Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Welcome to the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday morning, February twenty sixth. And this morning, we're going to be getting testimony related to criminal justice data in the context of a report of the Division of Racial Justice statistics and in the context of H382. And if there's time, we will also get to 04:10 this morning. If we don't have time this morning, we'll get to it this afternoon, is bill that is significantly amended from introduced, but anyway, we'll get to that later. But we'll start with the Division of Racial Justice Statistics and Executive Director of the Office of Racial Equity. Thank you very much for being here. Susana, you are muted still.

[Susana Davis (Executive Director, Office of Racial Equity)]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Pleasure to be here. For the record, Susana Davis, Office of Racial Equity. I am joined by two colleagues who know significantly more about data than I do. That's Andre Comandan. He is our new data manager, and he'll introduce himself more deeply in a moment. And who you have in person, of course, Laura Carter, with whom you all are already familiar, who is an analyst from our division.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Can I share the presentation now, you guys?

[Susana Davis (Executive Director, Office of Racial Equity)]: Yes, thank you. We've prepared slides for you all, thanking the committee assistant and you all for your patience. We did get them to you this morning, but we would also, with your permission, like to be able to do a screen share just for your convenience to see them.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yep, absolutely. Thank you.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Can you guys see that?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We can, it looks great.

[Susana Davis (Executive Director, Office of Racial Equity)]: So thank you, committee members for the generous time slot that you've allocated for us today. What we'd like to do is talk to you a little bit about the goals and the vision that we've set for the immediate future for the division, and then go into depth telling you about this year's annual report, and follow that up with a little bit more insights and recommendations. Of course, we welcome any questions you may have along the way. Please don't feel like you need to wait till the end. So, first, I want to formally introduce the current composition of our team. You're already familiar with Laura, who is an analyst. Our second data analyst position was recently vacated, so we are eager to get that one filled. And the newest member of our team is Andre Kommenden, who is our new data manager. Andre, I'm gonna ask you to just say a few words and introduce yourself to the committee.

[Andre Commenden (Data Manager, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Yes. Thank you, Laurent. Excuse me. First of all, can you hear me okay? Yes. Alright. Good morning, everyone. So as Susana just mentioned, my name is Andre Commenden. I just started, about a month ago, and I come, from academia. My previous position was with the University of Southern California, And, so I bring an expertise that is, mostly in urban planning, but that is steeped in concerns for racial justice and a deep expertise in how we measure and understand racial bias. I've worked extensively with administrative data of all sorts, and so one of the key roles for my position is really to bring disparate data together to analyze them and share their the results with the public and government agencies. And I'll talk about a little bit more about that in a minute. The other thing I want to mention is that I specialize in really leveraging data to to really craft policy recommendations in various context, but also always with equity at the center. So I'm not going to say too much more, but, of course, if you have any questions about background or vision or the division, I welcome those at any point. Laura, you can move to the next one.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Thank you, Andre, and welcome welcome to to Vermont.

[Andre Commenden (Data Manager, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Thank you very much. And I apologize also. I should mention I'm currently in California. So if I get a little groggy, you'll

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: have Welcome to virtually to Vermont at six in the morning or something. Right. Alright. Sorry, Marco.

[Andre Commenden (Data Manager, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Alright. So, yes, the the RJS goals as I see them can really be summarized into three buckets, and I'll talk a little bit about kind of how we see those as priorities for our work going forward. And those three buckets really build on each other. Right? They're complementary. They will happen at the same time, but there's also an order to them. So the first one, really, the foundation of all our work is to develop data governance. And what we mean by that is to really provide a foundational understanding of how data work together, where it comes from, what is required to have them work together. Right? As I mentioned, we're working across agencies. We're working across a lot of different fields, right, from correction to public safety to health and others. And so when we kind of bring those data together, they tend to not work together. Right? They're in very different formats, and they've they they're guided by different mandates in how they collect it and so on and so forth. And so building this framework for how we bring those data together and and store them, analyze them, so on and so forth is kind of the foundation of everything we do. This is what my colleague Laura is going to be talking about after this slide. The second element in our mission is really to support state and local agencies in applying what we learn from data governance. I think that there is some low variability in capacity to collect data, in capacity to analyze it, to make it available to to the the public, and we bring expertise in doing exactly that. And so I see our role as being one of support for other agencies so that they don't have to do anything on their own, especially when we have someone or or people that that can lead a a either guiding or really more concretely handling some of that data analysis. And the other thing that's part of this is to really ease the ways in which data are handled. Right? I think that there's some burden that falls on agencies in how they collect data that can be improved over time. And so this is something I'm looking forward to working with my colleagues in government to really make sure that our processes are as efficient as possible, clear, and and ultimately makes everyone's work easier. And the last part is really where my expertise comes in, and this is on the analysis of data and how it is presented to the public. Right? Ultimately, what we're doing is is for the public is to share results that are easy to understand that are impactful. There's quite a few steps to get to that final results. And so there's this kind of a process of bringing the data together, cleaning it, and then performing analysis and writing it up. But, also, one of the things that I want to turn my attention to in the short term is building dashboards. These will be our main method for sharing data, sharing results with the public in a way that's transparent, easy to understand, and as comprehensive as possible. So this, I think, will be a good way of tracking also our progress in creating those linkages between agencies and collecting data across them to develop really a broader overall vision of our of what our mandate covers. Alright. So at this juncture, I'm going to pass it to Laura to talk about our 2026 report. And then, Susan, do you have something to add? Thank you. Thanks.

[Susana Davis (Executive Director, Office of Racial Equity)]: I might just tee up I might just tee up Laura by letting the committee know that this year's report, you will probably notice, looks a little bit different than last year's. Last year's was particularly heavy with statistical data and gave a little bit of insight into things including school discipline, arrest, incarceration, traffic stop, that sort of thing. This year's report looked a little bit different, and partly because we chose to look at, to go for depth in one of the statutory mandates that the division was given, which was the gap analysis project. And so, of course, you all will recall because the enabling language emerged out of this committee, that one of the things that the division is tasked with doing is to conduct a gap analysis of data systems and information sharing. And one of the things that we have heard over the years most from colleagues in government is that they don't necessarily know what other similarly situated agencies are doing, and that there's a lot of confusion about who owns data and who's analyzing it and for which purposes, who's required to share it, etcetera. And so, our division being a more centralized focus area for these data, we thought that this would be a good opportunity to embark on that project. And so, we spent a lot of staffing hours conducting it, and are very pleased with its status so far. So that is the reason that you'll notice that this year's report looks a little bit different than last year because we're tackling a different one of the buckets that was assigned to us by the statute. So the gap analysis project was conducted by Laura. She was our point, and we were also tremendously grateful to have the assistance of colleagues across government. Again, we're trying to break down those silos. So we wanna provide particular thanks to Andrew Race from the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration and also Megan Wheaton Book from the Agency of Human Services. We had a really fruitful partnership, and I think that you will be quite interested to learn more about how that project went. I'm going to stop talking and hand it off to our project lead on that, who is Laura.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Thank you. So as Susana said, we really spent a lot of time this year focusing on this mandate in 3BSA 5012A subsection four, which requires the division to maintain an inventory of justice technology assets and a data dictionary while also conducting a gap analysis of system data systems and information sharing across the criminal legal landscape. And so for the record, my name is Laura Carter. My background is in library and information science. I have my master's in library and information science. And so pulling together this project team, I really wanted to focus on information professionals across the state to leverage what the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration already uses to manage our records, which is functional analysis, which I'll explain that in a second, kind of at a high level what that means. But the methodology to kind of get this gap analysis going, essentially, a project team was developed with information professionals across the state. And as Susana already gave them their flowers, I just want to shout out again Megan Wheaton Book from the Agency of Human Services. She does the records of information management for all of AHS. And then to Andrew Reyes, my other colleague from the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, who is also a records and information management specialist with a focus in the judiciary, state's attorneys and sheriffs and other archival processes as well to kind of blow the continuum there of managing information. So once the project team was established from there, we identified stakeholder groups through leveraging the records officer database, which is something that the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration is responsible for. In 3BSA two eighteen, all state agencies and departments are supposed to have a records officer and record liaisons. So using this, we were able to then leverage that individual to identify these project teams, which we call the DGAPs or the Data Governance Action Pods, which is essentially like subject matter experts that would understand data systems the best in the flow of information, etcetera. From there, we worked with these DGAP groups and developed a survey based on the generally accepted recordkeeping principles. There's eight of those. And the information governance maturity model, there's five levels of information governance maturity and provided that survey across these governance groups so that we could best identify from them their understanding of their information and their data flow and how their systems are currently processing and managing and making information available. From there, as a group internally, our project team, we reviewed the survey results, identified systems and presented areas of opportunity for each of these cohorts. There were three cohorts. The first cohort was DOC, DPS and DCF. The second cohort was the state's attorneys and sheriffs, the Center for Crime Victims and the Center for Crime Victim Services. And then our third cohort was the judiciary, the Office of the Defender General, who did they meet with, the Vermont Criminal Justice Council and the attorney general's office. Yeah. Any questions? Is BCIC the point? BCIC was part of the DPS interviews that we did. So what is functional analysis? This first graphic is a definition that comes from a presentation actually given by the State Archives called conjunction junction. What's your function? So functional analysis is essentially we have legislation that mandates public agencies to perform certain activities. So we've got areas of responsibility outlined in law or this domain and activity that you can see in the chart below. And then the functions are comprised of transaction, which results in the record types that we when people and agencies and departments are performing these activities. So the example you can see below is I used to work for corrections, so I find them a really easy example to use. You can see in this chart, we have the activity domain, the department or agency that's responsible for this activity or domain, and then there were legal requirement that pairs to that. So in the first row, you'll see that the Department of Corrections based on 28 BSA 101 is responsible for managing inmates similarly in 28 BSA two zero two for supervising probationers. And then we're seeing the overlap here in the third row that the Department of Corrections and the Department of Public Safety are both responsible for registering sex offenders, and then you have their responsive legal mandates there. And that's why we wanted to use functional analysis to identify those overlaps in statutory responsibility so that we could see the natural relationships, at least in legislation. So this gap analysis is part of a larger project plan that the project team and I put together. So I'm just gonna highlight the project objectives and our research question that we had going into this project. So our research questions were, how do agencies and departments create, manage, and share criminal justice related data? What challenges may limit the accuracy, accessibility, or equity of such data, and what opportunities exist to improve data quality, streamline processes, and support coordination across state agencies and departments. And you'll see these five interconnected circles. So as part of the larger project plan, which is actually an appendix in our annual report, you can see initially we have in the first circle the justice information gap analysis, which we consider as a project team continually ongoing. It's the functional analysis work. It's the legislative research and statutory research. And then part two, which is what we were working on with the data governance action pods, the DGAP groups, is the data dictionary and justice technology asset inventory. And the asset inventory is the largest part of our report, and we'll get to that in the next slide. From there, one of our other mandates is to create a justice technology strategic plan, as well as standardizing data collection processes and establishing data governance policies. So in our larger project plan, we've kind of outlined how the division anticipates meeting all of these mandates, leveraging the gap analysis work that was done in the D gap groups while creating the data dictionary and justice technology asset inventory. So this is what we have so far. It's organized alphabetically by system. So you'll see that there are multiple departments in there a few times based on what they're using or what they're anticipating going into. So we focus on identifying current systems that are in use, the legacy systems that exist and may also still be in use across the criminal legal landscape. And then we do have some systems I mentioned earlier that we were sending out opportunity documents and things like that. Those were also part of verifying the systems that we had identified in our informal interviews. So we still have some of those that remain to be verified and plan to update this asset inventory as things move forward. I see you staring really hard. Do you have any questions?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Mean, what a massive looks like. Just remind me what CVS is. Center for Crime Victim Services. Okay. Yes. No, I like that the notes are kind of explaining the status of the system. Exactly.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: And for some of the ones like ELC, so I know you guys have heard a lot from attorney McManus and also from the attorney general's office about their system. So, for example, states attorneys and sheriffs should be migrating into their new system, Matrix Prosecutor, within the next few months. From my understanding, it should have it should have already been happening, but I don't know really what the exact timeline on that is. But we included Justware because they're still using it. But technically, that is the legacy system of Matrix Prosecutor. Something that we also learned, too, from this process and another reason why we did it this way was to identify if there were any system or vendor overlaps for natural intersectionality when we're thinking about connectivity and data collection. So you'll see in this chart that both the attorney general's office and the state's attorneys are now using Matrix Prosecutor. The attorney general's office, I'm not sure if they have officially migrated into Matrix Prosecutor yet, but it is included in this inventory. They have been using a system called Law Manager, which has not been vendor supported for, I think, a while. Don't super quote me on that. Jay Bailey would be the one.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: A while is correct. So is DPS involved in the loop on this as well?

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Yes, DPS was part of our first cohort. Actually, Mindy Wilson is in this room. She is the records officer for DPS. So we were in frequent communication, and I appreciated her patience and willingness to work with us. The systems that are missing, sorry, before I move ahead, that we just need verification on and or that we know exist but didn't necessarily come up in any of our interviews include Vine, which I know there's been a lot of conversation about that in this committee and other committees. Vows the warrant database. Why OMS or the Youthful Offender Management System? And then we did meet with the judiciary, but not before the report was published. So Enterprise Justice is not included on this, but obviously that is a system we know exists.

[Andre Commenden (Data Manager, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Okay.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: So this was in kind of our recommendation section, but I wanted to highlight these as successes and leverageable wins that we think are no cost, low cost solutions that could be leveraged already across the criminal legal system or in other areas of state government. So we tied each of these to a governance principle. So we wanted to highlight accountability and the action and application of this. So the DPS Valkor governance board. So DPS that has a Valkor governance board, Valkor is their system. This isn't structurally mandated. This is something that the department identified as a need and created. Their meetings are also public, so anybody can attend them. And so they are basically applying governance oversight and it's their main data system to support any kind of problem solving as it arises. We think that any kind of next steps and ideas for that to leverage it again across the system could be a replicable model for other areas and other data systems across the state and just the model that they've set up there. Next, we wanted to highlight the Vermont Criminal Justice Council in transparency. They have been able, in collaboration with a new vendor, to efficiently and effectively get staff trained on their system and being in compliance with their mandates. They had an audit in 2022 that really highlighted the lack of accountability and efficiency in their systems, and they took that really seriously. So they have frequent meetings with their vendors and really successful collaboration that have gone and led towards process automation and more efficient workflows and, again, more accountability across the board. So we've highlighted here in the next steps and ideas that this demonstrates the values of dedicating more attention and resources to transparent operations and to promote strong governance across systems. It was really awesome talking to them. That team consisted of Lindsey Thurberge, Lisa Ryan, and both Chris's, Chris Purkel and Chris Perkett, I believe. Is awesome.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: And then lastly,

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: we wanted to highlight compliance for the attorney general's office. They are really efficient at communicating across their divisions and what they expect and what they need for their casework, which we thought was incredible, because oftentimes we find that communication gets lost and these things are not being communicated. So this frequent communication and compliance enables the attorney general's office, specifically the control division is to be met with to resolve issues quickly as they arise within their system. They also conduct quarterly reviews of system data as like a self audit to ensure that the information is current and correct and that the processes that they have in place are actually being followed by the attorneys entering the information. So next step and ideas for that group that could be leveraged, we're thinking, obviously, they're working on migrating into a new system from their legacy system. And the criminal division plans to use their new system to better align their information management and records management needs to, again, blend more of that compliance together.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Any questions? So I'm wondering when we have two organizations that are collecting data, how would they get trued up if there were either different statistical results or issues with definitions? So that's what we're working

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: on finding out. That's coming up next. Stay tuned. But before we jump into the recommendations, I just wanted to share that my colleagues that I mentioned before, like I said, all of us have backgrounds in information management or information professionals. We submitted this as to a conference, the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators, and got accepted to present on this to leverage functional analysis, which is a traditional information management process to still incorporate governance into these workflows. So we're really excited about that. It's coming up in July. Okay. So our recommendations and further inquiries, we have three buckets. So I'm going to cover two of them and then Suzanne will cover the last one. So first, we're asking for clarity on the data dictionary component of our initial mandate in 3BSA 5012. We're hoping that you guys can provide us with a more scoped understanding of what the legislative intent for this resource was and what in what format would be the most appropriate. Additionally, we wanted to highlight some resource allocations. These also came out of our governance action pod meetings to support better governance structures across some of these agencies and departments. Again, highlighting stakeholder groups that could benefit from additional resources in order to support better governance structures within their agencies. And then lastly, expanding the division resources to include a policy and research analyst. This would include expanding the capacity to include a policy and research analyst that focuses specifically on the criminal legal system and any kind of data pieces that are coming up in the State House. So we got a lot of questions about this in our informational interviews. So we were hoping and wondering if the legislature meant a business glossary or a systems data dictionary. Currently, dictionary is not defined in statute. There are a lot of different ways that this can be interpreted. When we were meeting again across the criminal legal landscape here in Vermont, folks were asking Some folks don't even have data dictionaries. Some people do have business glossaries. DOC has a business glossary for their public use file. But when we asked them about the data dictionary initially, they were like, we have an 800 page systems dictionary. Do you want that? Similarly, the judiciary has one that's over 1,000 pages that they can get from their vendor. So we really want to make sure that when we're asking folks for these things, that we're making the most useful resource that was attended by the legislature. Currently, we're going to proceed as if we're doing a business glossary because that also came up, I think, to your point, rep Rachelson, that understanding uniformity in terms across. And so making sure that when we're talking about a warrant, we all know what that means across each of the systems.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Before we go to two. Yes. I'm pretty sure I can tell you that I don't know that we had an intent on what precisely the data dictionary was. We did a lot of work with ADS and others who knew these kinds of things. There was this desire to have this data dictionary.

[Kevin "Coach" Christie (Ranking Member)]: I can't tell you that we had a particular intent of the

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I don't know that we knew there were different kinds of data dictionary. At least I didn't, I was on this bill. I guess just looking at the statute, it says the data dictionary should be used to identify elements and structures of databases and relationships between databases. So does a data dictionary or a business glossary or likely accomplish that?

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: I think the business glossary would define the data elements in the terms, and then the systems would answer what the system technological elements and how the systems interact would be. I don't know if

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So maybe that would can tell you a little higher level of what we were going for or trying, if this may be way too general. The idea was to be able to track from essentially contact with law enforcement through the state's attorney's office and what they do with them through the ports to DOC to after DOC. And to be able to kind of like track individuals, de identified individuals kind of through that system, that wouldn't we have to have the data kind of talking, the systems talking to each other? And was a data dictionary what would allow that to happen? I believe that that's what we were after. I'm not sure, Coach online, if So Coach could weigh in if I'm misunderstanding because coach and I really worked on this back when we passed this. Coach, are you available and wanna weigh in on that? If not, we can catch you later. I'm not here. You'll jump in. Yeah, we can hear you now. Great.

[Kevin "Coach" Christie (Ranking Member)]: I had put together a synopsis of the history. You know of this this work by the committee. I took a ten year snapshot. So I think what I'll do is. Since I've got it structured to cover the entire data system that we are addressing in our work. Let's see, I think Nate said I would be around 10. So I can can go in the next slide.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: You You'll address it when you are presenting or kind of introducing three eighty two. Is that right? Yes. Okay. I don't know if that helps at all as far as what I said, that's kind of the level of our concept of what data dictionary

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: I think we would just wanna make sure that we're making the most useful resource for the sake. Okay, cool. No, that's super helpful. Okay. And then secondly, another reason why we leverage this functional analysis is because we wanted to identify, again, like I said, the areas of overlap for responsibility in legislation. And so what we're finding is that the scope of this expands far beyond what Vermont considers a criminal justice agency, at least by definition. Like, for example, we met with DCF, but we know that they're not a criminal justice agency by definition. However, they maintain juvenile justice data. So we were able to identify a really broad web of entities beyond the criminal legal landscape in Vermont that intersect with these spaces that include connections to the Department of Labor, to the Agency of Education, and broadly the Agency of Human Services and likely beyond. So one of the pieces of this in our report is saying that if the legislature wants to expand the scope of this to identify kind of where the webs of these are to kind of trace these people, like you're saying, de identified across these systems, there's going to be upstream factors and downstream factors once these folks are not in the system anymore and also prior to entering the system, other things like that. And that is a much larger scope than what the division is currently scoped to do. So that is another thing to consider. Any questions on that? And so then these were the suggestions that we had for resource allocations to promote better governance across these departments that we met with. So I know all of you are familiar with the first one, DCF. They currently have the oldest known child welfare system in the country. It went online in 1983. There was earlier testimony this year in House Human Services. I believe it was a joint hearing, actually, where Deputy Commissioner Eric Iraqi talked about how the system actually was offline for a few days in December. And it took a long time for them to kind of get that back. What we learned anecdotally is that because the system others distrust inherently in the system that folks are creating workaround processes and maintaining duplicate records to manage information and do their business operations. This is a crisis of the state, we feel, And these outdated system risks, information gaps, operational inefficiencies and perpetuate harm in these systems that are intended to support children. So we would we really would like to see some resources allocated there. Again, 1983 is when the system went online.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I know that's been a high priority, and this has come up the last few years A few years, same.

[Kevin "Coach" Christie (Ranking Member)]: As well. And it's a little disappointing that they have seen and made a

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: lot of progress yet, progression.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: So I'm wondering, that sort of raises a really another question that I have. So are there data points, and I know there are related to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, but there are probably other ones too related to DCF, where there's federal money on the line if we're in compliance with certain data. Because I think those being highlighted in a different color and knowing what the money is. Because my experience over the years, one reason Because we all change, people don't know. If DCF doesn't get this, we lose out on this every year, or if we're not in compliance with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, we lose money.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: I think that would be a question for DCF's quality assurance units specifically, because they are the ones that are in it every single day. I am more than positive that there are federal monies attached to this, but I don't know any of the regulations off the top of my head that would definitely be a DCF question.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: But I guess my question is, I only know about the ones that are sort of relevant to the work I've done in my non legislator life. And there may be ones that none of those are about. And I don't know if it's like when you're mapping stuff out, if there's any kind of code that can go to ones that either trigger the loss of the gain

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: of funding. That's kind of the second phase, and I'm sorry I didn't cover this earlier in our presentation. But the next phase of this So essentially, we have our inventory of technology assets that is already basically obsolete. We're gonna have to go back and talk to those folks again. The next phase will be getting an idea and a picture of where the sharing agreements exist between agencies so that we know about who's sharing what and then the data elements. So then once we have the data elements, it would be more easily able to map those to say federal requirements, understanding what programs those might be a part of. But we

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: don't have that information. And again, if there's money on the line, it's important for the legislature to weigh like, Oh my gosh, we could get 300,000 a year, which could offset the cost of doing this, or we could lose this if we don't deal with this.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: We could lose children if we don't deal with this.

[Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Absolutely. The outcomes are huge. But as resources are tight, I know we look under every tiny rock for burden on the couch cushions.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Yeah. No, totally. But yeah, I think I'm trying to think of I'm drawing a blank on what her name is, and I feel really good about it. But the quality assurance unit from DCF would be Those are the folks that I would reach out to to see. So the next we're highlighting the state's attorneys and sheriffs. So we identified in their current data landscape that there's challenges with information access and use tied to disparate data management processes and outdated data entry systems because there's 14 offices. So they all kind of do things a little differently. That was fun. Their team was Attorney McManus, Tim Lugo, Dumont and Ian Sullivan. I say Ian Sullivan. And so this leads the attorneys to spend a lot of time on data entry rather than their casework. And so we are recommending dedicated staffing to support the transition from just where into matrix to alleviate some of that administrative burden on the attorneys themselves and to promote consistent data management practices across each of the offices, obviously understanding that each of them are elected officials. So they're going to do things a little bit differently based on themselves and their constituents. But having some consistency is better than not having any consistency. And then lastly, we wanted to highlight the Office of the Defender General. So for their current data landscape And the team for this team was literally Defender General Valerio and Jessica B. Martin, and they tag teamed all of this themselves. So their current data landscape, sometimes their information can be delayed or incomplete because they work with a lot of contractors. We learned that about 40% of their cases are contracted out and that those attorneys can use any data system that they want. So we're not really sure what systems they are or are not using, leaving the Defender General essentially to rely on caseload formulas and generate aggregate data if they're not receiving that information from these contracted attorneys, which I said is about 40% of their cases, according to Mr. Valerio. So what we recommend for them is increased staffing to include a statistician. They've been looking for a statistician for over a year from our conversations with them. That would enable the office to shift their oversight from directly the Defender General, who obviously has a lot of other things that are pressing, and to just improve data analysis and reporting overall, and additionally increasing in house attorney capacity to reduce reliance on contractors so that we do understand how that information is being stored, managed and accessed for the clients that we are serving in that capacity. Do you guys have any questions before I turn it over to Susana?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No, I've done that. Okay,

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: thank you. Okay, Susana.

[Susana Davis (Executive Director, Office of Racial Equity)]: So the last recommendation that we have is one that you've already heard from us before. It should not come as a surprise, but we do wanna remind the committee that we are excited about our mandate. And in order to really dive into it and be able to do all of our projects simultaneously and not have to pick and choose which ones to work on that narrowly, that we want to encourage the committee to consider going closer to the original vision and the original recommendation based on the input from people who are technology experts, data systems experts, and criminal legal systems subject matter experts in Vermont. You'll recall that the original RDEF report recommending the creation of this division, or a division of its nature, recommended that based on the intended workload at that time, before any additional things may have been added, that it would have required five FTEs in order to be able to do that work effectively. And so, of course, the division was initially staffed with three, and we are aware that in Vermont, is often the case, we start with what we can, and then we try to build. And I think that particularly with what we're seeing in terms of rapid changes in policy and just the flow of information generally at a national level, it's more important than ever that we keep our eye toward making sure that Vermont is successful at understanding what's happening in the state borders, who's being impacted, who's better off, is the juice worth the squeeze, so to speak. And so for us to be able to do that, we wanna make sure that we're properly resourcing it in ways that we've already discussed, like updating data systems for relevant partner agencies, etcetera, but also making sure that this team is fully staffed and empowered to be able to do the lift that's being asked of it. So that is a renewal of that pitch. And with that, I will ask Andre or Laura if there's anything else that we haven't said. And if not, then I welcome any questions the committee may have. Thank you.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: I'm just gonna add to the second point about specifically allocating an additional analyst for policy and research. In the report, it mentions that one of the analysts have been designated to do policy for half the year and research ad hoc as needed. That's been me. So it is really challenging to do the other things that we've been mandated to do when the legislature is in session for half the year. And we're trying to make sure that we're not missing anything that could have disparate impacts on folks. Just

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: a question about the first point, Sizada. Did any additional positions, are they included in the administration's proposed budget, recommended budget?

[Susana Davis (Executive Director, Office of Racial Equity)]: They are not, and we're not asking the committee to go outside of that recommend for the fiscal year currently under consideration?

[Kevin "Coach" Christie (Ranking Member)]: Okay. So

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: first of just thank you. I think the work that this report reflects is really important and great work. We've been trying to get our hands around understanding the landscape of criminal justice data, and I think this really starts us to be able to get to that point. So I really appreciate the hard work, and I think this is very valuable. Some of those recommendations that you had, probably a little late in the session to really start lining them up, but for next biennium, for if Saul Burlington will have me back, I would like to work with you to kind of try to line these things up for the next biennium to get some of those recommendations put in place. So any questions for Susana or Laura or Andre? Go ahead, Ian. I don't really have

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: a question. I just appreciate the work and the report. And I think

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: while

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: it's a moving landscape on the data data collection from each of these agencies, tracking it alone is a really important step. And I think it seems like a lot of them are shifting towards new programming. And I just hope that you'll continue to keep track of it and hopefully the tracking data as it goes through each of these different programs.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Yeah. So we're hoping the reason why we developed the data governance action path was so that we could leverage those contacts moving forward when we start to move towards the end of phase of the project. So we're definitely going to be reengaging Mandy, be aware, and other folks that we tap before to start engaging these other parts of it so that we can expand on what we've already done and then update what we've already done. Because as you mentioned, some of it is already obsolete, essentially.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think from like I'm in the little place where I sit in all of this in one of the one of the offices as a deputy attorney, what you've reported feels very accurate me. So you guys are doing the work, and I just appreciate it. Thank you.

[Laura Carter (Analyst, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Oh, Andre has his hand up.

[Andre Commenden (Data Manager, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: Yeah. I just wanted to follow-up on some of the points, especially regarding staffing and also bringing it back to the discussion about data dictionary. I think one thing that can happen when we have these discussions is those data feel very abstract. Right? These are very abstract processes, and we kind of lose track of the concrete work that's involved in doing this. This is a highly complex, obviously, environment and and network of data systems, and each one of those often involves a fair level of manual work. Right? As Laura pointed out, some of those systems are outdated, some of them are hybrid, and that's that burden of manual work falls on both the agencies, but also when we receive data, some of what I've seen in my short time here is that it comes to us in very disparate formats, and there's kind of a lot of work that needs to go into just understanding the data we have. And so I think I I I just want to to impress on on the one here to have the the the labor intensive nature of a love network, and that's to move towards something that is more automated, more efficient. For example, a lot of foundational work needs to go into it and really preparing it and and making sure that what we do is reflective of the conditions on the ground. So really just to to have a second of the the things we've said and emphasizing the fact that this is this is work that's that takes labor, and it it doesn't happen easily. And so I really hope we can work together to kinda get this this ball rolling.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I appreciate that as well. Thank you all very much for the presentation and again for the great work. So we're now, we're going to turn, we're going to have a representative Christie kinda introduce h three eighty two and just kind of some issues regarding data, and then we'll take a break after that, and then we have some footage back to Emily. So coach, over to you. Are you with us still, coach? We have HDD.

[Kevin "Coach" Christie (Ranking Member)]: I'll close it right now. Alright,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: maybe we'll take our break

[Andre Commenden (Data Manager, Division of Racial Justice Statistics)]: now, and