IMRC - IM Day 2002: Managing Criminal Justice Information: A Strategy for Success

Speaking Notes for
Nicole Jauvin
Deputy Solicitor General of Canada

Im Day 2002
Ottawa, Ontario
September 13, 2002

Thank you, Niall [Sinclair], for your kind introduction.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen.

I am very pleased to be here taking part in this IM Day 2002 conference.  I am delighted to contribute our reflections and experience at Solicitor General of Canada in building successful frameworks for managing information.

My Department is leading two key initiatives designed to meet the goals of improved information sharing, both using new information technology.  The first initiative is the Canada Public Safety Portal.  The second is the Integrated Justice Information initiative.

Both illustrate the power of sharing information to build public confidence and safer communities for Canadians.  I am proud to champion these initiatives.

The Canada Public Safety Portal provides public access to a wide-range of on-line public safety resources, at present from 25 federal departments and agencies.

Through the Portal, Canadians can access information on criminal activity and policing, financial safety, consumer protection, family and home security and national safety - and Canadians are telling us how we can further develop the themes and linkages they seek at the click of a mouse.  The Public Safety Portal is a concrete demonstration of the Speech from the Throne commitment to make Canada the most connected nation in the world by 2005 - a federal Government On-line commitment.

As we all know, the Government of Canada is in the business of providing programs and services to Canadians to ensure quality of life and a safe environment.  Our ability to respond to the needs of Canadians - and to make informed decisions - depends on how well we manage the information available to us.

This leads me to the second major activity my Department is spearheading - the Integrated Justice Information initiative.  We are reaching across the criminal justice sector to revolutionize sharing and management of operational information so that decision-makers can handle cases more effectively and reliably.  The cornerstone of this initiative is the Canada Public Safety Information Network, or CPSIN which I will talk about a little later on. 

We live in a time where access to information is instantaneous - with the click of a button. Yet, when it comes to information management and information sharing, the criminal justice sector offers unique challenges.

To understand our integrated justice initiative, it's important to appreciate just how many partners and complexities are involved. The criminal justice system is not the responsibility of one government or one agency; there are roles and responsibilities for multiple agencies at all levels of government - federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal - each with its own organization, statutory authority and history.  Some describe Canada's criminal justice system not as a coherent whole, but a sum of interrelated parts.  Each relies on and collects different information with different technologies from multiple sources, presenting serious obstacles to effective information management.  Let me mention a few. 

First, many of these systems rely upon what we call legacy systems.  These tend to be stand-alone "stove-pipe" systems, that make it difficult to share information.  Transactions between agencies are typically paper-based, labour-intensive and error-prone.  In one review within a large police agency, it was found that basic information on a typical crime had to be re-keyed or photocopied over a dozen times in order to feed the various automated and paper-based systems then in place.

Second, there are few standards governing how information should be managed or shared in an electronic environment, or how the technologies can inter-connect. And third, we have an information culture that may, at times, tend to hoard information rather than share it.  We have to continue to make investments that move us beyond this archaic way of doing business.

We need to remind ourselves that every component of Canada's criminal justice system relies on information - information collected by police to investigate crimes, information used by prosecutors and the courts, or information about an offender, his or her crimes, and rehabilitation. It is this information that is vital to those who protect Canadians from harm.

If the information is incomplete, inaccurate, or not available when needed, the effective administration of justice - and ultimately, public safety - is at risk.

Here is an example of the multi-jurisdictional nature of Canada's criminal justice system.  An individual accused of murder in rural British Columbia would be arrested by a national police force, the RCMP, working under provincial contract, and charged with federal offence.  Yet the individual would be tried in a provincial court, by a provincial Crown attorney, likely before a federally appointed judge.  And if the accused is found guilty and sentenced to incarceration for a period of more than two years, the sentence will be served at a federal correctional facility.  All these decisions and transactions need to be tied together electronically.  Let me give you another example.

At Ottawa airport, police, customs, and immigration officials work together to ensure the safety of air travel and enforce Canadian laws against smuggling, organized crime, terrorism threats and other crimes.  While Canadians expect them to work as a team, we know that their information systems do not currently allow easy and timely sharing of operational information.  And that's why we are investing significantly in bringing about the necessary improvements.

Notorious cases have a devastating impact on public confidence in the criminal justice system.  Arguably the best known is the Bernardo case, where, according to Judge Campbell's Review, Bernardo fell through the cracks, and I quote, "...because of the systemic weaknesses and the inability of the different law enforcement agencies to pool their information and cooperate effectively".  Despite the reality that the criminal justice system is made up of many jurisdictions and agencies, the public perception is of a single criminal justice entity.  Failures in information sharing are seen as failures of the Canadian criminal justice system as a whole.

I think we would all agree, then, that the effective administration of justice relies upon an integrated network for sharing information.  We envision a day when the literally hundreds of different types of transactions between agencies and jurisdictions can be done electronically without duplicate data entry, and reams of paper.  Little of this is possible today.

Our Integrated Justice Information initiative is an opportunity to revolutionize the way we work together - the way criminals and cases are tracked, how day-to-day decisions are made across the entire sector in Canada.

It's about modernizing systems, and partners willing to share.  It's about removing boundaries and giving the right information at the right time to front-line law enforcement officials to fight crime, combat terrorism and keep ahead of those who mean harm - while of course protecting the Charter rights and freedoms that we all value.

But the path to integrated justice is not without its barriers.

To achieve our goal, we need to recognize the challenges in front of us:

• the different legislative frameworks regulating the information flow;
• the systemic and cultural barriers caused by "stovepipe" traditions;
• the varying privacy rules across jurisdictions;
• the outdated and incompatible legacy systems; and
• the limited resources available to get it all done.

To chart a course of action, my department led the development of a five-year Plan to achieve the first generation of a Canada Public Safety Information Network, CPSIN.  This was approved by Cabinet and funded in recent budgets.

The vision of CPSIN is a network of networks - not a "big brother" database.  Partners in Canada's criminal justice system will be connected and able to do business with each other electronically by sharing and retrieving information as required.

Our current federal partners make up a "criminal justice cluster" of agencies, which brings together the Department of Justice, the RCMP, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, the National Parole Board, the Correctional Service of Canada, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics and the Treasury Board Secretariat. 

There are other federal, provincial and territorial partners with a stake in public safety.  Provincial counterparts - including British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Ontario - are already there with us.  We have recently collaborated on a very specific information sharing initiative in the lower mainland of BC called Prime-BC.

CPSIN will rely on common standards, common tools, and technology projects to link and share data electronically.  Over time, we foresee national tools that will allow mandated users to "drill down" into the databases of partners to obtain the specific information their role requires.

For example, a Customs officer at the Ambassador Bridge will be able to share, retrieve or submit a case-file to police in Windsor.  Further along the line, if necessary, this information would be available to Crown Attorneys in Toronto, and corrections officials in Kingston.  All of this will be done electronically.  Let me repeat that very little of this is possible today.

But how do you do this?  How do you enable partners to share?

We do so by taking advantage of new technologies for interoperability and by advancing partnerships.

Interoperability is a popular catch-phrase these days.  For those of us in the criminal justice sector, the term is quite meaningful.  Interoperability is the delivery of modern case management tools for every player to enable them to function effectively in an interconnected environment.  It means that systems talk to one another in the same language.  For example, a provincial probation officer in Saskatchewan can now go online for required information in the federal offender management system.  This could only be done by paper in the past.

Another track we are pursuing is consensus-building and partnership opportunities.  CPSIN already has many partners and stakeholders, and we're continuing to work with the provinces and territories to find the best way to make our systems interconnect.

And of course we must ensure that we have the right public policy in place to support increased information-sharing.  Privacy and security are paramount concerns, and it also important that we have the appropriate accountability structures.  We are therefore developing guiding principles to protect personal information, and a harmonized approach to legislative authorities that allow or limit information exchanges within CPSIN.

Based on consultations with our partners and stakeholders, we have learned that a successful information management strategy for CPSIN must include the development of sectoral information management standards.

Education, health, criminal justice - all these sectors have specific business requirements that must be recognized when developing information management standards and guidelines.  And each sector has its own unique culture and characteristics - but one common virtue is valued by each - trust.

We all know that trust is paramount to information sharing.  Any partnership like CPSIN that relies on the exchange of information between partners relies on confidence in the policies and practices of each partner.  That is why we have made such valiant efforts in developing the Framework that guides CPSIN.

The adoption of a sectoral approach for information management will allow us to be cost-effective by working in concert with our criminal justice partners from all jurisdictions and more importantly, by building trust within this community regarding how shared information is treated.

The Framework for Managing Information in CPSIN, which is being developed, has four components:

The first provides policy guidance to all partners across Canada, and serves as the basis for understanding information sharing within the CPSIN environment.

Secondly, the Framework is supported by the adoption of common standardsacross jurisdictions so that information can be shared.  These standards are being developed collaboratively with CPSIN partners to ensure that they reflect the requirements of each jurisdiction and address privacy, security, and accountability requirements.

The third component consists of developing operational procedures to assist partners to implement the information management standards.

The fourth is a CPSIN technical library providing a national repository of standards, procedures, business processes and best practices.

We think this framework for managing information will ensure the integrity of information shared.  This will help build confidence among the general public and CPSIN partners.  This is a long-term venture, but if we can build it right, success will follow.

Our ideal is a national public safety information system that is reliable, accurate and efficient - one that will support front line workers by providing them with the information they need to combat crime and public safety threats.

Even if it were as simple as linking our computers, our challenges would not disappear.  We need to develop an information sharing culture.

Many of you in other sectors of government programs, and IM specialists, face some daunting challenges in charting a course towards your own strategy for information management.  I hope that our experience serves as food for thought, and I would encourage you to contact our Integrated Justice Information Secretariat if this would be helpful.

Those of you in the audience who are already partners in this initiative have worked diligently over the last three years to help plan and start building CPSIN.  I commend and thank you for your work as pioneers, and for the boldness of your efforts to deal with information management and information sharing challenges in the criminal justice sector.  I challenge you not to let up your efforts, and to push for rapid, effective implementation of this framework for success.

Thank you very much for you attention - and for your help in meeting the challenge.