Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI)

Fingerprint Background Check
Web Development

Project Description

The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction administers an employee background check program for schools across the state. Fingerprint scans are taken at school district offices and sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to verify employee eligibility. OSPI receives about one hundred emails from the FBI in response to these checks each day. It was difficult for OSPI to keep-up with the workload. Getting the data from each e-mail and entering it into OSPI’s database—an essential part of the program—was a manual process that took about five minutes per e-mail. Cayzen was selected to solve this problem.

Project Deliverables and Tasks

Cayzen approached this challenge using two developers to address two key components. The first included the development of a flexible and configurable application compatible with Washington State Patrol (WSP) files that receives e-mail submittals and parses their contents into a database for data management and reporting. The second component converted a FileMaker Pro database into a SQL database using a Web-based architecture to provide needed reports back to the schools. Specifically, Cayzen:

• Created a secure C# .Net Web Service for querying and returning WSP and FBI fingerprint results.
• Enhanced an existing SQL Server 2005 database to add RAP sheet tables and fields.
• Created a C# ASP.Net Web application with corresponding C# Business Objects for data entry and querying of fingerprint and RAP sheet that integrates with Active Directory.
• Created a scheduled process to replicate newly added fingerprint data from one SQL Server 2005 database to another.
• Created a data cleansing and migration process to import fingerprint and RAP sheet data.
• Read and parsed FBI fingerprint result detail e-mails and saved RAP sheet data to SQL Server.
• Ensured that all code meets OSPI development and security standards.

Technologies

The technologies included Visual Studio 2003/2005, ASP.Net, C#, SQL Server 2000/2005, JavaScript, Web Services, SOAP, XML, and Visual Source Safe.

Project Outcomes and Results

A job that once took several hours each day, now takes place automatically—in seconds, saving staff time, and increasing efficiency and customer response time. The system works so well that several other states are turning to OSPI to learn more about their project.