Department: Universal Services
Department Head: Sindhu Menon, Executive Director & County CIO
Regular or Supplemental RCA: Supplemental RCA
Type of Request: Investment Memo
Investment Memo Type: Preliminary Investment Memo
Project Name: JWEB Modernization
Project ID (if applicable):
Vendor Legal Name (if applicable): N/A
MWDBE Contracted Goal (if applicable): N/A
MWDBE Current Achievement (if applicable): N/A
Justification for 0% MWDBE Participation Goal: N/A - Goal not applicable to request
Managing Entity: Universal Services
Incremental Authorization Requested: $1,500,000
Total Estimated Project Cost: TBD
Request Summary:
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Request by Universal Services for approval of the Preliminary Investment Memo for modernization of Integrated Justice Information System (JWEB) for an initial authorization of $1,500,000.
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Project Description:
Software applications have a defined shelf life. Technology and development methodologies change over time to improve reliability, capabilities and efficiencies. In particular, JWEB, an in-house collection of custom developed software, originally designed in the 1990’s is becoming obsolete as the underlying technology becomes obsolete and laws, policies and business practices change so much that the software becomes extremely difficult and complicated to support and maintain. The system outages related to JWEB are frequent and have caused multiple challenges to public safety and other justice related services. The architecture is outdated and needs to be updated as soon as possible to meet the demands of stakeholders.
The modernization project is expected to be completed in phases. For FY25 the focus will be on project startup activities for JWEB modernization, including but not limited to designing, architecting, and business process development of an upgraded version of JWEB.
Project Scope:
JWEB is a collection of in-house developed software programs that support our justice community (District Attorney’s Office, Criminal Courts at Law, District Clerks Office, District Courts, Public Defenders Office, Law Enforcement and several other county agencies). JWEB is an updated version of the original mainframe JIMS. It is the second generation of the JIMS mainframe and is a web-based application. The JWEB modernization project, which the Universal Services team kicked off in 2022, will enable the team to move to using a modern architecture and data model that fully leverages the newer environments (security, scalability, ease of maintenance and ease of enhancement).
We have evaluated other alternatives along the way, are interviewing other Texas counties and are exploring 3rd party vendors to explore the best solution for the County. Everything we have explored so far has reinforced the resolve to continue to develop and modernize JWEB. We have released new features and functionality as well as developed key data to continue the replacement. Utilizing existing development resources and expanding the team, we will continue to build the new solution in FY24. This work will span multiple years.
JWEB is composed of JWEB Criminal and JWEB Civil. Supporting these two main modules are several smaller components that support extensive batch reporting, data replication and application programming interface (API) development and management. Many of these database designs were migrated from the legacy mainframe, JIMS.
The scope of this initial phase is to properly document the JWEB environment (major functionality and business needs), start to build a new data model/architecture (that will provide the Harris County justice community with a system that is secure, scalable, easy to maintain and easy to enhance) and start to establish a mature project management governance structure to support the project.
There might be changes in the County’s needs that result in operational changes for the projects throughout the Fiscal Year, but the overall scope will remain the same.
Justification:
The modernization of these applications is critical to ensure continuity of county’s public safety and other justice related services. The upgraded applications also ensure Harris County departments and end-users do not have to work with unsupported technology or out-of-date processes, which would be more susceptible to failure and vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
The new utilized applications will also reduce overhead costs required to support the current applications, due to the complex architecture of the current application. The effort will provide the following benefits:
• Access to a wide pool of resources for design and development support
• Enable configuration management to more easily test and deploy code
• Enhancements will be easier to configure and implement in the newer environment
• Enable the team to clean up some of the current JIMS2 backlog
• Create a computing environment that is more reliable and “fault tolerant” than the current environment
Alternatives and Engagement:
If this project is not funded, we will continue to see increase in application outages, maintenance costs, and potential exposure to increased security risks, impacts to customer functionality, and impacts to public safety and other justice related services to Harris County.
Anticipated Project Expenditures and Timeline:
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Scope of Work |
Estimated Cost |
Estimated Completion |
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JWEB Modernization first phase; funding is needed for project startup activities including but not limited to redesign, architect, and remodel business processes for an upgraded version of JWEB. The new version will have more redundancy, more reliability, more scalability and will be designed on modern technology architecture and practices. |
$830,000 |
FY 25 |
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IJIS Contract to hire resources including Business Analyst, IJIS Coordinator, Project Manager, Solutions Architect. |
$670,000 |
FY 25 |
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Total |
$1,500,000 |
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Alignment with Goal(s):
X Justice and Safety
_ Economic Opportunity
_ Housing
_ Public Health
_ Transportation
_ Flooding
_ Environment
X Governance and Customer Service
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Anticipated Court Date: 08/27/2024
Anticipated Implementation Date (if different from Court date):
Legal funding compliance confirmed by: TBD
Department Approval by: Louis Carr, Director - Integrated Justice Information System, Universal Services, 8/21/2024
OMB CIP Team Approval by: William McGuinness, Director-Capital Projects & Infrastructure, 8/21/2024
Commercial Paper Request (For OMB use only):
Receiving Department: N/A
Project PeopleSoft ID: N/A
CP Series Description: N/A
OMB Financial Management contact: N/A