REPORT TO SHASTA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

BOARD MEETING DATE:  March  6, 2018
CATEGORY:  Regular - Law and Justice-3.

SUBJECT:

Integrated Justice System Replacement

Supervisorial District No. :  ALL

DEPARTMENT CONTACT:  Stephanie Bridgett, DA (530)245-6310; Tracie Neal, CPO (530)245-6200; Jeff Gorder, PD (530)245-7560

STAFF REPORT APPROVED BY:  Stephanie Bridgett, District Attorney; Tracie Neal, Chief Probation Officer; Jeff Gorder, PD

RECOMMENDATION

Take the following actions to replace the aging public safety Integrated Justice System (IJS): (1) Receive a presentation about the IJS; (2) waive the formal competitive procurement requirements of Administrative Policy 6-101, Shasta County Contracts Manual and Shasta County Code 3.04.020 “Competitive Procurement” due to limitations on the source of supply and necessary restrictions in specifications, to purchase a new IJS public safety Case Management System; and (3) provide direction to staff.

SUMMARY

The current Integrated Justice System (IJS), a case management system utilizing JALAN software, is over two decades old and is considered a legacy system.  Maintenance on this aging system is inefficient and involves escalating internal costs borne by the District Attorney, Probation, and Public Defender (County Partners).  Shasta County Superior Court (Court), the other major IJS partner, is moving forward with replacement.  Waiving competitive procurement requirements will allow the County Partners to negotiate the purchase of a system that meets all necessary standards.

DISCUSSION

The County Partners have been utilizing JALAN and its associated components for over two decades.  The Sheriff’s Office also utilizes portions of the outdated legacy system via the Integrated Public Safety System (IPSS). On May 2, 2017, the Board approved an agreement for the Sheriff’s Office to partner with the cities of Anderson and Redding for a new replacement system from Spillman Technologies, Inc. at an estimated Sheriff’s Office cost of $1.5 million.  As implementation occurs, there may be additional costs to meet Spillman system requirements and to provide interfacing for integration with systems used by the County Partners and the Court.

The County Partners, Court, and County IT representatives have been meeting sporadically as a group for several years regarding the current IJS and possible replacement.  The Court is the current “lead” for IJS and has its own IJS analysts and programmers to administer and maintain the current IJS used by the Court and County Partners. The County Partners contribute funds monthly to the Court for Court IJS staff and services/supplies for ongoing maintenance and support of the IJS.  County IT staff has been handling some County requests for IJS reports and is familiar with the ongoing challenges associated with the aging system.

In October 2015, the Court IJS contact indicated that the Court was interested in exploring options regarding the current IJS.  The County Partners, Court, and County IT representatives began meeting again on a regular basis.  In addition, the County Partners and County IT met frequently to discuss County options. 

Research by the County Partners and County IT included obtaining and refining a master list of what public safety case management systems are being used in other counties, visiting other counties who have “in-house” systems (created in-house by county IT or modified versions of other products), participating in various vendor demonstrations, and requesting information from other counties.  The following summarizes the options which were explored.

Option 1: Maintain Current IJS – This is not a feasible option due to the age/customization of the current IJS and is not an option when the Court moves forward with a new system:

• It is not a supportable platform and lacks reliable system processing.
• Over two decades, the Court has had to apply so many customizing modifications to the code, that the original vendor does not have the capacity to support Shasta’s IJS.
• The system requires a distinct requirement of specific RPG programing (Report Program Generator a IBM proprietary coding language) knowledge.  Due to this programming language being antiquated, it is not feasible to expect to hire programmers.  As recently as 2013, the Sheriff’s Office was unsuccessful in seeking programmers for the IPSS (a piece is also JALAN software).   
• It is not user friendly due to its aged “green screen” and exhaustive amount of steps in order to function appropriately; it lacks operational process efficiency.
• State and Federal organizations continue to require detailed statistics, especially from Probation and the District Attorney’s Office, for grant opportunities and other funding formulas. Additionally, managers and supervisors require daily statistics in order to oversee and balance caseloads.  A significant amount of staff time and other resources is needed to hand-count data or attempt to program the code to produce the requested information for revenue opportunities. 
• If the local Court moves forward with a new system without County, the County Partners will have no computer system as, due to customization and integration of the current IJS, the County “pieces” cannot be separated from the Court “pieces.”  Without a new system the District Attorney’s Office will not be able to function in its current state.  Basic activities like charging and filing a case or generating subpoenas will all have to be done manually requiring a significant amount of additional staff that would far exceed the cost of a new system.

Option 2: Obtain an “In-house” System from Another County – This is not a feasible option due to the reality of the lack of IT programmers available to support and maintain it.

• If Shasta obtained an “in-house” system from another county, our County IT would have to hire programmers to support and maintain the system.  The reality is that such programmers are difficult to recruit/hire/sustain.  This would create an unstable system environment. 

• Systems designed by other counties are customized to specific business processes which may not be the same as Shasta’s processes.

• Research did not yield an “in-house” system for the combination of District Attorney, Probation, Public Defender, and Court.

Option 3: Purchase “Off the Shelf” Case Management System – This is the most feasible and in County’s best interest for the long term.

• In August 2017, our local Court, partnering with nine other California courts, released an RFP to further identify a short list of four State-approved vendors to provide a replacement court case management system. 

• Our local Court is moving forward with replacing their case management system and is choosing a vendor product which won’t work for County’s best interest because:

  • The product does not contain a separate probation module and does not include a custody module. The probation module is part of the Court module, which would require Probation to continue to rely on the Courts for system administration.  Further, it would require the Probation Department to separate from the other County Partners. This would cost more in integration with the Court, Law Enforcement, and the rest of the County Partners.

  • The Attorney module is one year to one year and a half from going live.  They currently have an outdated Windows-based product.  The current product does not meet the District Attorney’s needs to go paperless.

  • The vendor has not developed their attorney case management system for a California law office, which would require more time in design and implementation.

• The County Partners and County IT have participated in several demonstrations to review available vendor products.  The County Partners have determined that Journal Technologies, Inc. provides a product in the County’s best interest because:

  • Journal Technologies contains a specific module for each of the County Agencies and are integrated with each other.

  • Journal Technologies has a long history in California and working with the Courts, District Attorney’s Offices, Probation Departments and Public Defenders offices.

  • After an evaluation of numerous other case management systems, The Journal Technologies products best meets the needs of each agency out of the box.

To ensure integration capabilities, the County Partners, Court, and County IT will work collaboratively on a combined implementation plan.  In order to exercise this option, the County Partners respectfully request that the Board waive the formal competitive procurement requirements of Administrative Policy 6-101, Shasta County Contracts Manual and Shasta County Code 3.04.020 to purchase a new IJS public safety case management system. 

ALTERNATIVES

The Board may direct staff to conduct additional activities related to replacing the IJS.

OTHER AGENCY INVOLVEMENT

Due to the business need for successful interfacing, integration, and collaboration, the County Partners have involved the Executive Officer of the Shasta County Superior Court and Shasta County Sheriff in discussions about this replacement opportunity.  The Support Services, Purchasing Division has reviewed the recommendation.  The Chief Information Officer supports the recommendation.  The recommendation has been reviewed by the County Executive Officer and County Chief Financial Officer.

FINANCING

A minimum of $750,000 of the Sheriff’s Office cost to replace the aging IPSS came from public safety reserves (comprised of unused Proposition 172, Public Safety General Purpose Reserves, and General Fund, which fall to public safety reserves fund balances to support future operations).  It is anticipated that public safety reserves would also fund the IJS replacement.  However, this is dependent upon also having sufficient reserves or other resources to support ongoing costs of the public safety departments.  The Sheriff’s Office also utilized AB 109 and Homeland Security Grant funds for the IPSS replacement.  At this time, AB 109 revenue and reserves are being utilized for various programs, services, and numerous staff to reduce recidivism and are subject to use approval by the Community Corrections Partnership Executive Committee.

For FY 2017-18, the County Partners contribute $365,340 to the Court for maintenance and support of the IJS.  Ideally, once a new system is in place and the old system is gone, these funds can be used instead for annual maintenance, licensing, and support of the new system.  However, this depends on the decisions made during the transition and implementation of the new system.  Although it’s difficult to quantify operational savings, the DA estimates a potential savings of $200,000 annually due to the efficiencies provided by a new system after its full implementation.  While actual cost savings are not anticipated for the Probation Department the efficiencies gained by a new system and the ability to better track case management of offenders will allow officers to spend more time working with offenders which will in turn increase community supervision, offender accountability, and referrals to treatment services.    

The one-time estimate to replace IJS using the Journal Technologies, Inc. product is $638,250, but the County plans to negotiate to pay this over time to the vendor.  The information from the vendor at this time is that there is no payment due at the time of signing the agreement.  The County Partners will explore other financing options with the Auditor-Controller and County Chief Financial Officer.  There is also an estimated $210,000 in license and maintenance fees which would become an annual cost as with any software/hardware system. Additionally, a one-time estimated cost range is $70,000 to $100,000 for County IT involvement to implement the system for District Attorney, Probation, and Public Defender. The ongoing estimated cost range, including District Attorney, Probation, and Public Defender for County IT involvement is $45,000 to $60,000.  The final costs are unknown until agreement negotiations are completed and an agreement is brought to the Board in the future for consideration.  There is no additional General Fund impact associated with this recommendation as costs associated with negotiating an agreement are included in the affected departments’ FY 2017-18 Adopted Budgets.