Kane County tries to avoid blame game in $12.6M computer purchase
According to the adage, if Kane County cannot learn from the history of the dysfunctional computer system running its court system, it will be doomed to repeat it with its pending $12.6 million upgrade.
Kane County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay said Wednesday all the steps to avoid repeating that past mistake are in place. The only thing that could muck it up is turning the purchase into a witch hunt.
In a statement to the county board's Executive Committee and a subsequent interview, McConnaughay said she recognizes years of suspect or absent maintenance of the current system has created an image that taxpayers must cough up $12.6 million to fix a big mistake. McConnaughay said the real mistake is in not moving forward with a new computer system.
“The current system that is in place was determined solely by the circuit clerk,” McConnaughay told the committee. “I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about what was done right or done wrong there. We have to make sure that the unfortunate circumstances that happened from the last purchase don't happen again.”
Court officials have said the Case Management System causes risky delays in circulating orders of protection to law enforcement, and wastes thousands of dollars in duplicative data entry and lost state reimbursements. The maintenance contract with the vendor who created the system was canceled in 2006. Circuit Court Clerk Deb Seyller has tried to both fix and maintain the system with her own technology staff ever since she made that decision.
Seyller has placed the blame on the vendor, JANO, for delivering a system that never lived up to what the county thought it would do. JANO, in turn, blames Seyller for both altering the programming and not maintaining the system.
In a letter Seyller sent to county board members Sunday, she provided evidence for her viewpoint by pointing to security breaches into the system by JANO staff. Seyller also pointed to difficulties with the JANO system in other counties.
“It is election time,” Seyller wrote. “What other county can publicly state that their CMS (content management system) sucks if their county has no plans to replace it? If the (other) counties were satisfied, why did DeKalb probation jump back off the system? Winnebago (County) left the system. Will (County) is leaving the system. If the system were stable, would any of us have considered spending millions? To what purpose?”
McConnaughay explained the pending computer system upgrade was negotiated into the recent settlement between the county board and Seyller over Seyller's budget to give the county leverage in being part of the process. That's key to the success of the new system, McConnaughay said, because all parts of the judicial system — from judges to the state's attorney's office — will be involved in picking a system that works for everyone.
“Last time we let one, individual, elected official really do what they wanted,” McConnaughay said. “The consequence is that the system we have does not work for everyone. We want to ensure that old mistake doesn't happen again.”
McConnaughay said the county's information technology department will take a larger role in maintenance of whatever new system the county purchases. That means moving most of that function out of the circuit clerk's office. The county will also have a new standing committee of judicial system workers to ensure communication continues across all departments about what works and doesn't work in the new system.
With those changes in place, the county board should move away from pointing fingers, McConnaughay said. Not purchasing a new system means, someday, the current system will fail, and the county's entire judicial system will grind to a halt, McConnaughay said.
“It's important for the county board to not get caught up in taking sides and laying blame at (Seyller's) door or on JANO,” McConnaughay said. “This should not be a political football. We are going to move forward with this because it is the right thing to do.”