Travis County Commssioners Court
January 27, 2004
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Item 15
15. Consider and take appropriate action on update on the fully automated case tracking system (facts) component of the integrated justice system. I have the team director and Ron shore, the team director and project manager for the integrated justice system fully automatic mated -- automated court tracking system, a technology system we are installing in the courts to make all of the information fully integrated with law enforcement and the courts. And in November we came to the court and told you that we would come on a monthly basis to update you on the progress of the facts system. We are in the home stretch. The system should be fully implemented by August or early fall of this year. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to judy and joe.
>> we just want to give you a overall project status and tell you about some of the accomplishments that we have made since the last time we reported to the court. Some time line considerations and issue that's we have. I will let Ron give you the overall status.
>> I'm Ron [indiscernible] the project manager for the facts implementation. I guess first of all, to date we've had 593 technical service requests, what we call tsr's, problem or issue statements defined by either the end user or ourselves .we document them with the vendor and they in turn provide some type of [indiscernible] may be anything as simple as a date change to as complex as incorrectly computing some types of balances. To give you an idea, 90% of those have been completed to date. 534 are done and over with. We still have 59 globally open across all of the different entities. Tiburon is working with us day by day to resolve those. As you are probably aware of, facts has a very complex accounting basis. We have been very fortunate to have a person contributing to our team from the auditor's office. As you are aware, a full accrual based accounting system also known as gas intee 34 -- gasb 34. What it really means we feed to be able to identify as an -- at an agency level a receivable balance at any point in time and monthly be able to produce the financial documents to go with it. Facts version 7 is presently only available in Travis County. And that's primarily because of its gasb 34 implication. Most other users of this product are using it still in a very simplistic cash accounting format. What this means to us is we are hitting. We are the first ones really hitting a lot of significant problems. As we go through our sequence of tests or even sequence of events, if we change them, we make take a different path through the system and hit an area that we have never touched before. Those are the types of problems that we are finding today.
>> I want to just jump in here and say that just -- just to relate tt to -- to something maybe that you have experienced, is if you go from windows '98 to windows 2,000, you will see a difference in functionality but you also will have different errors that you might find and report to the help desk. Same thing goes on with software even though this is application software. We are in version 7 since we are the only ones it would be like microsoft corporation saying we are going to give the county our next version of microsoft. Similar to that. Probably not quite as robust as microsoft. But we are going through those issues.
>> let me -- let me talk about that complexity of the accounting for a second. Basically facts had accounting structure in there for a cash basis and the accounting functions that we had in the county prior to the gasb 34 changes we didn't even really have to track assets other than know where they are or depreciation, didn't have to do [indiscernible] accounting or anything of that. So what's happened is tiburon has with the help of our audit staff here, redefined the accounting throughout the system. So that's, the fact that we are the first to do it, that's why we are having so many issue was the accounting piece of it. We are working through those. I feel confident that we will get to the ends of it.
>> to help resolve some of those issues the first of this year we have started a new process calling netmeetings, holding a face-to-face conversation with them using the product, seeing exactly screen by screen, function by function what we are doing. When those individuals are in salt lake city, we are in Austin. They see the same -- they see the screens as we see them so we can walk through processes or problems and very quickly cut to the chase so we don't have to spend end numerous amounts of time seeing how we got there. We found netmeetings to be very, very beneficial.
>> when will you be able to go -- you are looking at texdot and stuff like that. When will we actually be able to look at a live situation. All of the intgreated pieces in here in compliance and does meet the standards of what we are trying to do to satisfy everything. I see August is a completion date, but is that the accurate time that you are suggesting, that would ensure all of the necessary --
>> I have some new target dates. I will just interject that right now.
>> all right, thank you.
>> originally our target date was I believe 112 as a go-live date. We have moved that now to 3/8. The reason is because of these issue that's we are still having. And we are down to the point where we only have 32 -- 32 unique items, 25 financial, 7 non-financial open. For the first court which is the district criminal.
>> all right.
>> once we resolve those issues, we will be able to go into what we call our functional acceptance test which runs three weeks. Then we will do our conversion and go live. We feel that we should be able to make and he and he if we don't come up with major new issues we should be able to make that date up March 8th as a goal if not prior to that.
>> okay.
>> okay.
>> thank you. That answers my question.
>> well, our current focus is on the district clerk's criminal implementation. We are trying to consolidate on one entity, get it up, get it running. As you know, there's four divisions that are going to be going to facts, district clerk, county clerks, jp's, probate. One area, district clerk criminal we are pursuing so we don't have to fight on four fronts simultaneously. We are trying to focus on one. Once we eliminate -- once we resolve the issues there, 90, 95% of those issues carry over into the next entities. Under our project accomplishments, the district, we have completed the district criminal and civil financial table development. We have a couple of -- of corrections that need to be made because of tsr's that are upcoming. We have completed the district criminal and civil case related tables, which run the case side. District criminal conversion. We have actually, we feel that it's production ready. We have valve dated the case -- validated the case data, the financial data, what we are doing the first week of February, next week, we are doing a trial run converting the district criminal both financial case data into the production area to prove to ours that's we can accomplish it over the two days that we feel that we need to have, which is a weekend. We will review those financial results with the auditor's office to make sure that they also agree that our dollars match penny for penny. We have been working with the j.d. Libd testing prefills and contributions, we do have a couple of tsr's remain thing that area. The web browser, the internet graphical user interface for case and financial data, primarily going to be used for public inquiry, that is tested and ready to go. We have completed 33 specialized operational crystal reports for the district criminal component. We have completed nine financial crystal reports for the district criminal and civil. We have got roughly 12 remaining. The district criminal user documentation is production ready. Couple of minor changes because of tsr's. The district criminal and civil financial documentation is 85% completed, we have a few operational processes that need to be taken care of. In talking of operational processes, we are down to four. Two financial processes remain in the district clerk's office, that's [indiscernible] restraining orders and two non-financial which are the expunctions and the non-disclosure implication between the order and j.d. Ilidb, removing it from there. Interactive case forms generally production ready. We have implemented and put in place all of pc hardware printers, windows 2000 software in place ready to go.
>> the only other thing that I would want to add to that is the 90 day review period that we just previously had. And finished. Is -- we have -- we believe that we have increased communication, we've had 20 plus reviews of the case management system. Out of that the user community and the project team did -- did initiate some tsr's that are now 90% complete of the one that's we have gotten. We had the facts assistance request form that was online. We had -- we have resolved all of those requests with the exception of one. And -- and that is one that -- that has to do with -- with the p.c. Configuration in the county clerk's area. So we are still working on that. We are -- we are publishing the next newsletter is ready to go out by the end of next week. That communication line I believe has increased, wheef several meetings -- we've had several meetings, joe and I have met with the j.p., A couple of j.p.'s, we have met with the strict clerk as well as the county -- district clerk as well as the county clerk. We are focusing on district as Ron said because that's our first court. One the things that Ron mentioned is once we get the financials solid and that's kind of where I think we all are is that unless the financials are accurate, then really we don't want to -- to have a time line drive us because we want to present you with an accurate financial functional system. Because we certainly don't want to bring something up prematurely. We've had to do that before because of y 2 k, we don't want to do that again.
>> I guess my point, though, even with that statement that you made, as far as the financial system is concerned, you want to make sure that the auditor has submitted all of the necessary financial transactions, all of those things to make sure what we are testing and what we are looking at. I just wants to make sure in other words [indiscernible] can't make this August deadline, make sure all of the financials are taken care of. Looking at the task data, before we go live, make sure that everybody is in the same pot.
>> yes, sir.
>> then that's my concern.
>> beth blankenship from the auditor's office just stepped up here.
>> we have a very detailed test plan we have been going through, we are addressing not only the gasb 34 issues, reporting requirements for the auditor's office, but also a lot of these tsr's that are still open from the financial standpoint are die day to day operational things for the offices, doing receipts being able to make payments to other entities who serve warrants for us, things like that. So we have a very detailed plan, we will not sign-off on the system until it's operating correctly.
>> thank you.
>> I have questions but I will give them to you later.
>> thank you, sir.
>> thank you, motion by Commissioner Gomez to recess to 1:30.
>> second.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Of the three people here.
Last Modified: TUesday, January 28, 2004 6:44 AM