During the 2019 regular session of the Virginia General Assembly, bipartisan legislation (SB 1669, Vogel; HB 2576, Krizek) amended the Code of Virginia to create a statewide Sex Trafficking Response Coordinator position (“the coordinator”) within the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services
(DCJS). The purpose and responsibilities of the position are articulated in Va. Code § 9.1-116.5. Among other duties, the coordinator is required to produce a report summarizing relevant prior-year activities and making recommendations for addressing human trafficking in the Commonwealth, as needed, to the Governor and General Assembly of Virginia on an annual basis (§ 9.1-116.5(C)). The team supported the Sex Trafficking Response Coordinator in their daily data reporting needs and creating advanced analytics to support regulatory reporting as mandated by state requirements.
As noted in the 2021 annual report, the highly decentralized nature of trafficking-related data collection presents a challenge to the ability of stakeholders at all levels, including the coordinator, to clearly understand what is happening in the trafficking landscape and create data-driven strategies and services in response. The coordinator previously recommended creating a comprehensive, unified statewide data collection system for human trafficking in order to address this challenge and ensure strategic direction, services, and decisions about the allocation of state and local resources are as informed as
possible. Progress has been made in this area through the creation of a data platform called Virginia’s Analytics System for Trafficking (VAST).
The creation of VAST in spring 2022, roughly midway through the pilot phase
for the VAST platform, which took place between late January and early June 2022. The team and the coordinator worked during the pilot phase to identify and import appropriate datasets, primarily sourced from other state agencies, to develop initial data dashboards. The project was fully launched within 6 months of the start date and the users were receiving automated-daily emails identifying missing children.
Identifying and importing data from pilot agencies represented a significant undertaking given cross-agency differences in variables, collection methods, and collection intervals. The initial dashboards within the VAST system include the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) overview dashboard for Virginia, the Missing Children Dashboard, and the Eastern Shore Police Incident dashboard. Ongoing efforts seek to integrate historical data from VDSS (beginning in 2019) about human trafficking assessments conducted as a component of Child Protective Services investigations.
The full report can be found here:
social informants solutions 
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