TexDECK PROJECT
TexDECK strives to integrate information for the child protective agency, the court, and related government entities in order to help courts and the Texas Department of Family Protective Services to work quickly and correctly to protect children. TexDECK will establish data interchange standards and enable software tools to facilitate the work of judges and TDFPS to collaborate to improve safety, permanency and well-being of the children of Texas. The TexDECK project is federally funded through a Court Improvement Program Data Collection and Analysis grant.
Judicial Web Page
Since 1998, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) and the Court Improvement Program (CIP) have provided selected child protection case information lookup capability through the "Judicial Web Page" (JWP) to trial court judges. The intent of this web application is to make it possible for the courts to monitor more closely the progress of their CPS cases through the court system, and thus to allow the courts to make the best possible decisions concerning the disposition of those cases. This is an important part of the collaborative endeavor which makes a significant impact on the way cases are handled, and on the well-being of abused and neglected children in our state. Availability of such information to judges helps Texas judges work with a full set of process information about the case, thus moving them to timely resolution. Texas CFSR results could be expected to worsen without such a tool.
The TexDECK project proposes to re-platform the JWP. OCA proposes to re-factor the system to phase out the obsolescing and marginalized technologies now in use. This re-factoring will base the JWP on current, more economical and more sustainable technologies, thus enhancing the long-term sustainability of the system. The continued operation of JWP will help Texas maintain and improve timeliness outcomes in the CFSR.
Software Functional Requirements
The Supreme Court of Texas Judicial Commission for Children, Youth and Families formally adopted a functional requirements reference model for the special needs of courts handling child protection ("dependency") cases. Culminating nearly two years of work, the functional requirements reference model was developed in order to give vendors of court case management software an authoritative set of requirements for the creation of specialized modules of the court software systems. The work was done with major funding from a Court Improvement Program grant to the Court from the Administration for Children and Families.
The reference model may be the most comprehensive description built to date for these special court cases, as Texas law and court rules require. In Texas and most other states, child protection cases must follow tightly controlled timelines. The cases may have multiple parties, with the judge acting in a problem-solving role.
The Commission is chaired by Justice Harriet O'Neill of the Supreme Court of Texas. Judge Darlene Byrne of Travis County chaired the Technology Committee, which oversaw the development of the functional requirements reference model. Technical work was performed by staff of the Office of Court Administration, which is headed by Carl Reynolds.
The reference model consists of a number of web pages presented in an interactive format, providing overviews of the court process, timelines, a feature to allow deep drill-down into the particulars of each subprocess, and detailed descriptions of the data requirements. It is available on the Commission website, at http://www.courts.state.tx.us/oca/texdeck/frd/texdeck functional requirements.htm.
Data Interchange Standards
Much of the delay in today’s court and child welfare system occurs because documents are in transit from one desk or location to another. Our most iconic form of communication—a posted letter—spends uncounted hours sitting in bags waiting for the next leg of its journey to its destination. E-mail, as an opposite example, moves at the speed of electricity to reach its destination nearly immediately. For such instant communication and exchange of text information to be possible requires use of a broad set of technology standards. Like e-mail, for child-protection case information to flow immediately between process participants, additional data- and technology standards must exist to enable that immediacy. Once this immediate flow of child-protection case data is achieved, state agencies and courts are able to act with similar dispatch. Through the TexDECK project’s efforts to create data interchange standards, we plan to speed up the disposition of child protection cases, and expect that Texas Child and Family Service Reviews (CFSR) and IV-E Reviews will reflect such improvements in years to come.
As definitions of standard interfaces are being developed, TexDECK will begin to study means to tangibly move those into implementation in operational software that is used within the child protection community. As mentioned previously, during the development of standards, the TexDECK project will be engaging with other states and the national community engaged in child protection case management standards, and software vendors or their trade groups for a two-way exchange of information and ideas, thus maximizing the utility of the standards for the software industry. The project will seek to broker agreements that will enable separate software products working on opposite sides of a defined, high-priority data interchange to communicate child protection information using interchange standards.
Judicial Caseload Analysis
In 2005, the Legislature (79th Regular Session), passed S.B. 729, which directed OCA to conduct a weighted caseload study of district courts for the purpose of identify a need for new district courts. With guidance provided by the Judicial Needs Assessment Committee and with funding for the project secured, OCA with the assistance of the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) began the Texas Judicial Needs Assessment. The Assessment will collect a statistically valid sample of the time spent on case-related and non-case-related activities during a one month period. Data will be collected for specific types of cases and will be used to identify the average number of minutes necessary to process a case from filing through disposition plus any post-judgment activity. With a time value identified for each type of case, judicial workloads can be identified through an objective and accurate methodology thus providing the Legislature the information they need to make informed decisions that confront the ever increasing case loads experienced by the courts. TexDECK is assisting by contributing a proportional amount of funding to study child protection cases.
Updated: 21-Oct-2008
