The Alaska Office of Victims’ Rights: (l-r) Taylor, Candice and Joseph.

The Alaska Office of Victims’ Rights adds an additional 10 licenses to the 11,000-user strong New Dawn Nation.

JustWare replaces an outdated system that no longer meets the needs of the OVR. Alaska has 13 districts that deal with victims—the OVR is the central agency that monitors the rights of victims within those 13 districts.

A grassroots victims’ protection agency, the Alaska Office of Victims’ Rights was created by the legislature to help crime victims cope with, understand, and successfully navigate the criminal justice system.

The Alaska OVR is unique in that it provides protections to victims of crime on a legislative level—it is not connected to community corrections or probation—in the way that many victims services offices are. “In 2011, the APPA learned that 85 percent of those offices without a dedicated victim services unit, the responsibility to serve victims fell to front-line officers within the agency”—a statistic illustrating how victims’ rights can often fall through the cracks.

Taylor Winston, Executive Director of the Alaska OVR, said one week after go-live, that “JustWare is functioning as we expected for our office.” According to Winston, “JustWare is a very easy program to learn.”

Attorneys representing victims across the state are now able to type notes directly into cases in JustWare rather than taking notes longhand and typing them into a system later. Future time- and resource-savings resulting from this JustWare implementation come about via a paperless workflow utilizing JustWare’s commercial-off-the-shelf “paper on demand” capabilities.

Quoting Winston, the Alaska OVR will soon “burn the pencils.”

Welcome aboard Alaska Office of Victims’ Rights. It is our pleasure to welcome you to the New Dawn Nation.

For more information about the Alaska Office of Victims’ Rights. 

We have super-charged a central business rule in this newest release of JustWare!

Why is this so great? Automating case involvements, event involvements, and default plea/judgments is much easier. With the new business rules activity, our customers can now write a query and pass a name ID to three business rule results.

• eventinypers
• caseinypers
• new plea/dispo (delivered in a previous release)

JustWare database configurations in a test environment can now be moved to production using the JustWare Tranfer tool. JustWare Transfer easily handles code tables, session definitions and JusticeWeb configuration in addition to a number of other configurations—including transfers from database to database or from a database to a file.

We’ve also integrated a new payment provider with JusticeWeb. Plug ‘n Play allows for international payment transactions—an area where our customer-base continues to expand. For customers stateside, we continue to integrate with Mercury Payment Systems; you will see no change in payment transactions.

You can access the upgrade through our FTP. JustWare upgrades are available to our customers at no additional cost. If you have questions about the upgrade process, please reach out to support and one of our #KickAwesome, knowledgeable and friendly staff can help you get started.

For more than 17 years, New Dawn Technologies has served communities worldwide by providing leading edge web-based, on-premise, and cloud-based case management solutions for governments. We offer the JustWare | Solution Suite case management software, data sharing, e-filing, e-payment, e-discovery, and public access solutions for every type of government agency.

The Standard

Most software development companies have a quality assurance (QA) department responsible for testing their software and assuring that a minimal number of defects get released to the public. The usual software company evolution goes something like this.

1. You get programmers.
2. You get sales reps.
3. You get support reps.
4. You get IT folks.
5. You get marketers, more sales reps.
6. You get a QA Department!!!

Until a company is profitable enough to hit step 6, they just accept that they have buggy software. Without testers, what else are you going to do, right?

A notion that is at the heart of this strategy is the belief that developers themselves make terrible software testers because they think like developers instead of software users. These testing departments often operate autonomously from the actual development departments in an attempt to avoid a “conflict of interest.” Development shops that do not have dedicated software testers are often judged for not taking quality seriously, and it is usually assumed that they just can’t afford the testers that they know they should have. Shame on them.

Bucking the System

During 2011, some of us at New Dawn were trying to understand what was wrong with our QA strategy. There was a continual Ping-Pong game taking place between Development and QA. Development would finish a feature and throw it over the fence to QA. Then QA would find problems and throw it back over the fence to Development. Repeat to ad nauseam. It seemed that Development would finish a feature and then just throw it at QA to see if it would stick. When bugs were found, it wasn’t the developer’s fault. It was the tester’s fault! Some QA team members became notorious, even vilified for finding defects. We were putting a lot of energy, effort, and money into our QA team, yet we were still releasing an unacceptable number of unfixed bugs.

To make things worse, the QA team seemed to be wrestling with two goals that were becoming increasingly at odds with one another – making the product better and just creating “bug reports.” As a result of this, our team of testers were spending a lot of their time finding obscure bugs that real customers would never actually see. Major defects were making it into our releases while testers were reporting that if you held down the Tab key with your left pinky while sitting on the mouse and soaking your right hand in a bowl of lemon juice while chanting, “Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon,” – the bottom of the screen would sometimes flicker.

It seemed that there was a serious disconnect about who owned the quality of our product. We had designed our process to have a discrete separation between building software and making sure that software worked.

We began to wonder if there was a better way.

I’ve worked at New Dawn for 11 years now, and during that time I’ve learned something about what makes this company a success: We are uncomfortable with following the status quo when we know it is wrong.

That fall, we made a move that would seem insane to many in the software development world. We eliminated the position of Software Tester at New Dawn. We disbanded our formal QA department.

The Lie

Perhaps this whole separation of development and testing thing was a conspiracy from the start. I’m not saying it was, I’m just suggesting we consider the motives. Let’s face it: Building new stuff is cool. Testing and fixing it is not as cool.

But regardless of whether or not this is all part of a decades old conspiracy, my point is that we all bought into a lie. The idea that developers are not the best people to test their own software is wrong to its core. It’s a myth, baked inside of untruth, then stuffed and deep fried in deception and served with a side of “not my problem.”

When you defer the responsibility of testing software to another team, you defer the ownership of quality.  By saying that developers are not the best people to test their own software, you are saying that they are not the best people to own their quality. Once that message is felt in the hearts of your developers, quality is forever an uphill battle, and you’ve began an epic Ping-Pong tournament that would make Forrest Gump look like an amateur.

The Reality

Ownership is empowering. Developers behave differently when they own the quality of the code they write. It changes their attitude and their behavior. They invest into coding practices and methodologies that make their code safer and better.

A while ago, I read a skeptical post on this topic suggesting that you wouldn’t just take away the net from a tightrope walker and expect that would make them better at not falling. Another poster suggested that the right response for the tightrope walkers would be to build a bridge. If developers don’t have the safety net of someone else to catch their defects, they build into their process a way to prevent defects in the first place. They design and write better code. They automate testing in order to shorten the feedback loop when they are writing code.

Yes, we did it. We weren’t the first. There are a number of companies that have taken this approach to software engineering with great success. Among them is Facebook. We are proud to be part of a movement to bring back the ownership and responsibility of quality to the developers. Our developers know that they are the final stop for quality. If bugs make it into a release, there is nobody else to blame. This is their baby.

It’s Working

At the time that we made this decision, our flagship product had over 1200 known bugs. Unfortunately, it is common practice for some of the giants in the software development world to carry thousands of known bugs in their backlog. A year and a half later, our backlog of bugs is zero because we don’t maintain a backlog of bugs anymore. If a bug is reported that needs to be fixed, we fix it rather than postponing it. But the most valuable indication of this success is the fact that since this strategic move was made, the number of bugs reported in released versions of our products has been on a steady and dramatic decline.

Now to clarify, this involved so much more than just getting rid of a department. Getting rid of the QA department was a catalyst for a change in attitude, but it was supported by an emphasis on practices like pair programming, code reviews, Test Driven Development, test automation, continuous integration, and frequent releases that have all aggregated into an extremely mature software development organization that has quality and craftsmanship at the forefront of its focus.

We still do QA! Quality Assurance is an attitude and a process, not a department. We still practice quality assurance with a passion. We are rigorous about reflecting on our processes and continually improving on them. We also know that having a QA process doesn’t replace user validation testing to ensure that we are building intuitive and useful software that is succeeding at solving people’s problems.

As a last word, I’ll admit this approach is not right for everyone in every situation. It’s just what was right for us right now. This is not a prescription for all companies. It’s just our own success story.

Joint Effort for Drug Court Funding

Deadline: June 13, 2013

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced that they are seeking applications for funding for enhancing Drug Court services, coordination, and substance abuse treatment and recovery support services. This program furthers the missions of DOJ and HHS by providing resources to state, local, and tribal governments and state, local, and tribal courts to enhance drug court programs and systems for nonviolent substance-abusing offenders. Eligible entities include states or state courts applying on behalf of a single jurisdiction; local courts; counties; other units of local government and federally recognized tribes. There will be $6.35 million available for 20 awards.

Juvenile Reentry Grant Program

Deadline: June 17, 2013

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention announces funding under the Second Chance Juvenile Reentry Program which helps ensure that the transition that youth make from secure confinement facilities to the community is successful and promotes public safety. Eligible entities include state governments, county governments, city/township governments and federally recognized tribes. There will be 16 awards, which range from $50,000 to $750,000.

OJJDP FY 13 Division of Innovation and Research Fellowship on Juvenile Justice Data

Deadline: July 15, 2013

This program will help OJJDP provide critical data to the field regarding juvenile justice system processing and needs, risk behaviors, victimization, offending, and related issues. The fellow will work with OJJDP to assist federal, state, and local juvenile justice data collection efforts. These important data inform juvenile justice policy and practice at all levels of government and in every sector of the juvenile justice field. The fellowship will provide an opportunity for researchers with experience and expertise in juvenile justice, survey methodology, and statistics to help implement collaborative cross-agency strategies, policies, and programs to enhance and improve data for use by policymakers and practitioners nationwide. This program is authorized by 42 USC §§ 5631-5633; Pub. L. No. 113-6.

At Risk Youth Grants

Deadline:  July 1, 2013

The Carlson Family Foundation focuses on supporting youth mentoring programs that exhibit characteristics of high quality and excellence; fostering innovation and creativity within the field of youth mentoring and supporting efforts to increase the number of adult mentors to serve youth.  The foundation awards most of its funds in the state of Minnesota, but has awarded grants in other states.  The trustees meet three times each year and the deadlines above correspond to the deadlines prior to each respective grant funding round.  The foundation made about $700,000 in grants last year.  Eligibility is limited to non-profits and faith-based groups.

Information:  www.clcfamilyfoundation.com/apply.asp Mary Owen, director, 550 Tonkawa Rd., Long Lake, MN 55356-9724, 919/604-0842.

Grants for At-Risk Youth Projects

Deadline:  August 9, 2013

The OneFamily Foundation will make available grants that support services to end violence and sexual assault against women and children.  Grants will support operating expenses, special projects and minor capital costs necessary to assure the success of a funded project. Eligibility is limited to nonprofits.  Grants go up to $12,000 each. The OneFamily Foundation distributed about $400,000 in grants last year.

Information:  Therese Ogle, 206/781-3472, OgleFounds@aol.com, 6723 Sycamore Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98117.  http://foundationcenter.org/grantmaker/onefamily/guide.html

New Dawn Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Daily Journal Corporation, has been serving communities worldwide for more than 17 years by providing leading edge web-based case management software, public access software, and data sharing solutions for every type of government justice agency.

By developing smart technologies, New Dawn also builds strong communities. New Dawn Technologies serves government customers—from criminal courts to specialty, civil, and municipal courts; attorneys general and county prosecutors to public defenders; community corrections and probation to child, family, and health services. New Dawn’s JustWare | Solution Suite is scalable and flexible enough to use in a single agency or in a large, multi-agency project spanning several states.

For more information on New Dawn Technologies or to schedule a personalized online demonstration, visit us online: newdawn.com/demo. Follow us on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/company/new-dawn-technologies) Twitter (@newdawntech), Instagram (@newdawntech), Google+ (http://j.mp/NDTplus) and like us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/newdawntech). New Dawn Technologies is the Silver Sponsor of the 2013 Court Technology Conference, hosted by the National Center for State Courts September 17-19 in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Bingham family: (from left) Megan, Hunter, Jason, Stacey, Gage, Sierra and Lindsey

In the summer of 2006, 6-year-old Sierra Bingham, niece to two of New Dawn’s employees, was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. This is a condition where the heart weakens, becomes enlarged, and cannot pump blood efficiently. She was transported to Packard Children’s Hospital in California, where she was placed on a transplant list to await a heart. Unless she received a new heart soon, she would die. After a long ordeal, a heart did become available and Sierra became the beneficiary.

In May 2012, Lindsey, Sierra’s 8-year-old little sister, was diagnosed with the same disease. She was flown to the same hospital where Sierra had been treated, and the family’s ordeal began again. Lindsey received a new heart just a few months ago—on Valentine’s Day— and so far is recovering well.

But . . . two heart transplants, the procedures and care leading up to them, and all the medication, testing, and biopsies that will follow throughout their lives don’t come cheap. Nor will transplants and treatment for the other three kids, all of whom show early symptoms of the disease and will need new hearts at some point. The Bingham family is facing monumental health care expenses.

New Dawn Technologies regularly awards community grants to the winners of drawings at our trade shows in lieu of prizes. It’s an honor to award the Binghams, a local family  and a relative of New Dawn employees, with a Community Grant.

The Binghams will be featured on Dateline NBC Wednesday, June 5 at 7 p.m. Mountain time.

Help raise funds while having fun
To help the Binghams, their family and friends are putting on a carnival-style fundraiser, which will include bounce houses, slides, amusement rides, face painting, balloons, a bake sale, silent auctions, and more.

When: Saturday, June 15^th, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Where: Smithfield Central Park (50 N. 50 W., Smithfield, UT—behind the Smithfield Library).

Other ways to help
If you can’t make it to the fundraiser, you can also donate directly by visiting http://www.heartsforbinghams.org. Alternatively, if you would like to assist with the fundraiser (donating time, bake sale items, auction items, etc.), please contact Kelly Campbell at kellysthrivinglife (AT) gmail (DOT) com.

At New Dawn Technologies we care about people. Building communities is something we are passionate about. We know that our JustWare | Solution Suite helps our customers do their jobs more efficiently.

For more than 17 years, New Dawn Technologies has served communities worldwide by providing leading edge web-based, on-premise, and cloud-based case management solutions for governments. We offer the JustWare | Solution Suite case management software, data sharing, e-filing, e-payment, e-discovery, and public access solutions for every type of government agency.

Stay inTouch with New Dawn Technologies: LinkedIn (linkedin.com/company/new-dawn-technologies)  Twitter (@newdawntech), Instagram (@newdawntech), Google+ (http://j.mp/NDTplus) and like us on Facebook (facebook.com/newdawntech)

related author: Eva Gillespie

According to the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Units, Medicaid fraud costs American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

New Dawn Technologies welcomes the West Virginia Medicaid Fraud Control Unit to its ever-expanding list of government customers and justice agencies.

West Virginia MFCU joins similar agencies who are JustWare customers including the Washington DC MFCU, the Kentucky Attorney General Medicaid Fraud Unit and the Louisiana Office of Workers Compensation.

Employees of the West Virginia MFCU will receive training to utilize JustWare’s integrated reporting tools, generation of letters, email tracking and filing as well as automating and organizing skills such as document generation, calendaring, reporting, and note taking—making it less expensive to track Medicaid fraud.

According to the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Units, Medicaid fraud costs American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Following the initial training and implementation phases, JustWare customers receive ongoing support and software updates as well as the opportunity to attend the New Dawn Technologies Training Conference each year. The 2013 conference will be held September 24-27 at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

New Dawn Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Daily Journal Corporation, has been serving communities worldwide for more than 17 years by providing leading edge web-based case management software, public access software, and data sharing solutions for every type of government justice agency.

By developing smart technologies, New Dawn also builds strong communities. New Dawn Technologies serves government customers—from criminal courts to specialty, civil, and municipal courts; attorneys general and county prosecutors to public defenders; community corrections and probation to child, family, and health services. New Dawn’s JustWare | Solution Suite is scalable and flexible enough to use in a single agency or in a large, multi-agency project spanning several states.

For more information on New Dawn Technologies or to schedule a personalized online demonstration, visit us online: www.newdawn.com/demo. Join our community on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/new-dawn-technologies.

You may also wish to follow us on Twitter (@newdawntech), Instagram (@newdawntech), Google+ (http://j.mp/NDTplus) and like us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/newdawntech). New Dawn Technologies is the Silver Sponsor of the 2013 Court Technology Conference, hosted by the National Center for State Courts September 17-19 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Team Winnovation has now finished their ninth season competing and participating in the FIRST Robotics Program, according to Karen Hill, coordinator of the Winnovation team.

“As a high school extra-curricular team, we are changing students’ lives, teaching them about careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, how to operate mills and lathes, and create business plans,” said Karen.

Todd agrees. He selected Winnovation to receive this grant because teams like these offer “opportunities to high school age students to learn about IT, engineering and business practices. Many of these robotics members go on to become our computer and engineering stars of the future.”

More than eighty students have been involved in this program during its nine seasons at Winnebago High School.

At New Dawn Technologies we care about people. Building communities is something we are passionate about. We know that our JustWare | Solution Suite helps our customers do their jobs more efficiently.

For more than 17 years, New Dawn Technologies has served communities worldwide by providing leading edge web-based, on-premise, and cloud-based case management solutions for governments. We offer the JustWare | Solution Suite case management software, data sharing, e-filing, e-payment, e-discovery, and public access solutions for every type of government agency.

We are delighted to donate to Team Winnovation on Todd’s behalf.

Schedule a demo with us to see how our solutions are making communities better, www.newdawn.com/demo.

You may also wish to follow us on Twitter (@newdawntech), Instagram (@newdawntech), Google+ (http://j.mp/NDTplus) and like us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/newdawntech)

Reading day at the Wayne Rotary club, Wayne, MI.

Congratulations to our New Dawn Technologies Community Grant winner Linda Gable, a court administrator with the 29th District Court, Michigan. Linda stopped by the New Dawn Technologies booth at the Michigan Court Managers meeting last week.

We’ll send a donation to the Wayne Rotary Club on Linda’s behalf. The Wayne Rotary Club provides scholarships to high school students, dictionaries to third graders and bedding to a local homeless shelter.

Linda says of her involvement with the Wayne Rotary Club, “I have been an active member for more than six years. I enjoy helping the community.”

Building communities is something we are passionate about at New Dawn Technologies. We know that the job you do each day benefits the community around you. We also know that what makes your life easier at work can make your life easier at home. We develop case management systems that help our customers do more with the time they have. New Dawn Technologies creates smart technologies to make your day more manageable.

We are delighted to donate to the Wayne Rotary Club on Linda’s behalf.

On June 16-22, you’ll find us at the California District Attorneys Association summer meeting in Lake Tahoe, California.

June 18-21, we’ll be exhibitors at the Nevada Judges of Limited Jurisdiction show.

Looking east: on June 19-21, we’ll be in Maryland for the Maryland States Attorneys Association meeting.

Other shows these coming months include the Alabama District Attorneys Association (June 25-28); Florida Association of Community Corrections (July 10-12); the National District Attorneys Association meeting in San Diego (July 13-16); NACM (July 14-18); and American Probation and Parole Annual Training Institute (July 28-31). We’ll also visit county attorneys in Montana in July 17-19.

Be sure to watch for New Dawn Technologies at the Court Technology Conference this September 17-19.

And mark your calendar (or register now!) for our New Dawn Training Conference this September 24-27 in beautiful Logan, Utah. Want more information? Read the blog.

Remember, you may enter to win a donation to the charity of your choice by opting in to our newsletter or visiting our booth during exhibiting hours. We’d love to see you! Opt in here.

When funding opportunities decrease, resources get stretched, and the hats we wear pile up on our heads, it’s important to keep the end goal in mind. Community corrections officers are taking on additional responsibilities as victim service providers.

This new responsibility, discussed in “Enhancing Victim Services in Probation and Parole,” Spring 2013 Perspectives, published by the APPA and written by Carrie Abner, can have a powerful impact for both victims and perpetrators.

In 2011, the APPA learned that in 85 percent of those offices without a dedicated victim services unit, the responsibility to serve victims fell to front-line officers within that agency (51). With more than 32,000 laws that protect the rights of victims (on state, tribal and federal levels), it is the corrections professionals who know the laws in their jurisdictions and own the responsibility for enforcing them.

According to Abner, community corrections officials can combat stretched resources by seeing victims as “clients” of community corrections. “When victims are considered ‘clients’ of community corrections agencies, they are more likely to be kept informed and involved and to receive information about and access to community- and system-based services that can help them in the aftermath of a crime” (53). An officer who shares duties of a probation official and victim services provider can address the needs of victims who might otherwise become lost in a traditional criminal justice system.

It is important to remember that wearing hats and stretching responsibilities is not a new phenomenon. It is, however, pausing important work that was done some years prior. “During the 1990s, the community corrections field made important strides in engaging victims of crime, providing critical victim services throughout the correctional process, and developing partnerships with community-based victim advocates. Recent trends for the community corrections field, however, such as increasing caseloads and workloads, combined with declining budgets, threatened the field’s progress in this area.” (56)

The APPA knows that it is necessary to come up with new and innovative ways to support victims of crimes. It also knows that because of increasing work and caseloads, as well as budget concerns, the strides made in the 1990s in victim services are now no longer progressing as they once were.

The APPA, with funding from the Office for Victims of Crime, provide training and technical help to support those agencies that are supporting victim services as well as probation and corrections. This list of resources includes:

• A curriculum designed to provide information and skills development to front-line community corrections officers
• A series of eight fact sheets focusing on topics related to victims services in probation and parole
• Three webinar sessions dedicated to victim-related issues (recorded and available to view for free on the APPA web site)
• An online training course on the “Role of Community Corrections in Victim Services.” This course provides basic instruction on the impact of crime on victims, key victims’ rights, and community correction obligations for enforcing and implementing the rights of victims. http://appa.cequick.com/The-Role-of-Community-Corrections-in-Serving-Victims.aspx 

As an APPA member, New Dawn Technologies has served communities worldwide for more than 17 years by providing leading edge web-based, on-premise, and cloud-based case management solutions for governments. We offer the JustWare | Solution Suite case management software, data sharing, e-filing, e-payment, e-discovery, and public access solutions for every type of government agency. Visit our booth at the 38th Annual APPA Training Institute in Baltimore, Maryland July 28-31, 2013.

For more information or to schedule a demo, contact us.

for the full article:

“Enhancing victim services in probation and parole” by Carrie Abner