Crisp DX Meeting Minutes

Crisp County Data Exchange Project

Meeting Minutes

April 22, 2005

The Meeting was held at the Crisp County Law Enforcement Center located at196 Hwy 300, Cordele , GA 31015 . Lee Hampton called the meeting to order at 10:10 AM. Nolan Martin will be attending the meeting but was expected to arrive late. It was noted that Rick Malone had another commitment and couldn't make the meeting and Judge Pridgeon was in court.

Lee Hampton discussed Gwinnett County 's interest in Metatomix. Jean Rogers talked with Cathy Morris, CJIS Manager for Gwinnett County and said that Metatomix was one vendor that has done an integration project successfully. Jean also said that she had talked with Joe Hood the previous day and that Joe's reaction was that the money is there for stage 2 of the project. Rick Malone is currently working on the 2 nd phase of the grant application which will be submitted to Joe Hood, CJCC.

There was some general discussion regarding some of the good and bad integration projects in the past in Georgia . Jean Rogers brought up the example of the Dougherty Circuit where there was good information but the project didn't continue since it grew too large too quickly. She suggested that it would be better to keep the project small and expand the project later. It was stated that Judge Chasteen would like to be involved in the Ben Hill County implementation of the 2 nd phase of the data integation project and that he would be very supportive. Jean also said that the Ben Hill Sheriff was very impressed and would like to meet as a circuit more often. He said that it was good to bring the other counties into the project and it would be better to be more seamless as one circuit. Jean stated that the Clerks from the other three counties would be supportive as long as all of the bugs are worked out of the system and it really works.

It was mentioned that in Ben Hill County , that the court is expected to be connected to the DA's office and then the whole county will be connected to the clerk's network VPN.

Lee Hampton commented that the CJCC thinks we are on the right track.

Minutes for Prior Meetings – Corrections and Approval :

There was one correction to the previous March 11, 2005 Minutes. Dwayne Orrick, Cordele Chief of Police was not in attendance at the meeting.

The minutes were approved by the group with the one correction.

Magistrate Court Icon Software Status :

Judge Pfeiffer explained the status of the Icon Software program implementation to the group. He said that he was pleased with the progress that ICON had made. He said that they should have the data converted by May 1 st , 2005 including the warrants phase. The bookkeeping for the rest of the system will be transferred on July 1, 2005 so that the fiscal year will be finished on the legacy system. All of the data fields are in the new ICON system.

Proof of Concept (POC) Project With Vendor Metatomix Discussion :

Lee Hampton outlined the POC details. He said that Rick Malone discussed with Judge Pridgeon and Nolan Martin and he went ahead and approved the $100,000 for the POC. $50,000 is due now and the rest will be due upon delivery. Metatomix has a detailed project plan.

Lee Hampton stated that Ray Porter, sales rep for Metatomix really wanted to use the tech reps currently available who worked on the Florida project. He wanted to use them for the POC project and that's why he wanted us to start right away. Lee also mentioned that the Metatomix server will only be temporarily housed at PAC and that it would be moved to another location. During the start up it would be a lot easier for the tech support people at PAC and GPDSC to work on the equipment in the PAC Atlanta office.

Dwayne Orrick asked two questions regarding the continued funding of the project: 1) Will the circuits be mandated to be part of the data integration project? and 2) Will the project be funded by a grant or other revenue or county money?

Jean Rogers suggested that peer pressure will motivate other circuits to move forward. Each organization would need to consider a mandate to participate in data integration. Jean also said that money from the state may reduce the barriers for the local counties to participate.

Jean Rogers said that Judge Pridgeon went to the last Supreme Court Tech Meeting and that he felt you can't depend on grant money and there would need to be either state funding or some other revenue source.

Judge Pfeiffer said that currently the counties are hurting and that fees collected by the counties for court fess are not covering the Magistrate Court costs. The $55,000 for county maintenance of the data integration project may be another add-on fee to be added to pay for the data integration. The data integration project would benefit the courts. Or another alternative could be to go to the legislature to request an add-on fee that could be used locally for the data integration project.

Pete Chambers commented that it might be better to charge the person who is convicted rather than the victim in the form of add-on court fees.

It was agreed that there needs to be a mechanism for funding that's permanent that would cover the annual maintenance and licensing fees for the data integration project. Jean said that she liked the way the law library funding is allocatd for each of the groups. That she thinks the local board should decide how the money is spent to pay for data integration.

Lee Hampton said that he would discuss the issue of the $55,000 annual maintenance and licensing fee with Rick Malone. Judge Pfeiffer said that if the data integration project is fully implemented circuit-wide that the entire circuit may be able to fund the recurring fees. Lee Hampton said that as the system grows that the fees may be negotiable but he couldn't say exactly by how much.

Metatomix Onsite Visit To Crisp County Report :

The Metatomix technical representative, Christian said that he was pleasantly surprised.

Joel McLendon, Jay Harrell and Christian (Metatomix) went to Cordele to survey the POC project. Joel sent the specifications to all of the vendors. PAC purchased the server that will be temporarily housed at PAC for the POC. Lee Hampton also ordered the necessary operating system and SQL 2000 software required for the project.

Joel talked with Enterpol, the Cordele Police Department vendor about the project and ICON. He said that he still need to contact Paragon and Canyon Solutions.

POC Budget Status :

Lee Hampton handed out the budget and said that PAC would keep up with the current budget. Lee also said that the “buy-out” cost of the project for Crisp County would be $242,000 for a total of $342,000. He said that the 2 nd grant application for $400,000 if approved would cover this as well as adding the other three counties in the circuit to the project. It was noted that if Metatomix is the selected vendor then they would credit back $100,000 if they are awarded the contract for the circuit project.

The POC should be fully implemented within 90 days for phase 1. Phase 2 would be to finish in Crisp County and plan to add additional counties (add “ports”) for the rest of the circuit. For the Clerks group, there would be 4 ports for the circuit needed for the licensing requirements. There would be one development licensing cost and four port licensing costs. Jean said that if there isn't any additional development then just the l icensing and deployment fees should be applied. The licensing will be less expensive after the first county is implemented.

Pete Chambers brought up the issue of the annual maintenance fee and where the funding would come from to pay for the $55,000 required for annual license and maintenance fees. Lee Hampton said that the annual license and maintenance fees for the first year are included in the $242,000. He said there would be a need for a funding source for the next year's license and maintenance fees.

Jean Rogers moved to accept the POC budget and Alice Fowler seconded the motion and no one opposed.

CJCC Grant Application #2 Status :

The application #2 status would be for $400,000 for a circuit-wide data integration project implementation. The grant application is due Friday, April 29, 2005. Joel will put the documents together to send to Joe Hood.

Request For Proposal (RFP) Status :

No date as been set yet to send out the RFP. Possibly the RFP could be sent out during the 90 day POC which is expected to start June 8, 2005.

Jay Harrell said that we should first send out an RFI to the current list of vendors to find out who would be interested in bidding on the RFP. Dwayne Orrick thought that it would be a good idea to send out the RFI so we won't be sued if a vendor hasn't been allowed to bid on the contract.

Other Business :

The general discussion was that good progress has been made. The new website http://www.crispdx.org should be available by the next meeting.

Future Meeting :

The next meeting will be held at the Law Enforcement Training Facility located at 196 Hwy 300, Cordele , GA on June 10, 2005 at 10:00am.

The meeting was adjourned at 11:50am by Lee Hampton.

Present At The Meeting :

Judge Pfeiffer

Mary Jo Cox

Nolan Martin

Lisa Odom

Dwayne Orrick

Jean Rogers