Travis County Commissioners Court

May 8, 2012 - Item 22
Agenda

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Item 22, receive report from Electronic Data Reporting Committee regarding electronic data and status of data compliance.

>> good morning, judge and Commissioners, I'm steve capelle.
I'm appearing as the chairman of the electronic data committee as appointed by you and mandated by the Texas legislature.
our responsibility is to make sure that the work done in the courts on the prosecution of criminal cases, both felonies and misdemeanors, gets reported correctly to d.p.s.
and transferred into the f.b.i.
system.
as you remember, there was legislation passed in 2009 mandating that an electronic data reporting committee be appointed.
it's called the data advisory board this the legislation, by the Commissioners.
that board is made up of the sheriff's department, tcso, Austin police department, the two prosecuting entities in Travis County, the county attorney's office and the district attorney's office, the county clerk, the district clerk, i.t., and any other group that the Commissioners court asks to be a member of or volunteered actually to be a member of.
since that time of that creation, we've worked as a committee to correctly report the data to d.p.s.
to give you an idea of what was going on, the statute requires a 90% completion, data completion reporting requirement.
so that the reporting that's done, 90% of that has to be accepted by d.p.s., is the only way to say it.
it has nothing to do with the actual movement of the cases through the system from arrest to final sentencing.
that sets the range of the cases that have to be reported, but it does not grade you, if you will, with regard to how fast these cases move or whether all of them move, it's just that the ones that are report have to be accepted under the rules and regulations by d.p.s.
to have that 90% completion requirement.
as you know, this last summer the criminal justice division of the governor's office added that 90% completion percentage to their requirement for the issuance of grants.
and if any entity requesting a grant through the criminal justice division, the governor's office in any county that did not comply with the 90% reporting, that grant was -- they were not eligible to apply for that grant.
the good news for the county, Travis County, is -- is that we are above that 90% reporting requirement.
that requirement is a cumulative percentage of the last five years of the daily reporting.
so we are at 90%.
they round down, so we're actually above 90% on their stats.
to give you an idea of where we were in August of 2011, less than a year ago, our average completion percentage hovered in the 50% range.
since then the large groups of cases have been submitted back into the d.p.s.
system.
the way the percentages are arrived at is the cases are submitted electronically.
there is a number of entries that must be made for the arrest, approximately 50.
there's a number of entries in anyone's record, approximately 20, by the prosecuting agency, and then another 45 entries that have to be made by the clerks on the behalf of the court.
all those have to agree, have to go in under the codes and systems of d.p.s., and then the percentage is achieved.
so since that time, since 2009 when this committee was started and we've worked on a -- sometimes weekly and mostly now monthly basis, the electronic data reporting board has met.
that's representatives of the various agencies I just went through.
they've gone through all the policies and procedures of the county of how we receive the cases, what happens to them, how they are reported, how it's done.
we've made changes, and the work that this committee has done has been, from my perspective, exceptional.
with the assistance of the i.t.
people assigned to work with us and the people that work in the various agencies from the booking people that accept persons into the criminal justice system at the Travis County jail, all the way to the clerk's offices at the other end, they've all done a magnificent job of putting the system together in a way that is -- meets the requirements of d.p.s.
and gives us a better handle on how those records are sent and how they are -- excuse me, and how those records are arrived at and that they can be timely and specific corrections to any glitches in the system.
as you can tell by the numbers, we had approximately 42,000 criminal cases per year that are disposed of in Travis County.
a little more than that.
most of those are going to be misdemeanors, be misdemeanors and above.
so we kind of -- misdemeanor courts and the clerk's offices drive the percentages on the system.
so that's a lot of entries.
there's about 120 entries per individual arrest that have to be entered.
and when I say entries, I want you to just think not in terms of what you would give when you go into d.p.s.
and get your driver's license renewed.
it's not your name and date of birth and your address.
it has all those, but it is all done after you get past the initial identifying information for each individual.
it goes into a code system, as you might imagine because we're dealing with large computers.
each one of those entries for a specific offense carries with it a nine digit code.
each final outcome of the criminal -- that case carries with it a nine digit code.
most of the codes through the system are in the range of five to nine digits.
so in any given system, if you try to balance your own checkbooks at home, you know that sitting at a computer and entering this data is a little mind numbing.
I'm glad of one thing, I don't have to do that on a daily basis.
but the people that do have to do it accurately because the system kicks back any mistake and any change in that.
and so we've made tremendous progress in getting that done and I think the people that really deserve the credit for getting us to that 90% percentage are the people that aren't here now and that are back at their desks as they are for eight hours a day looking at records and punching numbers in.
the work that the people in i.t.
taken other clerk's offices and tcso and the prosecutor's offices has been tremendous.
that 90% is a continuing requirement.
so we've gotten past the point where we now are cumulatively at 90%.
our goal is to get that percentage up in the 92 or 93% range and keep it there because that gives us a little float if we have glitches in the system.
and I think we can accomplish that.
but I wanted to -- I know I've sent an email with you with regard to that, but I wanted to get an opportunity damage tell you publicly where we are with regard to than thank you for your support in 2010 for giving some of these agencies additional people to help with this project.
and we appreciate that and if there's any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them.

>> questions?

>> there is an item that went on consent with regard to budget transfers that also went to augmenting staff.
does that go toward this effort maintaining it?

>> there's -- d.p.s.
was kind enough when they imposed the -- the criminal justice division of the governor's office when they imposed the 90% on the grant to also put in the program that there would be grants to help you comply with the 90% of the grants.
they had a little glitch in their system because the first grants that went out with regard to that got rejected because the counties didn't comply with did 90% to get the grant but they fixed that.
and I think one of the clerk's offices, I think it's the district clerk's office, is getting some -- has made an application to get some grant funds to help them on some of their process with regard to this.
and the rest of all the agencies have done with what they had, but that was with the addition of the people that you gave to the agencies or departments, excuse me, in 2010.

>> thank you.

>> thank you.

>> so do the appropriate state officials and I guess staff agree with our conclusion --

>> yes.
this is off d.p.s.'s records.
we have a little disagreement with them that we think we're higher, but that's probably in the electronic float between our reports and theirs.

>> okay.
questions, comments?
thank you very much.

>> thanks for the good work.

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