The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs (ADECA), the state's SAA, initially contacted the NCJA Program Manager on October 25, 2017 to request information about training and technical assistance available under the Strategic Planning TTA Project. The Project Manager followed up the following day to discuss current planning efforts and needs for navigating the strategic planning process. The SAA indicated an interest in a new approaching to plan development and to gather more information in-person. The SAA currently offers live training on grant writing to subrecipients at the issuance of each RFP (most agencies lack grant writing staff). On October 30, 2017 the NCJA and SAA teams discussed working more collaboratively with their Department of Public Health and Human Services on treatment courts, etc. There was no overarching plan. There was previous administrative priority to build prisons. The Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) started with the Department of Corrections but the SAA is not connected to all of the work. And, while they have a good relationship with the state's statistical analysis center (SAC), they do not often work together.
On November 13, 2017, the NCJA staff had a conference call with Brian Forster, Bill Whatley, and other ADECA program staff to discuss previous TTA support provided by the NCJA. For 20 years, Byrne JAG has funded drug task forces (DTF). The state issued a limited RFP related to Prevention, Equipment and Specialty Courts, but received very few responses from any other group beyond the DTF respondents. At this stage we conducted a review of the state's strategic plan.
Brian Forster, Progam Supervisor, submitted a formal online TTA request on February 7, 2018. The NCJA Program followed up with information and resources, including information about regional strategic planning trainings to be held in 2018 (one in Tampa in April, one in Ft. Worth in July, and one in Minneapolis in September; AL SAA staff attended the two-day training in Ft. Worth, Texas).
The NCJA staff and Forster held a conference call to discuss the development of a stakeholder engagement survey to help ADECA identify the re: stakeholder engagement surveys. The state anticipated holding several town hall-style meetings beginning in January, 2019, and hoped to have the data available to inform these meetings. The NCJA Program Manager provided a pool of questions from which to develop the survey and made recommendations for additional content, based on state need. In October and November, 2018, the NCJA staff worked with the AL SAA team to refine the questionnaire and turn it into an online survey, which launched on November 5, 2018 and closed on December 31, 2018. The NCJA will analyze the data and prepare a summary report for the AL SAA.
The NCJA Program Manager reached out to the SAA on December 7, 2018; the ADECA has a tentative onsite visit planned for mid-January 2019. A call with partners was recommended to to identify meeting goals for this meeting and confirm onsite dates. Dates for the onsite visit were confirmed on January 2.
The TTA Project Manager and SAA team held a conference call on Feburary 13, 2019 to discuss onsite planning and agenda development. The SAA wanted to host a series of focus goups to inform broadening resource allocation. NCJA would help facilitate the first two focus groups and "train the trainer" to take over after that. Additional conversations were held in early March to refine the agenda and focus group priorities. The TTA Project Assistant would take notes.
On May 28, 2019 an MOU was developed for JAG PMT data utilization pilot project and circulated among the partners. On June 3, team discussion of data collection needs for the JAG PMT data project. Each partner will provide a data set for analysis. In addition, the TTA Project Manasger and SAA followed up on the schedule for upcoming focus groups.
On June 20, the SAA team was provided with an executed MOU for the data visualization project . In addition, the SAA was provided with a copy of summary notes from Focus Groups conducted on March 5 - 6, 2019. These notes were recorded remotely via cell phone, so information was limited.
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