimbursement from the Federal government. This meant lost revenue for the counties.
Under HEA 1001, probation officers would still collect information about each child, and DCS would still process the Title IV-E reimbursements. But under the new plan, DCS has an additional responsibility of processing the payments to the service providers. These payments are now made from the state general fund, since the law eliminates the local family and children’s levy on property taxes. DCS needed a way for probation officers to be able to enter the children’s information directly into ICWIS in order to avoid hiring additional case workers or contracting with a private company to handle this extra burden.
That is where the road got a little bumpy. Under ICWIS, a federally-provided program, only state employees had direct access, and local probation officers were not eligible. The challenge for DCS was to find a way for probation officers to interface with ICWIS without directly accessing it.
The Solution. In April, a month after HEA 1001 was signed, representatives from DCS met with staff from the Supreme Court’s Division of State Court Administration Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC) section to discuss language changes on court forms and orders to comply with federal reimbursement rules. At the time, they discussed the possible use of the Supreme Court’s Odyssey trial court case management system as an interface to ICWIS. However, because Odyssey was not going to be available statewide by January 1, it wouldn’t serve the immediate needs of the probation officers or DCS caseworkers.
The leadership at DCS explored several options over the following months looking for an ideal solution. In late summer, James Payne, DCS Director and former Marion County Juvenile Court Judge, met with Jane Seigel, Executive Director of the Indiana Judicial Center. They discussed HEA 1001 and the challenges for DCS. Jane Seigel told Director Payne about INcite, JTAC’s secure data sharing portal that was being used by judges and court staff. It already interfaced with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Indiana State Police, and other executive branch agencies. So at Jane’s suggestion, Director Payne decided to get in touch with JTAC.
It was about this time that Mary DePrez, JTAC’s Director, was driving to Alabama with her family for a vacation. There they were, trucking along a southbound highway, when her phone rang. And it was an urgent call, because in less than five months, HEA 1001 would become effective. Mary assured Director Payne that JTAC could make this project a priority. In order to succeed, JTAC and DCS had to begin the planning process immediately.
By September, the project to develop an interface between INcite and ICWIS kicked into high gear. JTAC assigned Mark Harvey, a new employee and former probation officer, to manage the project, and Eric Burris, a JTAC contractor, to make sure the solution would work in the field. JTAC software developer Dylan Vester had recently created an entirely new framework for INcite. It took advantage of the latest technologies and made development of web applications like the one planned for DCS much faster than earlier INcite projects. And Jason Butera, a Deputy MIS Director at JTAC, developed the software application to interface with ICWIS using the new framework. Just as JTAC had to build a new application, DCS had to scramble their own technology staff to update ICWIS and make the interface possible.
The January 1 deadline was met with a diligent, inter-branch team effort.
In four months, JTAC was able to design, develop, test, revise, retest, and deploy a critical web application utilizing precious and limited resources. The application exchanges data with an existing system, requires that data to be kept secure over an Internet connection, and is relied on by hundreds of users across the state.
Life After INcite. Now that HEA 1001 is in effect, and JTAC has launched this interface with ICWIS, processing juvenile services bills and Title IV-E eligibility is much more streamlined. Since the initial launch of the new software, nearly 300 users have gained access to the system and more than 200 cases have been entered. In the ten counties that use the Quest juvenile case management system, probation officers are using its new functionality to accomplish essentially the same tasks, but any county has the option to use INcite at no cost.
The benefits of this new INcite application may be difficult to quantify right away, but they commingle with the benefits of HEA 1001. One way to explain the relationship is with this analogy: In response to the people, the state legislature and the governor gave a directive that we all meet at a particular destination. HEA 1001 is the road, and the new INcite application is one of the vehicles that will help take us there.
HEA 1001 provides property tax relief by shifting the burden of payment for juvenile services from the county to the state. But because of the newly created electronic method of reporting information, Title IV-E reimbursements to the counties will arrive quicker than under the old system. Probation officers will also save time through better organization of the information they gather. They could potentially use the newly found time to discover unidentified Title IV-E eligible children, which means less overall cost to the state.
Chief Justice Shepard said in his 2009 State of the Judiciary:
The internal design of this system saved time and money, but more to the point it will permit services and placement for threatened or troubled children more quickly and more effectively. And it will allow Indiana to maximize the amount of federal reimbursement for providing services to children. Indiana has over time left tens of millions of dollars on the sidewalk. No more!
