Compliance Archives | Handel Information Technologies

Packing Up and Moving Your Data

May 27, 2015/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice, Tribal Government, Tribal TANF /by Ben McKay

In our age of technology and communication it is common that our customers are adopting RiteTrack after using another data management system, often for a substantial amount of time. One of the largest concerns that we deal with is, “Will we get to keep our data and will it be complete?” At Handel, we understand that historical information is invaluable to spot trends, maintain reporting requirements, and increase interdepartmental communication. That is why we have developed proprietary software to quickly and accurately convert legacy data into RiteTrack.

Our data conversion process starts at the very beginning of our project management process; Handel views data conversions as a key and central part of our software implementations, not as an afterthought. Our trained project managers begin by explicitly mapping out each column in every table in the legacy database and define a place for it to go in the new RiteTrack system. This process takes place alongside the creation of the system design so that the mapping is completed before we start developing the system in order to make certain that no crucial data is left behind. During this process your project manager will highlight areas where the legacy data may not be clean or accurate so that no dirty information finds its way into the new system.

While on the initial site visit, your project manager will sit down with you and your staff to walk through your legacy system to gain a full understanding of its functionality, how your staff uses it, and any potential difficulties that may arise in the conversion process. Since every system is different we make sure to take the time to get to know it. This practice gets to the core of how Handel does business; each project and each customer is unique and we dedicate ourselves to forming a relationship based upon communication, transparency, and honesty.

Once a conversion map has been completed and approved, the data will begin the process of being moved into RiteTrack. Our skilled developers have built software to assist us in the conversion process. Using this single core technology reduces errors, speeds up the conversion process, and lowers cost. Our data conversion experts work side-by-side with our project managers throughout the entire project to make sure that this process is as streamlined as possible.

Much like our software development, our data conversion process involves multiple rounds of testing and validating to make sure that the end product is exactly what it should be. You and your staff will be able to see and test the converted data in a sandbox version of RiteTrack, this will even include any custom fields that have been added. For larger systems this is often done in phases to ensure that nothing is missed in the sheer volume of information we work with.

Handel’s Conversion Process (Click to Enlarge)

We have utilized this process on databases of all sizes, from a few thousand rows of data up to millions of rows. To gain a more complete understanding of how our data conversions fit into the entire software implementation process please read Problem Solved: A Story of Vanquishing Risk and Complexity.
Finally, when the entire data conversion has been tested and approved, Handel will pull a final and current copy of the legacy database for conversion. This information will be what eventually comprises your initial RiteTrack system. At the end of this process your users will have a new, friendly, and easy-to-use software solution complete with all of the data that has been tirelessly entered by users in the legacy system.

This simple, yet powerful, methodology, when paired with our proprietary software, takes the often frustrating and error-prone process of converting data and turns it into an efficient and organized procedure. What is more, our data conversions are fully supported just like our software. If there is an issue found after RiteTrack has gone live our data conversion experts will rectify the error, often with zero downtime for users. Our philosophy for data conversions is the same as it is for building software; we center everything on our clients and their needs in our pursuit for the best product possible.

PREA: Tracking Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Personal Identification

February 2, 2015/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice, Training /by Ben McKay

One of the core focus areas of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) is the concept that each individual deserves to be protected and that one of the best ways to ensure that is through data collection and management. Handel has built RiteTrack to go beyond simply checking a box to designate a person as a female or male. Included as standard in our juvenile justice software is the ability to track not just a person’s actual gender, but also what they personally identify as and their sexual orientation. All of this information is tracked right on the Face Sheet of a resident in RiteTrack.

PREA requires special protections for intersex and transgender youth in a detention environment. Handel has taken this to heart and has designed, as standard product, functionality to track these data points.

Tracking Gender

There are instances where the labels of female or male simply do not encapsulate the reality of each individual resident. PREA recognized this and has set new requirements for working with intersex residents. RiteTrack has been built to scale to each facility’s unique requirements for tracking the gender of each resident. Below is an example dropdown list with three selection options; female, intersex, and male.

The above image is just to provide an example list of gender options. Each facility may custom design this dropdown list to suit their individual needs with as many options as they desire. What is more, if a facility needs to add an additional option in the future an administrator of the system may add the option through RiteTrack’s Admin Dashboard. The average time it takes to do this is under 30 seconds. This means that RiteTrack users can access very powerful functionality, with high degrees of flexibility, with no system down time.

Tracking Gender Identification

PREA defines transgender as, “A person whose gender identity is different from the person’s assigned gender at birth.” While tracking gender is, and will always be, a necessary requirement for juvenile facilities, that physical gender may not be how the resident personally views him or herself. In order to meet this new requirement, RiteTrack has built out additional functionality to track gender identification separately from a person’s physical gender at birth.

Much like the Gender dropdown box, the Gender Identification list may be altered by a facility to encapsulate as many options as is desired. This list can potentially get quite expansive; Facebook currently has 56 gender options. While a juvenile facility may never need to track that many options RiteTrack has been built to scale to that many, just in case.

Tracking Sexual Orientation

While tracking sexual orientation is not an explicit requirement in PREA, RiteTrack has been built with the philosophy that we don’t stop at just the minimum requirements. In working with juvenile facilities and other juvenile justice departments we have found that a person’s sexual orientation can have a great impact on how the juvenile interacts with other residents, interacts with staff, and experiences their stay at detention or residential facilities. This dropdown box works exactly like the two discussed previously; the list may be custom managed, added to at any time, and provide the flexibility that each facility deserves to have.

Accessing Advanced Functionality

While tracking data points is a great concept and a requirement that must be fulfilled, Handel believes that what we can then do with that data is much more important. Once users have access to a system that goes beyond check boxes that can only track if a resident is a female or a male and they are given the additional power of having more comprehensive gender choices, the ability to track how a person identifies him or herself, and the option to track sexual orientation we can begin to leverage that information to lead to better outcomes and track legislative requirements in a more robust manner.

Examples of this include PREA’s requirements to limit cross gender searches and viewings and to only allow trained staff the ability to search intersex and transgender youth. Once we track these three data points, it is then possible to build immensely powerful business logic off of those pieces of information and we can begin to, as an example, reduce the incidence of disallowed searches. Additionally, those fields can be paired with other modules in RiteTrack, such as Treatment Planning to be able to provide analytics on how gender, gender identification, and sexual orientation can play into that process.

Data can be powerful. Talk to a Handel Sales Representative or Project Manager today about how we can make your data work for you.

To learn more about the PREA requirements discussed in this post please go to the PREA webpage for Juvenile Facility Standards.

Room Management: Assigning Rooms to Residents

January 26, 2015/in Juvenile Facilities, Juvenile Justice, Training /by Ben McKay

Whether a facility is secure or unsecure, detention center or residential home, being able to quickly and intelligently assign a resident to a room is something that every organization needs to be able to do. RiteTrack not only is able to create a virtual model of your facility’s layout, it also offers users an interface to manage room assignments with ease.

RiteTrack displays a facility’s layout in a tree that is able to be customized to suit each facility’s needs. Sections of this tree can quickly be expanded and collapsed to increase the speed at which users can navigate through the various areas of a facility. RiteTrack provides counts of the number of vacancies for each area and rooms are displayed in different colors to identify them as vacant, not vacant, or closed. Please see the Building Your Custom Facility Layout blog entry for an in-depth discussion of customized room layouts and how it can benefit your facility.

The example shown below displays a resident who has had two separate room assignments during his stay at our demonstration facility. To display the power of RiteTrack’s Room Assignment Module, we are going to temporarily move this resident to a new room, keep his current room assignment open to make sure that his room is not accidentally assigned to another resident, and then close out his temporary room assignment.

As seen below, our example resident, Ben, is assigned to Room 103 in Living Unit 100. However, a co-defendant of Ben’s needs to be housed in that Living Unit during a court hearing and Ben must be moved to another unit. We don’t want to evict Ben from his room, just temporarily move him. This will keep his room from accidentally getting assigned to another resident while he is temporarily placed in another area of the facility.

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A simple click of the Green Plus Sign button will add a record and navigate us to our Room Assignment Tree. By clicking on the arrow next to Living Unit 300 we can quickly see what rooms are available in that area of the facility.

Creating a Room Assignment for a Resident

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As can be seen at a quick glance, there are 10 rooms in Living Unit 300, only one of which is currently occupied. RiteTrack automatically populated the current date and time into the Start Date for the new room assignment to assist in speeding up data entry. This date, however, may be changed if the information needs to be back dated. All the user must do to complete the new room assignment is click the save icon and the room assignment is added to the previous list of entries for this resident.

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Notice, this resident currently has two open room assignments. The new room assignment information will be reflected automatically on RiteTrack’s reports and the original room assignment will be preserved. Once our temporary room assignment is completed, all we need do is enter an End Date for Ben’s temporary room assignment in Living Unit 300 and Room 301 will become available again for another resident.

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RiteTrack provides flexible data entry to users in an environment that is fast and intuitive to use, yet maintains the strict data integrity that is required by juvenile facilities. Handel designed RiteTrack with the philosophy that the tasks that must be done every day by users should be made easier, not more difficult, by the software that they use. We designed the Room Assignment Module around that philosophy. Ask for a demo today to see just how easy and intuitive it is.

NICWA and First Focus SPARC Release Brief on Improving ICWA Compliance through State Reforms

October 28, 2014/in Child Protective Services, Indian Child Welfare, Tribal Government /by Casey Bader

Improving the Well-being of American Indian and Alaska Native Children and Families through State-Level Efforts to Improve Indian Child Welfare Act Compliance

Posts

Packing Up and Moving Your Data

PREA: Tracking Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Personal Identification

Tracking Gender

Tracking Gender Identification

Tracking Sexual Orientation

Accessing Advanced Functionality

Room Management: Assigning Rooms to Residents

NICWA and First Focus SPARC Release Brief on Improving ICWA Compliance through State Reforms

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