P&P June 2016

technology speaks By Marci Roth

Gathering Steam Information Exchange to Improve National Rollout of the Interstate Placement of Children for Foster Care and Adoption

L ess 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.

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.”

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

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,

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

Photographs via Flickr Creative Commons

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