Travis County Commissioners Court
June 20, 2006
Item 9
9. Consider and take appropriate action on funding source options for $247,658 for phase one of the electronic citations project for Travis County. We discussed this item last week. And really approved the project but did not approve the source of funding. For the $247,658, we did ask staff to huddle, look at the various options and bring those back to us today f. There was agreement to let us know. If not agreement, let us know that, too.
>> judge, I think the court has the memo on the funding option and I would never presume to speak for p.b.o. But.
>> oh, go ahead.
>> I do think >> [laughter] this project has been through a lot of discussion review and -- and I think barbara bimbry is here to kind of represent the j.p.'s point of view which you haven't I think heard yet.
>> as far as I know, I think that everything is agreed to on the funding.
>> okay.
>> hi, judge. Thank you. Well, yes, here comes everybody else. Thank you for allowing me to be here to speak this morning. I am judge barbara bimbry, judge evans is probably watching us on television since he can walk across the street if necessary. We have met and talked about this. We are aware of this new program as of last year. Now that it's gone from a $400,000 request from our technology funds to only $40,000, we do not have an issue with -- with partial funding. The only reason that I'm here is to remind everybody that when it comes to this kind of program, that affects our courts, that we should be a party of interest. When -- when these negotiations take place. And -- and to remind you all that -- that the whole emphasis, when it comes to -- to recommendation for our court is that it will provide efficiency in entering the tickets. I would like the court to keep in mind that -- that while we would have some up front efficiency, if it increases the number of citations by being efficient for the officers, then we will see that picking up on the back end of having more citations in the court. In terms of processing, more phone calls, more mail, more trials, more et cetera. So we recommend that we pilot the program, but that we keep an eye out for -- for the effect on the courts in terms of the number of citations, et cetera, coming in.
>> just remind me, roughly then I know we have figures going all over you know in our head. What percentage of people that whenever they get a citation, from you in precinct 2, has to deal with -- with just take -- I mean, is that I forget is that 70% of the --
>> just pay.
>> just say you get a citation, you --
>> I wish.
>> what percentage.
>> probably about 20 to 25%. Then you have 33% as we remember from fta, go to warrant next door. All of the people in the middle. That call the court, that mail the court that plead not guilty that do dsc in some -- you know, some comply and don't, deferrals and some comply and don't. So it's all that interim folks that are actively involved in their cases that provide the majority of work for the court.
>> so you got 20 to 25% that do. 30 to 33% that really just blow it off completely. So that leaves you, you know, around 40 to 45% that really actively get you engaged where you -- where you really have to take on that --
>> that's the thing -- what would you -- how many citations would you roughly think that would come potentially if all of them came your way in precinct 2? I mean --
>> well, that's a little hard to -- to predict at this particular moment. Which is why I was saying let's pilot and keep an eye out for it. Because we knew that traditionally speaking, in my precinct, we range anywhere from 28 to 30,000 cases.
>> a year?
>> yeah.
>> about 21 to 22 of them traffic, then nine or 10,000 of them non-traffic for theft and all of that kind of stuff. Now, in the fall, we already went through the 10 new officers project where then we predicted that based on the number of tickets and the number of officers in my back yard, that one would probably go up to 40,000 because they had issues in terms of getting all of those people on board, getting them trained. Of course when you are training somebody it slows down the trainer as well as the trainee. Some of them were filling in for folks who were on family leave, that sort of thing, those tickets didn't come bursting through the door. My concern is if we arm each one of them with a hand held device, that increases their efficiency to the point that they can really start sending them in, you know, that we are -- we are going to see the efficiency in the entering part, but remember the clerk still has to open a file, give the definite a personal identification number, run -- the driving record a whole lot of setup stuff. It certainly does do away with all of the follow-up that happens after we get the tickets. So I can't really predict and that's why I'm thinking well at -- we'll at least probably get up to the 406789 probably by the end of this -- 40 probably by the end of this next year. I don't know if you all have done those projections. I know that you all have incremental, say 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there kind of things because I talked to you all outside. But as far as having some concrete data to present y'all, I certainly don't have it.
>> but your increased numbers is really -- I mean from the fall, is a result of the 10 additional folks.
>> yes, sir, that's about the hand helds.
>> because I was thinking about it last week when we were talking about it, it does make some sense to think that because somebody has something electrically that they can do, okay I'm getting out of -- I can get out of here, give you this thing, get down the road, catch somebody else. Maybe there's a little bit of that, but I mean I was -- I have always been impressed with the whole east citation thing strictly from the standpoint of errors and it being able to be integrated into a system so that you don't have to have -- 16 sets of clerks in this county, you know, inputting information everywhere. I mean if that alone doesn't allow some sort of -- of savings somewhere then I'm really going to be bothered by this.
>> I'm hoping that with the technology will come some other -- other savings in terms of court processes. For instance, we have so many tickets that come into my court that I kind of had a policy with the officers unless a defendant pleads not guilty I don't require them to file an additional complaint to a pc affidavit or that sort of a thing. Once a defendant pleads not guilty they have to come in. I'm hoping that these units will also be capable of printing out the complaint. And that sort of stuff so that when they down load all of that we get all of the information to start with and that might save us some other steps a little later in the -- in the trial process as well. So we really won't know until we see, you know, the full package and that sort of a thing, one concern that we have for a technology funds I'm sure there will be licensing that has to be maintained year to year, all of those follow-up kinds of things that apply to the software aspect of it after the hardware is in their hands. So because we also have other -- other needs for the technology funds, that was our initial concern about handing over so much money, is that we have needs of our own that we are going to have to keep -- keep an eye on and then like I said then this carries over to a concern about what happens to us in the future in terms of having to pay out the follow-up stuff.
>> judge?
>> yes, sir.
>> Commissioner?
>> judge, in this pilot initiative with the citation thing that we are looking at, we have 35 units here, that will be issued to the -- to the law enforcement team of Travis County. The deputy sheriffs. Will they -- since you have been looking at the pilot, with all of these tickets that are written by -- by the use of these 35 e citation devices, will all of those tickets come directly to your shop.
>> I don't believe so. I let the sheriff's office speak to that. I think it was a total of 35 around the county. I don't think all of them will be in mine, thank you.
>> I guess the reason why I pose that question is because I hope it's spread around among everybody. The reason why I pose this question, I'm trying to determine how -- how you were able to account to seeing the impact of the effectiveness of it. Still having to deal with the manual portion of it. In other words, the old way versus the new way. Will you have set up in your shop to determine the effectiveness of this, all way -- old way versus new way seeing that the same person has to deal with -- with both. How do we separate that.
>> we will have to build in some sort of a little program to capture information both manually and I guess through its since it's going to be a down loading kind of situation. I assume we can down load stuff in two reports as well. Then if we can do a weekly report or something like that, and then match that up with some kind of information that we keep in the office, that would be quite helpful. Because the -- the so's are not going to be the only ones with those. D.p.s. Already have them, are using them when they hand the tickets to us. They are not down loading to us. Because all of these groups are going to have different software needs. But it does make it easier for the clerks to read the citations.
>> well, I guess my concern is -- is since the j.p.'s that we have here in Travis County will be looking at this, across the board, it appears to me that -- that you should be set up on the same criterion to ensure -- criterion meaning that -- that whatever standards need to be set, need to be set across the board equally. Otherwise how will we know the effectiveness of manual versus e citation, new technology.
>> I think that's a valid concern. A meeting with itf or the sheriff's office, to try to set up the criteria, I'm sure all of the j.p.'s will be excited to capture that information because it does have such an impact on us. And if it's good, then that's a wonderful thing for all of us. If it's kind of a quirky thing, then we will just have to see what happens. I don't.
>> I don't -- obviously it's like a pharmacist you get five million different ways of writing things. I just anticipate that if they get a lost faster in stopping a whole lot more people that we are going to see more of them coming in which then impacts the court in other ways. But I don't see it impacting their ability to use the equipment up front to make it easier for them out on the street and then for making it easier for us when we initially get the information. Then if it gets down loaded and sent to all of us at the same time so you don't have every clerk in Travis County reentering data over and over and over, then that's a valuable savings, I can't answer where we are, its will have to talk about where we are in terms of can it all be down loaded and dispersed at once.
>> will you maybe interject at this time on those particular premises that's been set forth.
>> the project plan calls for the -- for the -- for the interfaces to be written for -- for down load to the facts system. Once the j.p.'s are all on facts, so they will all be loaded into the same facts system at the same time.
>> equally distributed I guess.
>> depends on which court they -- the individual tickets fall in. I don't know whether that would be equal or not.
>> officers would decide where they are being filed. But I think the original question that you and I were sharing a minute ago is that once they down load the information to me, say they are -- you know the officers filed them all in my precinct because that's where it works, is he going to down load it to me and same time frame down load it to the sheriff's office.
>> it will go to the sheriff's office system first.
>> from there to you.
>> so they will have it.
>> to the j.p.'s.
>> okay.
>> so what efficiency feature do we have for the j.p.'s?
>> currently they are doing data entry on all of these tickets.
>> okay.
>> so once they are on facts, that link is between their records management system and the sheriff's office and facts, then they won't have to do that data entry.
>> they will have to do substantially less or not at all?
>> I'm sorry?
>> no data entry at all or substantially less?
>> substantially less. You know, like not sure -- I'm not sure what other data entry they do.
>> somewhat less.
>> what's your own -- once you're on facts it will be considerable. I mean as far as entry.
>> anything that you are picking up off the ticket.
>> that's right.
>> would be --
>> has very little ticket stuff. So it's not going to --
>> the hope is that the other things that have to go in the file.
>> yeah.
>> >> [inaudible - no mic]
>> prefill so to speak any fields that are set up to accept the data. But if it's other information that the court requires process for other reasons they have still got to go in there, that's why I was warning everybody up front, you are not doing away with the clerk. You are just changing the tenor of the job.
>> well, just to refresh the court's memory, there are a couple of other advantages here, we are hoping the error rate will go down because you have a lot of interpretation error rates because of bad handwriting. The second thing is that -- because these tickets are available for payment and you all are making it easier for people to use, credit cards, we are hoping that -- that we are going to see some revenue enhancement between electronic acceptance of payments and becoming available more quickly to the public to pay. So there's some additional benefits beyond the data entry. Solution. We are hoping for here.
>> let me tag on to the -- to the data that is supposed to flow from the -- from the sheriff's record system down to the j.p.'s. We have the county, Travis County through the integrated system project has paid for that flow as defined by the j.p.'s that were in place at that time. So what we have available to us now is that we will need to relook at that with the j.p.'s and it would be wonderful to have, I think they are looking at getting a business process consultant. With -- with technical background that would understand their business, that would revise that for citations. But that interface has been paid for by Travis County. So that costs was considered not a part of this project. But I do think that we may need to modify it based on current process and the -- in the j.p. Courts and maybe additional data. If we can do that, and some of the tools that its is requesting in this year's budget, our budget as -- as to -- is to allow its, now we have in the court approved the employment of -- of the application architect, for the integration, we hope to be able to do that in house. To add additional data, so we can substantially reduce data entry. But we would need input from all of the j.p.'s on what additional data would need to be captured. We can only send data that is captured by the sheriff. So if the sheriff isn't capturing a piece of data, then that will either have to be prefilled from another module on ijs or be entered. So you probably will still be entering some data.
>> there will be a lot of things to work out. One of which is just as you said, that if -- if the -- say the defendant doesn't -- stop me on the street, I don't have my driver's license on me. Right? But an officer says well give me your license number. I can't tell you how many people just rattle one off. The reason the clerk when they enter the information to set up the file runs the driving record is to make sure that we have the right defendant from the get-go. Because that becomes a huge -- you know a larger and larger issue the further it goes through the system. So the -- a lot of of the processing from the court's standpoint is to match up the information that we get from the law enforcement agency with the defendant and to make sure that we can rightly identify them. So a lot of times we determine it wasn't me, it was somebody else that used my number or I used his number, whatever. So, you know, that's why I'm saying it's not going to do away with the clerk altogether. Even if they down load the information, we have verifying processes that go with it. Without the facts system going up, all we are getting is a typed out ticket. We are only getting it when the officer drops it off. Because you can't down load it yet, right? It's only when we get facts that they are going to down load into our system.
>> well, you have an icon on your terminal actually that you will be able to click on and you can read it on the screen.
>> wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, sorry. What? I'm -- I've not heard of this.
>> that's one of the options I think that has been discussed. Until the implementation plan for j.p.'s is -- is put in place, that's one of the options is to be able to provide you all a cue so when the ticket is electronically sent to the track computer, which would be in the -- to the Travis County computer, in the sheriff's office, not y'all's yet, it would also create a cue in the j.p.'s office. Whether or not that's been official to y'all we have not really sat down and worked that out.
>> nobody has talked to us about it. I can't have my clerks working off of one computer putting in another computer.
>> I understand.
>> not to have --
>> this is all very fascinating. What it tells me, though, what it tells me is that the j.p.'s instead to get with i.t.s. Work with these issues.
>> they need to get with us. Not to be rude but I've not heard of that.
>> not to be rude, you all need to get together. What we have posted today is source of funding. Only. And there is a recommendation and what is that?
>> the recommendation, that -- that p.b.o. Had worked out as well, as to -- to take funding from the governor's grant funds that -- that the sheriff obtained for this project and then funds from their jag grant that they also had and its would -- buy the server at 35,000 and then split between the -- between the course technology fund and the facts reserve by 40,888 each.
>> so from the technology fund how much comes?
>> from their technology fund comes -- $40,889.
>> what's the total in that fund?
>> that fund currently has about 600,000 in it of which -- of which we are recommending in fy '07 budget I think between 250 and $300,000 of ongoing commitment. P.b.o.'s position -- yeah.
>> but you all have -- your interest is that some of that money be available when it's time for -- for electronic citations to get to the j.p.'s you all want to make sure that your technology piece can be funded.
>> yes.
>> >> [indiscernible]
>> other things.
>> it will be illegal to take that -- it will be legal to take that money from the jag grant.
>> yes.
>> and spend it on this project.
>> that's correct. The sheriff did indicate to me that that grant is about $200,000, and >> [indiscernible] can be gone through that grant. They identified this 171,165.11 as being applicable to phase one of this project.
>> any issues with the recommended funding option?
>> move approval.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. A suggestion from the Commissioners court, you all two departments please get together.
>> will do.
>> one standard.
>> thank you, sir.
>> we need the sheriff there, too, I guess.
>> yes, sir. Remember when I used term parties of interest, this is what I was making reference to because there are rules of criminal procedure that are involved in the court that don't impact the sheriff's office but we need to make sure that we get the right stuff to us.
>> right.
>> but it is real important I agree with you that the information that is gotten at the entry for the e citation that it be accurate. Because it does become a problem, it will wind up sitting on the constables -- in the constables department and if it's not correct then you can't do anything with it. So it's really crucial that when it first is gotten off of the person's information or driver's license, that it be accurate. Otherwise it doesn't help to have it in our system.
>> uh-huh.
>> judge, before we take this -- before they go, bob, let me ask you, when will you be getting together with the j.p.'s to make sure that everybody is on this criterion standards that was brought up earlier, I'm hearing all of this stuff. Everybody not on the same page at this time. How long will that take, when will you be back to make sure that everything is focused.
>> >> [indiscernible] wood is the its project manager. And I'm also on the team as our other -- as our other people in the sheriff's office, it's our intent before we come to an agreement with the vendor on any kind of form that will be loaded that the j.p.'s sign-off on that. And we do have that flexibility and we made very sure that is part of that process we did.
>> okay. Let us know if we can do anything to facilitate those discussions >> [laughter]
>> thank you, judge.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 10:26 AM