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Dealing In Data

Forget about building a big all-purpose database. There are other ways to integrate state and local information.

In the days leading up to Smarty Jones' run at the Kentucky Derby, state and local officials had more to think about than who would win a horse race. Thunder Over Louisville, an air show with skydiving teams and hundreds of planes, would be drawing a crowd of half a million people, and the dazzling pyrotechnics after dark would keep them there for hours. The extravaganza, which stretches over both sides of the Ohio River between Louisville and southern Indiana, would call on police, firefighters, emergency personnel and others from several jurisdictions to work together to monitor the scene and respond to emergencies. And two days later, the Derby would require similar vigilance.

The job of covering two weeks' worth of high-profile events is a big one, and officials wanted to have a lot of useful information fingertip-ready for watching and controlling crowds and responding to emergencies. That's why Louisville-area governments brought on board "special events situation awareness" software to bring together pockets of disparate information from multiple databases located at several levels of government. The program gave them quick-click access to Web pages and GIS maps of the area. Officials could simulate an aerial flyover of the region, get weather reports in case Derby crowds had to be moved inside and monitor real-time traffic cameras on the highway. Moreover, the Internet-based information was available to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials in Atlanta and FBI officials in Washington, if needed.

Governments have been trying to break down the silos of data that have been built up agency by agency, government by government. It's a never-ending quest to make information available government-wide, and technology vendors and officials have talked for years about finding a way to integrate underlying systems so that information is merged. Of course, before that can happen, all levels of government have to go electronic and get onto the Internet. "The bottom line is to get digital," says Steve Kolodney, the former CIO of Washington state who is now with CGI-AMS, a government technology consulting company. "If not, you don't have a prayer."

Full integration is not likely to happen anytime soon--if ever. But with a boost from ever-evolving technologies, the silos themselves have become porous and many agencies are looking at translating and connecting data from different places and assembling it on the fly. That is, rather than trying to force all data into one big compatible base, the idea is to tap into existing databases for the bits and pieces of information--and integrate them for a specific use.

In Louisville, law enforcement and emergency management agencies took the lead on sharing data. But officials in areas such as health care, social services and the environment, in Louisville as well as other jurisdictions, see the value and efficiencies not only in automating and sharing data but also in figuring out ways to make it happen. In addition, enterprise resource planning systems that connect all the financials or payroll information in a jurisdiction and 311 systems that tap into data from many departments to help resolve constituent complaints or problems have given officials and employees a taste of looking beyond their own departments--and an idea about the value of doing so.

ENVIRONMENTAL INTEGRATION

There is one basic prerequisite that has to be met before any data merging can take place. Government agencies have to take the information that lives on paper and convert it into digitized form. That's still a work in progress in many places. Once it's taken care of, however, advances in technology are available to make the most of that information.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality was paperbound and chose to go from 0 to 60 to reach a digitized state. The department's aim was not just to move environmental data from paper to an electronic form. It was also to share that data electronically with the federal government and others, including the private sector. Michigan undertook the move as one of more than a dozen states participating in the Exchange Network, a Web-based state-U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cooperative venture that will make it possible for federal, state and local environmental officials to get their hands on important environmental data in real time and make good use of it. District engineers, for instance, can tap into up-to-the- minute data to generate a report or a graph that shows a trend in a particular region or of a particular chemical so that officials can respond quickly.

Getting participating states up to speed on the network hasn't been easy--nor is it a mission that's been fully accomplished--but Michigan has helped blaze the trail and has already saved time and money from having done so. The starting point was meeting a long-standing federal requirement: The state's environmental quality department has to submit to the U.S. EPA monthly reports on the amount and concentrations of chemicals in the effluent discharged by the 1,200 automobile, manufacturing and other permitted facilities in the state. The same data are used by engineers in the field who would, says Mike Beaulac, state assistant administrator for the department, "take handfuls of paper copies, put it into a temporary database, crunch the numbers and throw the database away." And they did that every time they needed to examine what was going on with wastewater facilities-- something that was sometimes necessary on a weekly or even daily basis.

The facility data were also submitted to the state in a similarly inefficient manner. "Chemical companies had all this chemical effluent information in their computers they would handwrite, throw in the mail and we would put it in state computers," says Beaulac. Then they would enter the data a second time into a federal Web-based system to send to the federal government. The repeated replication of the data at different levels resulted in many errors, lowering the quality of the information.

In May 2003, Michigan launched a process to allow permitted facilities to send their computer data directly to the state database. In January of this year, that same electronic process was extended so that the information from the state database could be sent electronically to the feds. Michigan estimated that within a year, 10 percent of the permitted facilities would participate. It was wrong. The participation rate reached three times that number and is growing. The state expects to save up to half a million dollars a year in administrative costs--staff no longer have to type in so much data and district engineers no longer have to keep creating temporary databases.

What has made the connections possible between pools of data residing at the local, state and federal levels and with the private sector is a universal computer language called XML that lets one database communicate with another no matter what kind of operating systems or platforms are being used. Part of the conversion process also requires human beings to sit down and come up with data standards so the information can be exchanged smoothly. Previously, every time EPA made a change to a database, states would have to figure out how to change their programs for extracting data to match up to EPA's changed format. The Exchange Network's job is to make that unnecessary by defining the way in which information will be shared. "The language has to be standardized enough so all different users across the nation can use it," Beaulac says. Eventually, all 50 states will be able tap into the network. They don't have to but, Beaulac says, "once they do a cost-benefit analysis, it's a no-brainer."

CONNECTING THE HEALTH DOTS

In Wisconsin, the silo-busting project is in the area of health care. Linking up isolated data in public health labs, the clinical community and state and local health departments is essential for early detection and analysis of disease, and alerting the community. Wisconsin is putting together a Public Health Information Network (PHIN), a program funded by the CDC. All states eventually will have one.

The Wisconsin PHIN is collecting and analyzing related sets of health information electronically so health and emergency workers can be alerted to and prepare for a crisis. For instance, if a railroad car hauling a chemical crashes and spills its contents, the first responders need to know what they're dealing with and what sort of skilled responders to call for help in treating casualties. Appropriately trained people might not be in the area, and the system would help emergency workers on the scene locate the personnel they might need. "You have to reach into some system to find out who is trained and how quickly they can get there," says Michael Enstrom, project manager for Wisconsin's Division of Public Health. "This transcends county lines, sometimes state lines."

Once they're fully developed, PHINs will be composed of five pieces that range from detection and monitoring to response. Wisconsin is up and running with the health-alert piece that marries 2,500 trained users at health departments in counties and states to emergency management personnel and local police. The state's health department has the ability to reach across agencies to find personnel and use various forms of communication to reach them.

The state also is pilot-testing an electronic lab reporting system that can relay lab data back to counties that send in information about problems they're seeing. If a clinic somewhere has a hepatitis case, for instance, it will be tracked internally in its own reporting system but it can also be linked to Wisconsin's PHIN. Through a secure network, information about further developments would be sent back to the jurisdiction, as well as to the CDC and the local health department.

What Enstrom likes about the health information network is that the data remain in the silos from which they came. "The real focus is on interconnectivity," he says. A chief medical officer has a specific set of things he needs to look at, while law enforcement has a different set. "It doesn't make sense to shovel it all into a big database."

Governments have to look at organizational rules for connecting each department's or division's data by entering into agreements between agencies and setting the tone for how integration is to be set up, Enstrom says. Departments can define where it makes sense to share and where it doesn't, taking into consideration the need for privacy and security.

Public health departments, for instance, should be looking at linking up with the courts, human services and corrections, three different realms with the same set of participants, so that each set of data on a case can be useful to all. How these insulated groups work together has a bearing on how the state gets funding and accounts for funding. "The guts of this integration is to make the business case for integrating wholly different data sets and why it is appropriate to do that," Enstrom says.

ELIGIBILITY DETAILS

Social services agencies have long needed the means and the will to share information on cases. Multnomah County, Oregon, took a highly fragmented eligibility system serving the neediest of its residents and smoothed it out for simplicity. The result is Oregon Helps!, a Web site that provides low- and moderate-income people with a one-stop shop for information on their eligibility for 27 local, state and federal social service programs.

The databases for each of the 27 programs are scattered throughout agencies and offices. So are the application forms. People in need often were sent to several places while trying to figure out what they were eligible for and where they should go for applications. Many times, people in one program, such as food stamps, didn't realize they were also eligible for other programs that could help them. The county also discovered that a lot of the questions on the forms were too complicated.

Multnomah started its sharing process by launching a pre-screening Web site in 1999. There was enough interest and support from other agencies and foundations to take the county program statewide. The county also took the publicly available questions, applications and eligibility rules for 27 social services programs, combined them and made them multilingual. A sixth-grade reading consultant was asked to rewrite questions that were unclear or so complicated that they drove away deserving people. The county also programmed into the system an algorithm that can determine whether someone is likely to be eligible for various benefits.

The Web site sticks with basic technologies so that people living in rural areas can use it even if they have access only via a slow modem. Needy residents in rural areas, for instance, can sign on and check to see if they'd be eligible for programs, or if, say, their benefits have changed after a job loss. That way, says project manager Van Le, they can decide whether it's worth driving what could be a long distance to apply for a program. If the system tells them they don't qualify, they can save themselves an office visit that will only disappoint.

Those who are eligible are told what types of forms they should have in hand so that they can arrive at a government office with the appropriate paperwork. The Web site lets them know, for instance, that they can provide proof of income and resources using bank records or life insurance policies. "It's a self-service one-stop before people get into navigating the system," Le says.

EDUCATION'S CONGLOMERATES

Data sharing in education may end up changing how teachers are paid or trained. At the Texas Education Agency, agency employees are looking at a variety of sources of data to figure out how to distribute appropriate programs, staffing and funding throughout the state. The agency first tried using activity-based costing--a way of pulling together into a mathematical formula every detail of cost--to track costs for the efficient purchase of textbooks, computers and other learning tools. It didn't turn out as successfully as hoped, mainly because the publisher's costs were private and could not be obtained to plug into the formula. "Sometimes you go down the road and find that road's under construction, and you need to take an alternate route," says Bill Monroe, former chief of operations at the agency who is now with PeopleSoft.

But there is plenty of useful information in public records that can be taken out of silos and when conglomerated, provide insights that can be used strategically. Texas is pondering the possibilities.

It's been a long-held belief, for instance, that all teachers should be paid the same no matter where they are, but an idea that's emerging is to differentiate pay to attract teachers to poorer neighborhoods. With data pulled out of stovepipes, there is a way--at least technically--to make this possible, and officials are wrestling with the issue.

Shared information could also make connections between teachers, the quality of teaching and teacher training. "Policy people have to deal with these things," says Monroe. "But the devil's in the details. Until people start sharing data in silos, they don't have good concrete information to work with."

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