The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) awarded the Center for Network Development (CND) a competitive cooperative agreement to help state and local level jurisdictions improve information sharing practices. CND innovated juvenile information sharing as an approach to share ‘need to know’ information across juvenile justice, child welfare and other youth service agencies; designed and developed the Guidelines for Juvenile Information Sharing, which provide research based standards and methods for achieving juvenile information sharing; and created a data model for juvenile justice information exchange, the Juvenile XML Data Model - JJXDM.

The purpose of the National JIS Initiative (NJISI) is to improve procedures and policies of information sharing across state and local agencies, and with youth and juvenile services within communities. CND will utilize the modified NJISI Governance Guidelines as part of the implementation strategies with new NJISI test sites.

The revised Governance Guidelines for Juvenile Information Sharing has been completed and is available for review. These Governance Guidelines are based on the lessons learned from the State of Colorado’s Children and Youth Information Sharing (CCYIS) collaboratives actual implementation of OJJDP 2006 version of the Guidelines for Juvenile Information Sharing. Through these lessons the Guidelines were enhanced with the experiences of the pilot sites and modified to allow successful implementation of juvenile information sharing within local and state agencies and organizations. Tools have been integrated into the guidelines to provide users with tested and proven resources for successful implementation. To view the, new Governance Guidelines for Juvenile Information Sharing, click here.

CND and Tom Carlson Consulting have created a new JuvenileIS channel on YOUTUBE. We will be posting webinars and training videos out on the YOUTUBE channel as another way of getting the word out on juvenile information sharing.  The first video is the just released National Information Exchange Model - NIEM training, NIEM Misconceptions... UNMISCONCEPTUALIZED. Misconceptions abound about the NIEM, misconceptions that make it much scarier than it actually is. Take a look at this most ‘interesting’ video!!

What Do Youth and Parents/Guardians Think About Information Sharing?

The Family/Youth Involvement Subcommittee of the Colorado Children and Youth Information Sharing Collaborative (CCYIS), one of the pilot sites of the NJISI, was charged with planning incorporation of youth and family perspectives. Subcommittee members, with the help of JSI, developed the recruitment strategy, facilitation protocol, and the semi-structured focus group interview guides. Ten discussion groups  (5 youth and 5 adult) were held in the early summers of 2010 and 2011. The outcome of these interviews have been compiled and placed in this report. The family and youth perspective radiates throughout the report and provides us with recommendations and insight on how families and youth in crisis expect to be treated and how they expect their information to be shared.  Visit the publications page for a printable version of this document.

For further information about NJISI and related articles, visit our News page.