If Travis County continues with this software as originally budgeted, it would spend an additional $1 million to complete the software, plus an additional $4 million to put it in place.
If Travis County decides to cut the software loose, it would likely be out the $3.3 million with potentially little to show in return.
Two years ago, the Travis County Commissioners Court voted to split the $22.3 million tab of developing new criminal court case management software with Dallas County and Tarrant County. The software would mainly be used by county clerk and district clerk offices to input information about court cases.
The nonprofit Texas Conference of Urban Counties, which has a program called TechShare that facilitates collaboration on software, acted as the counties’ agent and signed a contract with the company AMCAD to develop the software.
Last year, AMCAD was purchased by another company, and, this June, it quit the court software business. To determine what AMCAD had left behind, the conference and Dallas County commissioned reviews of the source code.
The report that software developer Headspring wrote for the conference said the technology wasn’t up-to-date and that the code wasn’t written efficiently and effectively. The report recommended the conference scrap the source code and completely rewrite it.
In a written response to questions from the American-Statesman, the conference said it had identified almost all of those issues in its own review of the source code earlier during the bid process. That initial review suggested the problems in the source code, which AMCAD had written for previous software it developed, were “not insurmountable,” the conference said.
AMCAD was chosen over another finalist because the counties would own the source code, meaning they wouldn’t have to pay an outside vendor to upgrade and maintain the software, Dallas County Commissioner Mike Cantrell said. The counties might also recoup some of the costs if other Texas counties paid to use the software.
Dallas County received a three-part report from Microsoft that totaled 2,620 pages and listed examples of code defects. Stanley Victrum, Dallas County’s chief information officer, said all the issues identified in the report could be fixed.
“The software, even though it may not be in the latest code, even though there might be some things that could be tweaked, will still do what we need it to do,” Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said.
Commissioner Margaret Gómez said she hopes Travis County continues working on the software project — but other key Travis County officials aren’t optimistic.
County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said the report commissioned by the conference “outed how bad” the source code was. DeBeauvoir, who had worked on testing the software from AMCAD, said there were lots of pieces that didn’t work that AMCAD was hesitant to fix.
The conference also brought in two information technology professionals who had worked on a court software project AMCAD was contracted to complete for Oklahoma. State officials cut $10 million from the contract, then canceled the contract earlier this year.
In an October memo, the conference said they contracted with the Oklahoma professionals in part “to address perceived issues with AMCAD’s software brought up by Travis County personnel.”
The result for County Judge Sam Biscoe: “When I sit down with two or three county people, I’m left with one impression. A week later, when I sit down with two or three others, I’m left with a different impression.”
Tarrant and Dallas counties have tentatively voted to move forward with the development while a new contract is being prepared (Travis County abstained). The conference, which is now essentially acting as the software developer, has hired former AMCAD employees as contractors and can finish the software at the originally budgeted cost, the conference said.
But there are concerns that the conference can’t handle a project of this scope, especially given the shape the source code is in, said Roger Jefferies, Travis County executive for justice and public safety. Though the conference has successfully completed other software for Travis County, those projects involved an outside vendor, Jefferies said.
The Commissioners Court recently voted to send a letter inviting Dallas and Tarrant officials to meet in person and discuss how to move forward.
The county could decide to instead develop its own software or upgrade the software it’s using now. The vendor for the current software has told Travis County it will one day stop supporting the software, DeBeauvoir said.
In that case, Biscoe said, it’s unclear whether the county would still be an owner of the AMCAD source code. And AMCAD has filed for bankruptcy, meaning that if the conference tried to recover the money spent on that code, it would be in line behind major creditors also angling for payment, Biscoe said.
But Travis County’s $3.3 million expenditure wouldn’t be entirely for naught. Part of the money was spent determining the specifications for criminal court software — work that would still be useful if the county started its own project, DeBeauvoir said.
©2014 Austin American-Statesman, Texas
