Blog

On March 5th OJBC leadership, including representatives from Adams County, Colorado and Pima County, Arizona, presented about Building and Supporting Cross-System Data Sharing  at the 2018 NACo Legislative Conference  in Washington DC.  The session focused on established practices and lessons-learned for cross-agency information sharing, at the County level - with a specific focus on collecting and analyzing Jail, Law Enforcement and Behavioral Health Data. For more information about this session or the accomplishments of Adams County or Pima County, please contact us!.
Around 2 million people with severe mental illnesses are booked into jails in the U.S. each year—accounting for nearly 20% of all male and 30% of all female inmates. The corrections officials who run our nation’s jails and the public health officials who oversee the delivery of behavioral health services in counties and states have a unique challenge in managing this inmate population.  Because many of these severely mentally ill individuals continuously cycle through the criminal justice and community behavioral health systems, local governments must develop response strategies that are supported by improved information sharing and quantitative analysis between these distinct systems. Click here to learn how the Counties of Pima, Arizona, and Adams, Colorado, through the Open Justice Broker Consortium, implemented a data analytics framework that joins jail custody and behavioral health treatment history data, which offer invaluable insights to the jail inmate population.
The Board of Directors of the Open Justice Broker Consortium (OJBC)—which is dedicated to improving justice information sharing through the reuse of low-cost, open-source and standards-based integration software—has appointed Mr. Andrew Owen as OJBC Executive Director, effective May 1, 2017. In this role, he serves as the chief executive officer of the consortium, managing its work and business, serving on Board Committees, and reporting to the Board. “The OJBC Board is proud to welcome Andrew to his new role,” said OJBC Chair Matt Ruel, Maine State Bureau of Identification. “He has an extensive knowledge of open source software and information sharing needs of State and Local government and many years of experience implementing standards-conformant solutions. To these, he also brings thought leadership and a strong commitment to innovation. I am looking forward to working with him on moving the OJBC along in its mission to promote a more effective, efficientREAD MORE
Hawaii County—the largest county in the State of Hawaii—encompasses the “Big Island” of Hawaii and has an estimated population of close to 200,000 residents. Click here to learn how the County’s Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, through the Open Justice Broker Consortium, uses functionality offered by open source software to keep track of felony defendants and safeguard public safety.

Today, the Open Justice Broker Consortium was named among the inaugural winners of the Code for America Technology Awards at the 2015 Code for America Summit. OJBC is being recognized for its Open Justice Broker platform, which supports better information sharing and integration in the justice system through use of open source software and cross-boundary collaboration. Read more