(a) (1) It is the intent of the Legislature to create a workable system of criminal justice data transparency whereby law enforcement prosecution agencies will gather complete, accurate, and timely data in a uniform format, and make that data available to the public in a modern, open, electronic format that is machine-readable and readily accessible through an application program interface. In order that meaningful discussions can occur regarding criminal justice and its most challenging issues, including those regarding criminal caseloads, plea bargaining, race, mass incarceration, equity, and homelessness, the Legislature finds that it is an important state interest to implement a data collection, aggregation, and publishing process for criminal prosecutions to promote criminal justice data transparency. This data would be comprised of publishable statistics and other data from statewide prosecution offices. This section shall be referred to as the Justice Data Accountability and Transparency Act, âthe Act,â or âJDATA.â (2) It is the intent of the Legislature to create a reliable and robust methodology that is consistent county-to-county so that statewide data and trends may be accurately tracked. Further, the legislation shall set low technological and resource barriers so that every affected office may meaningfully participate to the fullest intent of this article. (3) The expediency and accuracy of the data is best served by the Department of Justice as a single data aggregator and repository unit. The participation of the department as the final point of collection, aggregation, and publishing of this data is more efficient, will ensure the uniformity and accuracy of the data, and, by providing the technological resources and aggregation and publication of all data, will allow offices that lack adequate technology or resources to comply with the mandate. As used in this paragraph, technological resources means providing the basic systems and support necessary to receive the case data described in this article in standard formats from prosecution agencies statewide and aggregate that data using appropriate means developed by the department, and then publish the data in a format that will allow users to easily navigate and access the data they require, for example, on an internet website. (b) (1) The department shall have the following objectives and mandate: (A) Collection of the data described in subdivision (e), hereinafter referred to as data elements, within the timeframes described in this section from all state and local prosecutor offices that prosecute misdemeanors or felonies or both, including county district attorney offices, city attorney offices, and the Attorney General, hereinafter referred to as agencies. Collection of data elements includes providing cooperation and assistance to participating agencies and developing consistent and clear guidelines for how agencies are to define data elements transmitted to the department. The department shall develop consistent definitions and formats for data elements to ensure success of comparing metrics created using said data elements between jurisdictions. (B) Transmission of data elements, defined as the method designated by the department for the participating agency to provide collected data elements to the department. (C) Aggregation of data elements, defined as collecting data elements gathered from multiple agencies in such a way that they can support metrics, defined as the combination of data elements used to track outcomes on any given process or decision point, developed by the department, that may be compared between jurisdictions. (D) Development of metrics, defined as using industry-appropriate methods and technology and cooperation with participating agencies to create accurate, actionable, and digestible metrics using data elements submitted by the agencies. The methods implemented must ensure that the metrics developed can be compared betwee
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