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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

San Diego Court Signs Up for Odyssey Software

(CN) - San Diego Superior Court has joined Tyler Technologies' burgeoning California court tech empire with Friday's announcement of a $6.8 million deal for a case management system that will cover criminal, traffic, family and juvenile cases.

The contract breaks down to a one-time license fee of just over $3 million plus $3.7 million for data conversion and training, according to court spokesperson Karen Dalton. The agreement also calls for a yearly maintenance fee of $640,000.

The court has the option to buy additional software to cover civil, small claims and probate cases for $700,000. Those cases are currently handled by software from a now-defunct software program handled by the Administrative Office of the Courts, called the Court Case Management System.

San Diego used the state judiciary's Master Services Agreement, a pre-negotiated contract for courts looking to buy off-the-shelf software systems. The agreement was developed by a forum of trial court IT staff led by court employees from Sacramento and Santa Clara, with participation by IT personnel in Humboldt, Alameda, Mariposa, Riverside, Fresno, Kings, Kern, Merced, Orange, San Diego and San Mateo counties.

The group was formed out of the ashes of the half-billion-dollar CCMS program. The ten-year project to develop one computer system for all 58 trial courts was derided by judges and lawmakers as a fiasco and a boondoggle.

Only a handful of trial courts were using CCMS when it was scrapped in 2012, including San Diego for civil, probate and small claims cases, leaving most of the state's courts scrambling to find replacements for their increasingly antiquated case management systems.

The forum stepped in and chose three finalists to provide software for the California cours: Tyler Technologies which developed the Odyssey software, LT-Court Tech from Thomson-Reuters, formerly West Publishing, and Justice Systems based in New Mexico as the preferred vendors for California. Tyler has dominated the competition since then with 18 trial courts signing up for the Texas-based company's software.

The San Diego court is now moving away from CCMS, after becoming one of the first courts to adopt the controversial software in 2006. "The ultimate goal of the San Diego Superior Court is that all case types will eventually fall under Odyssey," Dalton said.

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