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6. Program Management
Good program management produces effective programs. Planning, coordination, communication and cooperation are especially important for impaired driving activities that involve many different parties.

State and community impaired driving program management systems should have an established process for managing problem identification, program planning and control and evaluation activities.

Program management system should:

• Provide resources for Safe Community programs, state and local task forces, data analysis and funding;
• Facilitate planning and coordination of activities with other agencies involved in impaired driving programs, such as the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP) and state justice programs; and
• Expand existing partnerships, such as with the health and medical communities and other local, non-profit groups.

A. Planning
States and communities should develop and implement an overall strategic plan for all impaired driving activities.

The plan should:

• Be based on problem identification using key data, including: crash data, driver record date, arrest data, trauma registry data, court data and parole and probation records; and
• Assure potential measures are employed that address the state and community impaired driving issues.

B. Program Control
States and communities should establish procedures to ensure that program activities are implemented as intended. The procedures should provide for systematic monitoring and review of ongoing programs to:

• Detect and correct problems quickly;
• Measure progress in achieving established goals and objectives and modify goals and objectives where applicable; and
• Ensure that appropriate data are collected for evaluation.

C. Safe Communities and other State and Local Task Forces
Community-based programs provide the greatest opportunity to address the specialized problems experienced by individual communities. States can encourage the development of state and community impaired driving task forces and Safe Community programs in an effort to support state-identified problems and program goals.

States should:

• Provide data, technical assistance, materials, resources and training to communities interested in developing a Safe Communities program and/or a community impaired driving task force or program;
• Aggressively market the Safe Communities program to communities interested in health, safety and quality of life issues;
• Promote the Safe Communities program to other state organizations and educate and engage their members and constituencies about the program;
• Educate communities about the impaired driving problem and about the wide range of solutions that can be employed by communities; and
• Ensure that these groups include traditional and non-traditional partners, such as law enforcement, local government, business, education, community groups, public health, medical, prosecutorial, judicial and other groups.

D. Data and Records
States and communities are encouraged to establish and maintain records systems for crashes, arrests, dispositions, driver licenses and vehicle registrations. DWI tracking systems are an important source of information on every driver arrested for DWI to prospectively determine the disposition of the case and compliance with sanctions. States that have developed Crash Outcome Data Evaluation Systems (CODES) are encouraged to expand their CODES-linked crash and injury outcome data to include citation/conviction, DWI tracking systems, driver licensing and vehicle registration data. With this expanded linkage, states can retrospectively compare the consequences of crashes involving impaired and non-impaired drivers and evaluate the effectiveness of various enforcement and legislative countermeasures over time in terms of injury severity and healthcare costs. To adequately support state and local efforts, record systems should be:

• Accurate;
• Timely;
• Able to be linked to each other; and
• Readily accessible to law enforcement, courts and state and community highway safety program planners.

E. Evaluation
All impaired driving system activities should be evaluated regularly to ensure that programs are effective, that scarce resources are allocated appropriately and to ensure the activities are meeting the objectives of the strategic plan. The evaluation should be:

• Designed to use available traffic records and other injury control data systems effectively;
• Included in initial program planning to ensure that appropriate data are available and that adequate resources are allocated; and
• Conducted regularly.

Evaluation results should be reported regularly to project and program managers and used to guide further program activities.

F. Funding
Funding is essential to any program. Funds allocated to impaired driving programs should be:

• Adequate for program needs;
• Steady — from dedicated sources; and
• To the extent possible, paid by the impaired drivers themselves. The programs should work toward self-sufficiency.