City Council
Report
City Council Meeting: January 24, 2023
Agenda Item: 5.G
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To: Mayor and City Council
From: Douglas Sloan, City Attorney, City Attorney's Office, Administration Subject: Award Request for Proposal to Karpel Solutions for City Attorney's Office Criminal Case Management System
Recommended Action
Staff recommends that the City Council:
1. Award RFP #306 to Karpel Solutions for the City’s purchase of a case management software system for the Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office;
2. Authorize the City Manager to negotiate and execute an agreement with Karpel Solutions in an amount not to exceed $800,000 (including a $120,750 contingency) with a five-year term and a five-year extension option for the purchase of a case management system for the Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office and accompanying data hosting services, with future year funding contingent on Council budget approval.
3. Adopt a finding that the RFP is not a project within the meaning of the California Environmental Quality Act (Public Resources Code section 21000 et seq.) Summary
The Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office Criminal Prosecution Unit prosecutes misdemeanor crimes in Santa Monica including driving under the influence, domestic violence, assault, battery, and quality of life crimes such as trespass and loitering in public parking structures. In order to ensure the accuracy and security of its work, the Criminal Prosecution Unit utilizes a case management software system that interfaces with the Santa Monica Police Department’s records management system and will eventually be required to interface with the Los Angeles Superior Court for the filing of electronic documents in new or pending matters. The current 23-year-old legacy system used by the Criminal Prosecution Unit lacks the functionality to allow for e-filing with the Superior Court. Staff issued an RFP in 2022 for a new criminal case management 2 of 7
system that is fully compatible with the Superior Court and has the necessary e-filing functionality. The RFP proposed a new 5-year contract with a 5-year extension option not to exceed $800,000 (including $120,750 contingency). The replacement system will be funded by the General Fund with funds reserved by a Capital Improvement Program request from 2019.
Discussion
To ensure secure and reliable prosecutions and to promote public safety, the Criminal Prosecution Unit currently utilizes a Case Management Software (CMS) that tracks arrests, the various charges filed against defendants, the victims, court dates, restitution, case referrals, and dispositions. The system also interfaces with Santa Monica Police Department’s (SMPD) Incident Crime Information System (ICIS) system.
This interface allows the Criminal Prosecution Unit to seamlessly integrate basic information directly into the CMS such as name, date of birth, location, and Incident Report Number. Allowing for direct communication with SMPD’s system prevents the duplicate manual entry of basic information by the Unit’s three legal secretaries. This interface and compatibility is essential now that the Unit is operating at pre-pandemic levels with less staff to help process the growing number of cases.
The Criminal Prosecution Unit’s current system, CityLaw, was purchased in 1999 as a machine-based program without web-based access. As part of the 2014-2015 budget, the CAO requested and obtained approximately $70,000 to upgrade the system. Since that time the CAO has worked with the vendor on necessary and basic modifications to the system, including the addition of functionality to enable the system to work with Windows 10, and a failed attempt to enable web-based access from off-site locations.
Each change or attempted change has resulted in significant downtime and continuing usage issues that have required repeated corrections over long time periods with resulting losses of efficiency. As a result, staff does not have confidence that the current system can effectively be modified to provide electronic filing capability or other desired capabilities. (Staff has used only approximately $20,000 of the $70,000 and would use the remaining balance of approximately $50,000 to support the change to a new system.) The current legacy system no longer meets the City Attorney’s Office’s operational needs.
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In 2020, as Los Angeles County was transitioning its agencies to remote-work due to the pandemic, the City and the LA County Superior Court were also making enhancements to facilitate a safer work environment. This transition required the Criminal Prosecution Unit to not only digitize over 5,000 files in five days, but also to create a new ad-hoc data management system that allowed for remote access because CityLaw does not have this capability. The Unit turned to SharePoint to facilitate this process. Although, SharePoint allowed attorneys and staff to work remotely it did not replace CityLaw as it lacked the necessary features of a CMS such as the ability to issue subpoenas, create filing documents with the court, or interface with SMPD.
For each of the 3,000 cases the City’s Criminal Prosecution Unit has recently received, three legal secretaries entered biographical information, filing decisions, charges, and dispositions in two different systems (CityLaw and SharePoint) because each system serves a different purpose (case management vs remote access). To compound the current difficulty, one of the Unit’s most experienced legal secretaries recently left the office and the Unit has had a difficult time replacing this employee. This staffing shortage coincided with SMPD’s renewed effort to have a more visible impact on crime in the City. This effort led to the Unit receiving over 1,000 reports between August 2022 and October 2022. As a result, the City has paid out over 100 hours in overtime pay to the remaining legal secretaries so that the Unit’s work can continue in a secure and reliable fashion. This workaround is inefficient and is not sustainable going forward.
Implementation of the new case management system will greatly increase the efficiency of the Criminal Prosecution Unit’s legal secretaries and attorneys. Staff is hopeful that it will also reduce the number of overtime hours paid out by the City as there will be one centralized location for the Unit’s data.
The need for a new CMS is also due to the imminent rollout of Los Angeles County’s Electronic Filing (E-filing) system to be used in all County criminal courts. Currently, this program is expected to launch in summer 2023. The Los Angeles Superior Court has already completed the change to E-filing for civil cases (effective January 2019). Along with other local prosecutorial agencies, including the Los Angeles County District Attorney, the City’s Criminal Prosecution Unit has engaged in discussions with the Superior Court regarding the upcoming change for criminal cases. From these discussions Staff has determined that the City’s current criminal case management system cannot cost effectively and realistically be modified to provide E-filing capability. 4 of 7
Should the Criminal Prosecution Unit not change over to a system that can properly support E-filing functionality, the City risks missing the County’s anticipated deadline and will be unable to use the E-filing system that will be in place at all criminal courts in Los Angeles County. Because the City’s current CMS lacks the functionality to make it compatible with LA County’s upcoming criminal E-filing system, staff believes that a new CMS—such as the system provided by Karpel Solutions as recommended by staff—is necessary to support the City’s criminal prosecution function and allow for the Criminal Prosecution Unit to efficiently carry out its work.
Furthermore, in September 2022, the California Legislature passed the Justice Data Accountability and Transparency Act (AB 2418) which will require the City’s Criminal Prosecution Unit to report an extensive amount of detailed data to the Department of Justice. Required data includes biographical data of defendants, charges filed, pretrial and bail arguments, court proceedings, and disposition information. The current system does not have the ability to organize this type of detailed information in an efficient and reliable manner. To comply with this new state law using the City’s current CMS would require hours of manpower to manually comb through the data and create a compliant report that could be sent to the Department of Justice. The recommended Karpel Solutions system has the ability to produce the required individualized reports that will satisfy the new state law at no extra cost to the City.
To seek a system that would replace the aging solution and provide the additional enhanced features for reporting and e-filing, the City Attorney’s Office and the Information Services Department worked together to issue an RFP for a new criminal case management system. A six-person committee comprised of personnel from the City Attorney’s Office and the Information Services Department reviewed and scored all of the qualifying proposals. The two firms receiving the highest scores were invited to give a live demonstration of their software. Karpel Solutions was determined to be the best qualified to support the City’s operations.
Vendor Selection
Bidder Recommendation
Best Qualified Person/Firm Karpel Solutions
Evaluation Criteria
(include all that apply)
Experience and Technical Competence,
Stability/References, Work Plans/Timelines, Project
Team, Cost of Services, Sample Materials, Presentation
Demonstration Value Added-Breadth of Service, Quality
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of Work/Technical Capabilities.
Municipal Code SMMC 2.24.190
RFPs Received
Aeon Nexus Corporation Eccentex Corporation Journal Technologies Karpel Solutions Main Street Computing
RFP Data
Posted On Posted On
Advertised In
(City Charter & SMMC)
Vendors
Downloaded
Date Publicly
Opened
03/29/2022
City's Online
Bidding SiteProcureNowSanta Monica Daily Press 33 05/13/2022 Justification to Award
Based on criteria included in the RFP and criteria in SMMC 2.24.190, staff recommends Karpel Solutions as the best qualified firm to provide for case management and E-fling integration services based on the firm’s industry leading software, qualified personnel, cost effective pricing scheme, and extensive experience in providing these services to district attorney’s offices, public defenders, and city attorney’s offices across the state and country.
Karpel can provide the necessary cloud-based criminal discovery and case management system that includes the following functionality: 1) interface with SMPD systems to permit electronic transfer of cases and citations referred for filing (replacing the current paper-based process), as well as all discovery (including reports and bodyworn camera recordings); 2) store, view, and edit (to select relevant portions for purposes of discovery and court presentation) body-worn camera and other digital audio and video recordings; 3) efficiently manage discovery in accordance with court-imposed obligations; 4) generate case filing documents; 5) interface with Los Angeles County Court system to enable electronic filing in accordance with specifications to be provided by the Court as part of its change to requiring electronic filing (currently anticipated for 6 of 7
summer 2023); 6) generate Bates-numbered discovery packets; 7) track criminal case events and generate calendars and reminders regarding upcoming Court dates; 8) generate subpoenas to witnesses; 9) provide a mechanism to facilitate and track quality of life crimes and divert offenders to treatment and other programs; 10) enable cloudbased access for all users at all offsite court locations; and 11) generate various statistical reports and provide users with the ability to customize reports to present to the City Council, the Department of Justice, and community partners.
The new criminal prosecution and case management system provided by Karpel Solutions will give the Criminal Prosecution Unit state of the art efficiencies to facilitate its prosecutorial work on behalf of the people, including timely prosecutions of criminal defendants, paperless filing of criminal court cases as required by LA County’s conversion of its criminal courts to electronic filing, cloud-based storage accessible onsite and at various court locations, and a significant reduction in records processing that will free up staff and attorney time to allow for further criminal investigations, prosecutions, and crime reduction.
Environmental Review
The award for Criminal Case Management Software is not a project within the meaning of the California Environmental Quality Act (Public Resources Code section 21000 et seq.) as the use of this software will not cause either a direct physical change in the environment, or a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment.
Financial Impacts and Budget Actions
Staff seeks authority to approve available funding from the General Fund to award a contract with Karpel Solutions for the purchase of a case management software system.
Future funding is contingent on Council budget approval.
Contract Request
FY 2022-23
Budget
Request Amount
Future Years
(5 Year Initial Term)
Future Years
(5 Year Optional
Renewal Term)
Department/
CIP Account #
Total Contract
Amount
$159,125 $339,625 $339,625 C0105980.689000 $800,800
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Prepared By: Bradley Michaud, Principal Legal Analyst
Approved Forwarded to Council
Attachments:
A. Oaks Initiative Form - Karpel