Travis County Commssioners Court
September 23, 2003
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Item 10
Item 10, approval 12-month extension to contract number 02 t 002940 j evercom systems.
>> good morning. What you have before you is theist-month suspension with evercom and the extension will cover the inmate telephone services as well as pay phones for Travis County. On the inmate services, we get about -- not about, we get 1.5 million. A guaranteed annual commission that is generated by the inmate and pay phone services from evercom. We also get 27% of monthly commissions on pay phones which comes to about $700 a year. In addition to that, because of the new funded bond contract with the state, evercom contributes 6900 per month. About 82,000 plus per year. And they also provide 25,000 for part-time liaisons with the sheriffs to help manage the contract n the last year that we've had the contract, the contract has an option for -- a four year with one year options. This will be the first renewal. In the last year, we have had some issues with evercom. I think there is someone from the sheriff's office to discuss that with you. But we also have as part of the memorandum to you, if you look at the first page of the memorandum from joe harlow to cyd grimes in the middle of the page it talks about tasks that we will require of evercom to be completed by January 31st of next year. And they are rollout voice authentication throughout the complex. Confirm that the voice authentication does not allow for another inmate to use an inmate's end, and then echo is operational, and new three-way calling is optional.
>> what is echo?
>> echo -- i.t.s. Division manager. Echo is a product that evercom has that allows the investigators to put in words, you know, like kill and bang, and when that phrase comes up and highlights that conversation, sends the information to the investigator. Then they can either jump on that call immediately or check it out.
>> okay. Thank you.
>> those are tasks that I was saying that we are raoeufrg evercom to -- requiring evercom to complete by January 31st. If for whatever reason they are unable to complete, even though we do believe that they will be able to to comply with these terms, we will at that time come back to this court and request we go out for another r.f.p. Or inmate cell phone services. The process for developing an r.f.p. For inmate telephone services, just the evaluation, the process of putting it together, is really quite timely. Most of you have been here while we've gone through two of these contracts, so they are very time consuming. So we are going to place special attention on this particular contract. It is a good revenue generator and we want it to succeed. So that is the information before you, and I don't know whether the captain has anything else to say.
>> captain willie krebs, sheriff's office. We had some issues with the voice authentication a couple months ago when it was first initiated, but since then, most of the issues have been resolved and the system appears to be working. We have about 50% of the facilities at del valle on the system now. And with the activation of the remaining within the next two weeks, the only issue that we need to look at is the system now is in default paths where there's no phone calls rejected. But once that is turned off, then we'll get a true count of what the system is doing. But so far right now it's -- all the problems have been resolved and the system appears to be working fine.
>> we also have a representative from purchasing if you have anything of him.
>> [inaudible].
>> recommendation is to approve the extension.
>> yes, sir.
>> no objection from the sheriff's office. I assume that this discussion is about [indiscernible] the need to address the full issues that are set out in the memo by January 31st of '04.
>> yes.
>> and does evercom agree these four are doable within that time period?
>> yes. We have three times a week conference calls with them. I have expressed these are the pour u. Four items we're going to require that you do before January and they don't have a problem with that.
>> I move approval.
>> second.
>> any more discussion? By staff or court. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it.
>> thank you.
Last Modified: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 7:52 AM