………… and the survey says:

Background: InfoNet is the data collection system used by victim service agencies across the state. It is jointly maintained by Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) and the Office of Crime Victims Advocacy (OCVA) within the Department of Commerce.  A steering committee meets regularly to prioritize enhancements and bug fixes for InfoNet.  More and more, we have heard from agencies wanting the ability to upload information into InfoNet.  This is especially relevant to agencies that report data into multiple systems.  In an effort to better understand this need, OCVA sent a survey on the subject to InfoNet users on May 7, 2019. 

First thing is to extend a huge thank you to everyone that participated in the InfoNet Survey.  Within the first 24 hours, there were a lot of responses. Over the next couple of weeks, there were responses from 64% of the agencies using InfoNet.  61 % of the agencies responding to the survey report they are using data collection systems required by other funders in addition to InfoNet.

Overall, most seem to be satisfied with InfoNet regardless of how long they have been using it.  The average time spent working in InfoNet each week is four hours.  This number is undoubtedly affected by the agencies that have full time data entry staff so the the median and mode are better indicators of user experiences.  The median time spent per week working in InfoNet is two hours and the mode is one hour.

In addition to questions about integrating multiple data collection systems, the survey gave space for more generalized InfoNet feedback. Many users provided comments clarifying their responses, which has been especially helpful. The suggestions for improving InfoNet overall mostly fell into the categories of:

• User Experience / Interface – change labels, views, navigation.
• Reports – adding new reports and changing existing ones.
• Electronic Data Interchange – transmitting data electronically rather than manually.
• System function – lagging, speed, timing out problems.

Next steps will be meet with the InfoNet Steering Committee and the Department of Commerce IT department to determine possible paths forward to provide agencies the ability to upload their data if they wish, rather than manually enter the data. After that a project plan will be developed and more information will be made available to the agencies using InfoNet.