The third phase of the IOMS Review Project saw the confirmation of Corrections’ long term view of offender management and the documentation of the impacts of that on support systems. A number of principles and guidelines for the future development of the IOMS system have been designed to be used as a framework, and to ensure coherence of the overall strategy and direction for the IOMS system.
Three key principles, in conjunction with corresponding guidelines, provide the framework for future IOMS system development. Underpinning these principles is the aim of ensuring that the system is always responding to and supporting the business needs of Corrections. Corrections requires robust, reliable, and relevant systems to continue to operate, which is why IOMS needs to continue to be updated.
Offender management is core to the IOMS system; however, any core operational system needs to support the whole organisation, not just offender management tasks. The IOMS system must include all data or data processing related to the management of offenders. This means that the IOMS system will include the core system and any supporting sub-systems that may or may not be integrated into the core system.
There is an increasing requirement to access information on an anywhere, anything, anytime, to anyone basis. This includes internal parties accessing external information, as well as external parties accessing the Department’s information. Corrections require that both internal and external parties have secure and appropriate access to information through multiple access points.
The system should evolve to coding for principles that persist over time. Business rules, being more dynamic in nature and defined in response to business and legislative need, are then applied to the system through a more flexible configuration layer. This rapid application of new business rules to the system will ensure more timely response to changes in operational policies, thereby expediting the implementation process from both a systems and operational perspective. The core system will evolve to being principles driven with configurable business rules.
Guidelines that support the above principles have been defined, based on achieving the best balance between functionality, responsiveness to need, technical limitations, risk management and cost containment.
The IOMS system was originally implemented using criteria of a 70% functional fit across the Groups and Services. This will continue to be the criteria.
Accepting the percentage fit criteria above, functionality still needs to be split into priorities based on alignment to strategy, risk, criticality, quality and ROI, to ensure that the critical and important functionality is always delivered. The priority categories are:
The Department will primarily opt to purchase a package where such a solution meets the identified business needs. If none can be found, the option is to then carry out system development. It is expected that most of the custom development will be based around Department specific functions (i.e. Offender Management), while more generic functions (such as health of inmates) will be delivered by package solutions.
The Department will aim to implement package solutions without modification to minimise the impact on supportability. Implications of implementing package solutions include the vendor driving upgrade cycles, fault fix approaches, licence costs, and support approach, all of which could have a negative impact on the Department. These factors will need to be evaluated as part of any cost / benefit impact analysis relating to the implementation of a package solution, as well as the impact on business processes and system usability of implementing the package.
Any solution must meet the basic operational requirements of system users to ensure compliance to business process. Where possible common functionality and applications would be implemented across the business. Consistent operational look and feel is an important requirement as this will ensure, as much as possible, that users can become proficient with any new functionality as quickly as possible, and can also easily navigate around and use functionality they operate less regularly.
There is also a requirement to develop a portal approach to the front end of the IOMS system to improve the user experience and provide simpler integration of other packages for users.
Improved navigation within the IOMS application is required. To achieve this, a set of usability standards and guidelines governing enhancements to the IOMS system will need to be developed. Retro fitting new standards into existing functionality is not recommended due to the significant investment required, and the relative importance of other initiatives. Every modification to existing functionality will, however, include the adoption of the new standards.
Corrections recognise that it is not always appropriate to implement electronic solutions to business issues, and that there are tasks more appropriately suited to manual solutions. The appropriateness of the form of processing (electronic or otherwise) must always be considered when any solution is proposed.
Workflow management is required to provide a mechanism for monitoring the completion of tasks and to continuing to ensure that all actions in the IOMS system are fully auditable. Workflow management is not required to fully dictate the process for carrying out tasks, only to ensure the required outcomes are achieved.
Areas for development will focus on strategic areas where the IOMS system will need to increase its functionality in future years.
Future IOMS system developments will include evaluating potential package solutions before custom development takes place.
Offender-centric management remains the primary driver for the system. The focus of offender management, however, is broadened as follows:
The Department will continue to use business process outsourcing in various forms as a means of delivering service. This involves external parties providing parts of the service that Corrections is responsible for delivering. Examples include:
Process outsourcing impacts how the Department operates, yet is currently unsupported by the IOMS system.
Any system will be able to support a two-way flow of information with external parties as though the Department itself delivered the services. This will enable the Department to support these activities and monitor their impact.
The IOMS system will be able to securely share and exchange approved information with external service providers to support the seamless integration of external parties into applicable Corrections’ processes.
There are further scenarios that will be considered, such as Corrections’ employees working externally.
Information access is becoming more important over time. There is an ongoing requirement for improvement in the quality of the information, specifically information that is more accurate, usable and easier to obtain.
How information is collected supports this requirement.
A component of the IOMS system functionality is case management. This can be defined as the co-ordinated and integrated approach to reducing re-offending by people who are the responsibility of Corrections, from their first point of contact with the Department to the completion of their sentence and their re-integration back into the community.
The full implementation of this approach to offender management will require on-going policy and business process definition.
The Department currently holds both hard and soft copies of offender related information, such as offender files and notes, in a number of different places.
The Department will be implementing a document management project during the 2004/05 financial year as part of its Knowledge Management Strategy. Document and records management needs from an IOMS system perspective will be included in this project.
There is a clear framework for future work on IOMS which will ensure that future IOMS work continues to be carried out in a structured manner, and is not done in isolation.