(CN) - Keeping with a trend in the nation's courts, a second small California court has opted for multi-million-dollar software from Texas-based Tyler Technologies, to be paid for by California's Administrative Office of the Courts. The spending comes in the wake of a failed, half-billion-dollar software project by California central court administrators.
The decision by seven-judge Kings County Superior Court in the heart of the Central Valley will cost California somewhere between $1.5 million and $2.1 million over the next five years, in order to lease Tyler's Odyssey System.
With that decision, Kings County joins San Luis Obispo, along California's Central Coast, where the superior court decided earlier this year to spend $3.1 million to buy the Odyssey System, a contract that included yearly maintenance payments.
The presiding judge and clerk in San Luis Obispo emphasized the financial advantage of buying the system outright over leasing it. But the clerk in Kings County said he did not have that option.
Head clerk Todd Barton said the county is kicking the court off its mainframe in the coming year, creating an emergency.
"The county gave us notice that they would like us off the system by 2014 because they want to get out of the mainframe business," Barton said, noting that the court is the last public agency still on the county mainframe, and has been picking up more and more of the cost as other agencies leave the county system.
"It will be $550,000 a year and there's no way we can afford that. Increased costs would mean more furloughs and layoffs," Barton said.
A third California court in San Joaquin County chose software by competing Justice Systems earlier this year. Both Tyler and Justice were among a group of approved vendors chosen by a consortium of courts to provide software to California's 58 trial courts, in the wake of the failure of the Court Case Management System that was terminated last year after costing California more than $500 million.
In a Judicial Council meeting earlier this year, Kings County Assistant Presiding Judge Steve Barnes drew a stark picture of the court's computer problems.
"The difficulty is that the emergency that we have has to do with the county and is throwing us off their main frame." He said the system they have is run on COBOL, which stands for COmmon Business-Oriented Language. COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages in existence.
"It's not a bad system, but it's COBOL. It's difficult to keep it running," Barnes said. But he added, "The COBOL issue is not the issue with us. It is actually the county getting us off their system."
Court clerk Barton also pointed to the loss of its one COBOL programmer in adding to the court's sense of urgency.
"Our programmer retired this past December. So we really didn't have a choice," said Barton.
He said the court had moved to replace its case management system years ago, but was told to stop by former Administrative Office of the Courts director Bill Vickrey, in anticipation of all 58 courts eventually getting Court Case Management System.
"He said there would be a statewide system and he wanted us to be on the statewide system, which really never happened," Barton said.