The Client
The client operates a state-based government juvenile corrections system in the US that detains and rehabilitates felony offenders aged 10 to 21. It oversees multiple facilities that provide year-round academic and vocational education programs to cater to young offenders’ criminogenic and behavioral needs.
The Challenge
Keeping up with the times, the client wanted to leverage advanced data analytics capabilities to monitor the effectiveness of its rehabilitation programs. It also wanted to establish guardrails that weed out biases and discrimination by analyzing current guidelines and best practices against the evolving needs of its detainees.
The client faced significant challenges with its outdated Juvenile Justice Case Management System (JJCMS). The 17-year-old system, built on legacy technology and hosted on-premises infrastructure, carried technical debt, data silos, limited data governance, and weak analytics capabilities.
The absence of centralized data governance and reporting mechanisms resulted in a fragmented view of data, with the client’s Business Intelligence (BI) team struggling to pull insights from multiple disparate sheets and entries. This led to limited visibility into major Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as recidivism rate, mental and physical well-being, behavioral improvements (number of incidents for misconduct or disciplinary actions, etc.), and employment or skill development.
The Solution
The client commissioned Persistent to design a modern data management solution leveraging Google Cloud technologies.
We developed a robust data warehouse using BigQuery, Google’s serverless data warehouse. Persistent’s data experts created modern data pipelines with the existing JJCMS data backend, integrating them with BigQuery through Dataflow, Google’s fully managed data pipeline service. This automated data ingestion, transformation, and loading processes. This integration addressed issues stemming from data silos and led to enhanced data quality. This unified data platform provides a single source of truth, allowing the client access to data-driven insights that inform programs, ultimately benefiting the youth they serve.
We incorporated a Looker dashboard that visualized data the client did not have access to, creating a Business Intelligence (BI) element to provide powerful analytics and actionable insights. Looker’s intuitive interface enabled users to access and analyze data stored in BigQuery, creating interactive dashboards and reports.
We also implemented a comprehensive data governance framework, ensuring data security, quality management, and regulatory compliance. The Composer managed the data pipeline orchestration with real-time logging, monitoring, and alerting for observability.
The solution serves as the foundation for future data warehouse modernization efforts, enabling self-service analytics and fostering data-driven decision-making.
The Outcomes
The newfound insights are already leading to better program planning, resource allocation, and improved outcomes. With modernized data analytics capabilities, the client:
- Facilitates self-service analytics
- Improves inference from major KPIs
- Drives strategic improvements by empowering decision-makers with timely insights
