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Policy&Practice
August 2016
52
our
do’ers
pro le
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.
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.
From left, Raghu Govindaraj, Michael
Giammanco, and Susmita Linga