Summary

Story

Metropolitan King County Councilmembers Bob Ferguson and Julia Patterson have introduced an ordinance proposed today by King County Executive Dow Constantine to invest in critical criminal justice technology. Chief among the proposed investments is replacement of the King County Prosecutor’s mainframe computer system, the Prosecutor Management Information System, known as PROMIS.

“What do buying lattes at Starbucks, the Apple MacIntosh, ‘The Cosby Show,’ and the data system used by the Prosecutor’s Office all have in common? They were all introduced in 1984,” said Councilmember Bob Ferguson, chair of the Council’s Law, Justice, Health and Human Services Committee. “We heard in committee about the importance of updating PROMIS, which will have a positive impact on our entire criminal justice system and help us do more with less.”

“This is a much-needed efficiency in our criminal justice system that will bring down costs and make this government more sustainable over time,” said Executive Constantine. “I thank Councilmember Ferguson for championing this one-time investment and urge adoption by the Council.”

PROMIS is a 27-year-old mainframe application and is the Prosecutor’s primary case management system for criminal filings. Since PROMIS was installed in 1984, the Prosecutor’s Office’s criminal caseload has tripled from about 3,700 filings per year to over 10,000. Because PROMIS does not meet modern law practice standards, it is unable to store and share records electronically, which means the prosecutor needs to make hard copies of everything related to the cases filed.

Written with an archaic programming language that is no longer used, PROMIS cannot communicate with the systems used by other criminal justice stakeholders. The vendor that created the system no longer provides technical support, and only a handful of employees know how to keep the system up and running

“PROMIS provides no useable data for me as a manager regarding how to deploy our scarce resources effectively, and it is functionally inadequate for the efficient operation of a modern law practice,” said Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg. “We are operating in the 1980s from a technology standpoint. It is like our office is playing ‘Pong’ while the rest of the world has moved on to ‘Xbox.’”

The 2011 budget required cuts in King County’s criminal justice system in order to close a $60 million general fund budget shortfall. In the budget, the Council set aside a $1.5 million criminal justice reserve to respond to emergent needs related to public safety and to ensure the smooth functioning of the criminal justice system.

The current estimate to begin replacing PROMIS is $1.5 million, considerably less than the previous price tag of over $3 million. By implementing the project in phases, the County anticipates improving business efficiency in the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office more quickly.