WHAT WE DOOklahoma Data Exchange builds the connections that enable data to flow securely and efficiently across Oklahoma’s justice systems and beyond.
We build the interpersonal trust, collective decision making structures, and technological tools that allow for sharing data and linking individuals across the governmental and nonprofit service agencies that serve Oklahomans. Our goal is to give both decision-makers and frontline staff the information they need to do their work efficiently.
Building Trust and Connections
OK Data works with leaders of agencies across the justice system and beyond to understand their work and the data they need to be successful, including:
Resources like critical data sets and staff capacity
Challenges, from inefficiencies in workflows to data quality concerns to lack of information for planning and forecasting
Opportunities for improving their work through better access to data and analytics
Data Linkage
OK Data develops tools to make the most of the data collected by partner organizations. This includes:
Testing, refining, and validating the linkage of individuals across data sets, giving agencies more complete information about a person’s situation
Working with agency data staff to understand available resources and how to use them to answer the questions that matter to their organizations
Maintaining an integrated database of data from courts, law enforcement, and other public sources
Data Sharing Governance
OK Data facilitates decision-making processes and legal agreements to ensure data is shared and used according to the highest legal, ethical, and security standards. This includes:
Understanding and communicating the legal and regulatory requirements that govern sharing of personally identifying information from various sources
Developing Memoranda of Understanding and Data Use Agreements that specify what data each agency will share and how it is used
Maintaining strict and transparent compliance with CJIS, HIPAA, and other applicable regulatory standards
Criminal Justice Data Sharing and Linkage
Efforts to reform Oklahoma’s criminal justice system over the last decade have stressed the need for better data in order to operate systems efficiently and inform decision making, from Vera Institute’s 2016 report on the Oklahoma County jail to the statewide MODERN Task Force report in 2023.
Service organizations, law enforcement agencies, courts, and jails hold crucial data on the people they interact with, but this data largely remains siloed within the organization that collects it. Many legacy information technology systems were not designed to communicate with other systems. Without the ability to share data effectively, the same information must be collected and entered by each agency at each step of the process.
OK Data aims to build data capacity across the justice system and beyond to give frontline workers and decision-makers timely access to trustworthy data from incident to reintegration.