To: Board of Supervisors of Sonoma County
Department or Agency Name(s): Information Systems Department
Staff Name and Phone Number: Dan Fruchey and Sherry Bevens 565-8221
Vote Requirement: 4/5th
Supervisorial District(s): Countywide
Title:
Title
Integrated Justice System Modernization Phase 3
End
Recommended Action:
Recommended action
A) Authorize the Information Systems Department Director or Designee to execute an agreement for professional services from Ernst & Young, LLP (EY) for Phase 3 of the IJS Modernization project, Phase I of which began January 2023, to complete the core components of the Integrated Justice Exchange, allowing justice partners to exchange live data using the new cloud-based platform, in an amount not to exceed $3,076,156, for a term of 1 year as stated in the professional services agreement.
B) Authorize the Information Systems Department Director or Designee to execute subsequent agreements to migrate the IJS Exchange to the Cloud, and to build adaptors between the IJS Exchange and the new Public Defender, Courts, and Sheriff Case Management Systems (CMS), with Ernst & Young, LLP in an amount not to exceed $578,524 (as long as the CMS implementations take place as scheduled within the Phase 3 timeline).
C) Adopt a Resolution authorizing budgetary adjustments for the fiscal year 2024-2025 adopted budget redirecting $3,654,680 from the Non-Departmental Designated Purposes Fund and Graton Tribal Funds to the Information Systems Department in support of the Integrated Justice System replacement which were sources previously designated by the Board as part of the FY24-25 Adopted Budget.
D) Direct staff to establish a Justice Partners governance steering committee.
end
Executive Summary:
This phase is a continuation of a project that began in January 2023 with the Board authorizing an assessment (Phase I) of the County's legacy Integrated Justice System (IJS). Phase 3 will begin March 2025 for a duration of 12 months.
Legacy IJS is an in-house developed system whose life has spanned almost 40 years and is reaching end-of-life and was built upon legacy IBM mainframe infrastructure. Throughout the years, as technology changed, this platform was extended to include additional Microsoft technologies which has resulted in three generations of the platform used today, with each supporting different business functions. Over the last ten years, the needs of Sonoma County justice partners have also evolved and 3rd party software packages offering expanded functionality were also adopted.
IJS is made up of multiple primary line of business applications for all County justice partners (Courts, Public Defender, District Attorney, Probation) and law enforcement partners (Sheriff’s Office and local Police Departments), exchanging data between partners and tracking clients as they moved through the justice continuum starting from arrest and booking all the way through release. Over the years, the Courts, Public Defender, and District Attorney moved to their own individual case management systems, with Probation and the Sheriff remaining on legacy IJS as their case management systems. Legacy IJS has become very difficult to maintain, requiring a support team of 11.5 to 13 full time positions, with approximately three (3) of them being devoted solely to troubleshooting errors.
ISD utilized the State of California Technology, Digital and Data Consulting (TDDC) Master Services Agreement (MSA 5-22-70-25-001 to 359) having a term length from April 20, 2022, through April 20, 2025, with two optional two-year extensions. ISD issued a request for offer to three eligible contractors in accordance with the guidelines outlined in the Master Services Agreement User Guide. From this process, Ernst & Young, LLP (EY) was selected.
The 2023 assessment, or Phase 1, completed by Ernst & Young at the request of the Information Systems Department (ISD) concluded that the legacy IJS system is using outdated programming languages and software that are no longer supported. Due to the complexity of the platform, it cannot easily be upgraded. The assessment concluded that attempting to update the legacy IJS system was not feasible. Instead, what was recommended was to build a new IJS Exchange Hub before the legacy IJS platform becomes unsupportable and unstable, and allow the two remaining partners to continue using the legacy IJS case management solution until they could select new third-party case management systems. As part of Phase I, work began on constructing the proof of concept for a new IJS exchange.
Phase 2 was approved April 2024 and was a continuation of the development of the new IJS Exchange and included requesting approval from the California Department of Justice (CalDOJ) for the new cloud-based IJS exchange which has since been received. CalDOJ approval is required for justice information systems.
Phase 3 will complete the build-out of the core components of the IJS Exchange Hub, migrate the platform to the cloud, and integrate the IJS exchange with new case management systems from the justice partners that will be implemented during this phase.
Several justice partners, such as the Courts, are currently implementing new case management systems that will integrate with the new IJS Exchange. The Courts’ vendor is currently working with our IJS Exchange vendor to develop the integrations. The request before the board will allow staff to continue with the development of the IJS exchange and begin the integrations between Sonoma County criminal justice departments’ new case management systems and the new modernized IJS exchange. This item also requests Board authorization to establish a multi-departmental governing committee that oversees, coordinates, and manages the project through its remaining phases.
The total estimated project cost to build out the new IJS system is $8 million. To date, $3.7 million has been invested and financed from the ISD Reserve Fund, Graton Tribal Funds, and Non-Departmental Funds from CAO. Justice partner departments are leading the selection and implementation of their individual case management solutions and have been allocated approximately $4.8 million in Tribal Mitigation funds for this work.
Discussion:
The legacy Integrated Justice System (IJS) is comprised of millions of lines of code developed over a span of almost 40 years, which has served as a core platform, acting as a case management system and facilitating data sharing among the Courts, Public Defender, District Attorney, Probation, Sheriff’s Office, and local Police Departments. This data is critical to the justice partners in the execution of their operations and necessary for the administration of justice. In addition to a data exchange, legacy IJS continues to serve as the current case management system for the Probation Department and the jail management system for the Sheriff’s Office.
Legacy IJS far exceeds the average lifespan of similarly sized enterprise applications which is 12-15 years. The various modules and subcomponents that make up the system span three generations of technologies, some of which date back to the 1980’s such as COBOL with “green screen” user interfaces. Maintaining these older technologies has become both difficult and labor intensive, with support costs continuing to rise. Additionally, there are significant challenges finding and hiring technical staff with expertise in these outdated programming languages. Current Information Systems Department staff most skilled in these legacy IJS technologies and the underlying programming code have retirement target dates expected within the next 6 months to 2 years. Staff retirements will impact the county’s ability to maintain the legacy system, posing a significant support risk. For these reasons, the Information Systems Department began this project to build a new IJS Exchange two years ago.
The new IJS exchange initiative is comprised of multiple phases:
Phase 1: Phase 1 started with an assessment of the County's legacy Integrated Justice System (IJS). As part of Phase I, work began on constructing the proof of concept for a new IJS exchange. As part of this phase, data was stored in a new format, uniquely designed for justice partners to easily query information from different sources about their clients. Additionally, the data sharing follows the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) standard, a widely used standard supported by various government agencies at all levels (federal, state, and local). The value in NIEM lies in providing a consistent format and guidelines for data exchange, making it easier for organizations to understand and use the information being shared.
When determining the approach for the new IJS Exchange, the decision was made to adhere to industry best practices and to build the solution using a cloud-based architecture. Moving to the cloud has the benefit of shifting some of the support tasks to the cloud provider with a large and diverse workforce, as well as offering robust disaster recovery capabilities that would be cost prohibitive to replicate by the Information Systems Departments. Cloud solutions also offer Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) features that can be implemented in the future, should justice partners wish to take advantage of them.
Phase 2: Phase 2 included design and began building the new IJS Exchange based on the proof of concept, including initial development of justice partner integrations (adult data only). During phase 2 staff also completed the rigorous California Department of Justice (CalDOJ) Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) application and review process, resulting in the Authority to Operate (ATO) the new IJS Exchange in the County’s cloud environment. A user portal, which allows visibility to the data within the exchange, was further enhanced.
Phase 3: During phase three, staff and partners will complete the core components of the IJS Exchange, which will allow justice partners to exchange live data using the new cloud-based solution. The Exchange will be migrated from the County’s data center to the County’s cloud environment for improved resiliency. Juvenile data integrations will also be developed in this phase. Production support will be provided by Ernst & Young during this phase and facilitation of technical training and knowledge transfer to ISD. A significant portion of this phase is bringing the new Court case management system online with the new IJS Exchange. Identified in the statement of work (SOW) from Ernst & Young are two options, both of which staff recommend the board authorize: 1) migrate on-premises environments to cloud; and 2) develop adapters with new case management systems. At the drafting stage of the SOW ISD had not received approval from CalDOJ so option 1 was added. Approval has now been granted and this option will be leveraged. Although some of the justice partners are still working on adopting new case management systems, there is certainty that the Courts will migrate and therefore option 2 is requested to be leveraged as well. ISD staff will train alongside Ernst & Young and will support justice partner case management system migrations after completion of Phase 3. See attachment - Phase 3 Diagram and Narrative Explanation.
Strategic Plan:
This item directly supports the County’s Five-year Strategic Plan and is aligned with the following pillar, goal, and objective.
Pillar: Resilient Infrastructure
Goal: Goal 2: Increase information sharing and transparency and improve County and community engagement
Objective: Objective 5: Develop strategies that improve information and knowledge sharing within and between County departments.
Racial Equity:
Was this item identified as an opportunity to apply the Racial Equity Toolkit?
No
Prior Board Actions:
On January 31, 2023, the Board authorized a contract for Ernst & Young, LLP for Integrated Justice System Technology Consulting Services utilizing the State of California MSA contract # 5-22-70-25-001 through 359 for Technology, Digital and Data Consulting services for a not to exceed the amount of $1,500,000. The agreement included an assessment of the current Integrated Justice System (IJS) and recommendations for system changes for sustainability, security, and adherence to industry standards. (2022-1462)
On April 22, 2024, the Board authorized a subsequent contract in the amount of $2,500,000 with Ernst & Young, LLP for Phase II of the IJS Modernization Project to develop a centralized hub and exchange between all justice partners with the exception of juvenile probation information. (2024-0239)
Fiscal Summary
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Expenditures |
FY24-25 Adopted |
FY25-26 Projected |
FY26-27 Projected |
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Budgeted Expenses |
$0 |
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Additional Appropriation Requested |
$3,654,680 |
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|
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Total Expenditures |
$3,654,680 |
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|
Funding Sources |
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General Fund/WA GF |
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State/Federal |
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Fees/Other |
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Use of Fund Balance |
$3,654,680 |
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General Fund Contingencies |
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Total Sources |
$3,654,680 |
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Narrative Explanation of Fiscal Impacts:
Funding for the IJS Modernization Project includes County set aside funds and one-time funding from the Graton Tribal Mitigation Fund. ISD estimates the cost for Phase 3 to be $3,654,680 with $1,800,000 from Graton Tribal Funds. A budget adjustment to add appropriations and transfer revenue from Non-Departmental and Graton Tribal Funds to the ISD departmental budget is included with this item.
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Staffing Impacts: |
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Position Title (Payroll Classification) |
Monthly Salary Range (A-I Step) |
Additions (Number) |
Deletions (Number) |
Narrative Explanation of Staffing Impacts (If Required):
N/A
Attachments:
Professional Services Agreement Phase 3
Ernst & Young Single Sole Source Waiver
2025-0073 Budgetary Resolution
Phase 3 Diagram and Narrative Explanation
Related Items “On File” with the Clerk of the Board:
N/A