P&P June 2016

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Policy&Practice June 2016 30
technology speaks
By Marci Roth
Gathering Steam
Information Exchange to Improve National Rollout of the
Interstate Placement of Children for Foster Care and Adoption
Photographs via Flickr Creative Commons
Less than three years ago, a small
group of states joined a pilot project
to build and test an electronic system
for exchanging child information to
investigate and secure safe placement
of children across state lines. The
six pioneering states involved in the
National Electronic Interstate Compact
Enterprise (NEICE) pilot successfully
tested and proved that such a system
significantly reduces the time children
spend waiting for states to exchange
paperwork and saves states money in
copying and mailing. The pilot ended
in May 2015.
Recognizing the success and the
potential for a nationwide, electronic
data exchange, the Administration
on Children, Youth and Families,
Children’s Bureau (CB) awarded
a cooperative agreement to the
American Public Human Services
Association (APHSA) and the
Association of Administrators of the
Interstate Compact on the Placement
of Children (AAICPC) to roll out NEICE
nationwide, beginning in June 2015.
As of April 1, eight states are using
NEICE, with another 23 in the queue
for onboarding in 2016 and 2017. More
than 12,000 cases have been processed
through NEICE since August 2014.
The AAICPC estimates approximately
70,000 ICPC cases are processed across
states each year, though no precise
numbers yet exist.
The Origin of NEICE
In May 2013, the Office of
Management and Budget, through the
Partnership Fund for Program Integrity
Innovation, awarded $1.25 million to
build a national electronic web-based
system to automate the ICPC admin-
istrative process. The CB was selected
as lead agency to administer funds
to APHSA and its affiliate, AAICPC,
through a cooperative agreement.
The goal of NEICE is to improve
administrative efficiency in the
exchange of case files and information,
to demonstrate savings in postage cost
and storage, and most important, to
shorten decision and placement time-
frames for children involved in the
interstate process. During the pilot, the
NEICE project worked with the District
of Columbia, Florida, Indiana, Nevada,
South Carolina, and Wisconsin and the
technical vendor, Tetrus Corporation,
to build and test the system.
An evaluation by WRMA found
that the NEICE pilot achieved several
positive results. The evaluation report
noted that “large decreases in time
were found…for each of the time
periods [during the process] when
NEICE was utilized.”1 The evalua-
tion also found that pilot state users
believe that other barriers to quality
interstate placement access, such as
data integrity, time spent on main-
taining records, and time spent on
dual entry, would be reduced as more
Rep. ToddYoung (R-IN), left, and Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) co-sponsored the Modernizing the
Interstate Placement of Children in Foster Care Act, which has bipartisan support. Young
explained how important easing the child placement process is to helping children find a loving,
stable environment: “They deserve to be placed in the setting that is best for them, regard-
less of whether that is a home within their state or across a state line. […] For children who’ve
endured such unimaginable circumstances, the sooner we get them placed into a forever
home, the better.”