P&P August 2016

our do’ers pro le

From left, Raghu Govindaraj, Michael Giammanco, and Susmita Linga

In Our Do’ers Profile, we highlight some of the hardworking and talented individuals in public human services. This issue features Tetrus Corporation , a technical vendor to APHSA and Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children (AAICPC) responsible for building a national data exchange for ICPC information.

Key Members of theTetrus Team: Sharad Rao, President and CEO; Tom Livoti, Director of Customer Support; Raghu Govindaraj, Vice President of Engineering; Susmita Linga, Senior Business Analyst, Chandra Jonelagadda, Chief Information Officer; and Michael Giammanco, Vice President of Program Management Experience withTETRUS or Similar Projects: Although this was the first time working together, APHSA, AAICPC, and Tetrus soon formed a collaborative partnership based on mutual respect, collegiality, and individual expertise to build and deliver the National Electronic Interstate Compact Enterprise (NEICE) system to state child welfare agencies. The NEICE was developed as a pilot project with five states and the District of Columbia to exchange case data and documents electronically across state lines. The successful pilot reduced the time children were waiting to be adopted or placed in foster care across state boundaries, and has helped improve administration of the ICPC through better case tracking. In 2015, the partnership was expanded to take the NEICE system nationwide. NEICE is made possible by grant number 90XA0151 from the Children’s Bureau. 1 The members of the project team (APHSA, AAICPC, Tetrus, and the state pilots) have truly worked in partner- ship with a “can do” attitude to solve various issues that have arisen during the project. Rather than tell the project team that new requests “can’t be done,”

Tetrus has consistently worked with the team to find and develop workable technical solutions. Rewards of the Project: The biggest rewards of the project have been the reduction of timelines for placement decisions for children across state boundaries, and the savings in copying and mailing costs. Some of the other rewards include the increased ability of states to share case data quickly and securely using national data standards, known as the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). Tetrus has brought its considerable technical expertise and experience with NIEM standards to bear on this project, and significantly elevated the overall quality of the infor- mation system developed. NEICE has created a data infrastructure that other human service programs will be able to leverage to support interoperability within and across state programs. Accomplishments Most Proud Of: NEICE’s most important accomplishment has been reducing the time children wait before they can be placed across state lines for adoption or foster care. Future Challenges for the Delivery of Public Human Services as it Applies to this Project: This project provides the ability for public agencies to connect data stored across different human service program information systems, which will improve decision- making and program administration.

For example, ultimately, NEICE is intended to be connected to child abuse and neglect registries and health information systems. However, the ability to share and connect case information across public agencies is a relatively recent innovation made possible by data standardization efforts. Security and privacy concerns are real issues that must be navigated for each data-sharing effort, and are governed by a number of state and federal laws that are also still being refined. Cybersecurity and liability insurance policies must be outlined, and plans for handling data breaches. These challenges do not make data sharing impossible, but are examples of some of the issues this project has faced and thus far, overcome. Little Known Facts About the Project: This data exchange infrastructure is the first of its kind in the public human service arena. This project will create the infrastructure to support integrated service delivery and effective interventions for victims of human trafficking; enable child welfare workers to be operationally effective in the delivery of services; and provide information to judges and other per- sonnel involved in the decision-making process to support the adoption of children across state boundaries. Reference Note 1. The contents of this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the funder, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Policy&Practice August 2016 52