Georgia’s TraCS Experience 28 th Int’l Traffic Records Forum August 7, 2002 Presented by Bill Youngblood State Traffic Records Coordinator

Background Our Traffic Records Coordinating Committee (TRCC) has existed about 2 ½ years. Georgia’s TRs were, and still are, primarily paper based. Our objectives are to reduce costs and improve quality, timeliness, and utility of all TRs. These objectives call for an integrated fully electronic TR System, from collection thru analysis. Top priority is crash records - followed by citations, EMS run records, hospital discharge records, etc. Priorities are from the bottom up; i.e., beginning with collection.

Georgia’s Unique Situation TRCC sponsored, rather than by Agency(ies). TRCC has no budget or authority (not unique, but very troublesome). GDOT (mostly) and GOHS have funded all TR Strategic Plan efforts to date, including TraCS. Driven by larger local PDs, who want electronic collection and digital data to improve enforcement.

Why TraCS? We began our TR System development by looking at all known data collection products. We chose TraCS for several reasons: It can be a universal data collection tool for ALL TR and related reports, The police officers liked the user interface, No license fee, and freely distributable within the State, The State and local agencies, with modest IT skills, can develop any desired report, and With improved search and analysis tools, it can become a complete TR system for smaller agencies.

TraCS ‘Adaptation’ Required development for each report type: Data input forms, Validation rules, Output reports, TraCS database, Local report processing, and Electronic transfer to local RMSs and state repositories. I and two police officers from our pilot agency began TraCS adaptation in January 2001.

Status of TraCS Crash Report (1 ½ years latter) All required products, except electronic transfer, are done. Under test since start of the year in three metro Atlanta county and two city PDs. Our pilot agency considers it to be operational, and is expanding its use to a full precinct (about 200 officers). Auxiliary software had to be developed to flexibly search database, print current crash form, and perform electronic transfer.

Other TraCS Applications Electronic citation products mostly done, and testing will begin after crash report is operational. Two police agencies have developed local products and will use TraCS for crime reporting. TraCS’ NIBRS Incident Form will be used in certification of Georgia for NIBRS reporting. A DOJ sponsored research project will use TraCS’ Incident reports to design a standard crime database.

Lessons Learned TraCS is a mature, stable and flexible base for electronic data collection for all types of TRs. Time, effort, and skills required are more than you think. Dedicated development team needed. Validation rules are critical to improved data quality, but require most effort, knowledge, and skill. Testing philosophy and procedures has been a major source of contention among participants. Multi-state involvement and sharing of enhancement ideas and costs has been extremely beneficial.

Major Issues That Remain The most significant obstacle to full electronic operation is moving the data into proprietary local RMSs. Data incompatibility across report types is an obstacle to an integrated TR database.

Demonstrated TraCS Advantages Use of a common data collection tool will: Save many millions of dollars in development costs for State and Agency unique systems, Allow joint funding of maintenance and enhancements, saving more millions of dollars, Encourage the use of common forms and data elements through shared development costs, Result in de facto, if not formal, standard data elements and forms.