Challenge: The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) is a regional planning organization covering seven northeastern Illinois counties, including Cook County. Among its responsibilities, CMAP is charged with transportation planning and programming for the region. As part of that work, and as required by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA), the agency needs to capture and submit its traffic crash reports to NHTSA. CMAP had built up a backlog of 200,000 crash reports; its in-house data entry resources were unable to keep pace.

Solution: CMAP decided to outsource the data entry project and selected TDEC as its contract partner. TDEC staff successfully completed Illinois state background checks and were trained on the Illinois Department of Transportation’s (IDOT) Crash Information System (CIS) platform. Crash records of all types, both simple and complex, are loaded into CIS by IDOT. Reports involving a tractor trailer are prioritized, and any crash records involving fatalities are returned to the state queue rather than processed by TDEC. Work was completed by end of the period of performance.

Results: TDEC completely cleared the backlog before the contract’s end date. Anne Hillen, IDOT Traffic Statistics Manager, commended TDEC’s work: “They have done a fantastic job of eliminating the backlog and since October 2018 have coded over 196,000 reports and effectively diminished our backlog significantly. We could not have accomplished this feat without their assistance.” TDEC then continued working with CMAP to tackle the current year’s backlog.