Bell County Discretionary Grant Closeout Evaluation Reporttidc.tamu.edu/DGReportDocuments/212-11-D05 FINAL...Bell County Discretionary Grant Closeout Evaluation Report: Portable Web-Based

Bell County Discretionary Grant Closeout Evaluation Report

Portable Web-Based Indigent Defense Solution

August 2013

1 Bell County Discretionary Grant Closeout Evaluation Report: Portable Web-Based Indigent Defense Solution

Executive Summary

In 2010 the Texas Indigent Defense Commission approved a discretionary grant for Bell County to

develop and implement an electronic indigent defense process management system designed to

enhance efficiency, transparency and compliance with the Fair defense Act. The county worked with a

consulting group to create Fair Indigent Defense Online, or FIDO.

This grant funded project was part of a broader review of indigent defense processes that succeeded in

changing the culture of the Bell County system toward one more focused on accountability, efficiency

and transparency. While the county did not achieve all of the objectives laid out in their proposal, they

succeeded in developing a tool that has improved the indigent defense system.

The grant application laid out a number of ambitious objectives. Bell County succeeded in achieving the

following:

Development and implementation of a system that tracks most data elements needed to assess

compliance with the Fair Defense Act

Automation of the attorney appointment process

All-electronic attorney fee voucher submission, review and payment process

Faster processing of requests for counsel and attorney appointments

Development of a system that is portable to other counties (with additional costs)

Partial implementation in Coryell County

Bell County’s additional steps needed to realize project objectives include:

Development of integration points with other county IT systems to address redundant data

entry and comprehensively track timeliness of magistration

Development of an integrated management dashboard based on key performance indicators

and Fair Defense Act compliance metrics (although the system does generate reports)

Development of attorney performance module

Implementation in Lampasas County

FIDO has yielded many important benefits for judges, defense attorneys and court staff, as well as the

auditor and district clerk’s offices. The lack of system interfaces with other county IT systems requires

redundant data entry, but more data is now being tracked centrally, yielding greater transparency.

Because of long-term hosting, maintenance and support costs, the county IT department has

recommended rebuilding FIDO functionality into their new court management software environment to

manage it in-house, however the county is currently exploring inter-county collaborations through the

Conference of Urban County’s TechShare program that would make long-term usage, maintenance and

support of the system viable over the long term in the way the system was originally envisioned.


Table of Contents Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 1

Grant Project Background and Evaluation Methodology ......................................................................... 3

Jurisdiction Overview ............................................................................................................................ 3

Project Expenditures ............................................................................................................................. 3

Evaluation Methodology ....................................................................................................................... 4

Grant Program Evaluation Questions ................................................................................................... 4

Stated Objectives of the Project ............................................................................................................ 5

Section 1. How well did the grant project achieve its stated objectives? ................................................ 6

Section 2. How has FIDO impacted county departments in the indigent defense process? .................. 15

FIDO Impacts for Pre-Trial Services ..................................................................................................... 15

FIDO impacts for Judges ...................................................................................................................... 17

FIDO Impacts for Defense Attorneys ................................................................................................... 18

FIDO Impacts for the Auditor’s Office ................................................................................................. 19

FIDO Impacts for the District and County Clerks ................................................................................. 20

FIDO Impacts for the Magistration Process ........................................................................................ 20

FIDO Impacts for the County’s Technology Services Department ....................................................... 21

Section 3. What steps are needed for other interested counties to implement FIDO? ......................... 22


Grant Project Background and Evaluation Methodology In 2009 the Bell County Commissioners Court provided funding to hire a consulting group to review the

county’s indigent defense and related criminal justice processes. That review led to a report with over

30 recommendations for process changes and eventually to a proposal to develop a new electronic

indigent defense management tool to make the system more efficient, effective and transparent. In

2010 Bell County submitted a discretionary grant proposal to the Texas Indigent Defense Commission

(TIDC) seeking funding to develop a web-based indigent defense management system that would be

portable to other counties and would track compliance with the requirements of the Fair Defense Act.

The proposed system was intended to centralize indigent defense information, automate indigent

defense processes, reduce paper and redundant data entry and provide new management and oversight

tools. The system developed under the grant was dubbed Fair Indigent Defense Online, or FIDO. TIDC

awarded a grant of $397,150 for the project in FY 2011, and Bell County committed $105,000 in

matching funds. This report will document and assess the impact of the grant.

Bell County’s broad system review, of which this grant project was a part, helped to bring stakeholders

together for a deep and thoughtful analysis which transformed the culture of the Bell County indigent

defense system to be more focused on transparency, efficiency and accountability.

Jurisdiction Overview

Bell County is located in north-central Texas and ranks as the 16th largest county in Texas by population.

The county experienced a population growth of 30% between 2000 and 2010 and current population is

estimated to be 310,235. The municipalities of Temple, Belton and Killeen all lay within Bell County.

The county’s justice system includes five district courts with felony jurisdiction and three county courts-

at-law with misdemeanor jurisdiction. The county uses an assigned counsel model of indigent defense

delivery and maintains multiple attorney rotation lists for the various levels of offense. In 2012 the

county paid $2,526,801 for the representation of indigent defendants, including 2,376 non-capital

felonies, 5,141 misdemeanors, 53 appeals and 5 capital cases.

Project Expenditures

The original grant period of one year was later extended to two years, ending in September 2012. The

breakdown of the expended grant funds was as follows:

Expense Category State Grant Expenditures

County Match Expenditures

Totals

Contract Services (including consulting services and system programming)

$346,289.60 $126,932.00 $473,221.60

Equipment (including Secure Remote Server Hosting)

$3,210.40 $3,210.40

Indirect Costs $47,650.00 $47,650.00

$524,082.00


Normally the county’s required matching funds are expended during the grant period, such that

expenditure reports for all eligible project expenses would be filed with the Commission, and the county

would be eligible for reimbursement of a designated percentage based on the county’s required match.

In this case, Bell County requested and received permission to apply funds expended for the first phases

of the project from June through September 2010 toward the match, prior to the commencement of the

grant period. The county reported that $105,000.00 was budgeted for this initial phase and $126,932.30

was expended on the project during the match period. (It is important to note that the grant project

under review here builds on an earlier indigent defense system review project conducted by the

county’s consultants and funded by the commissioners court. Expenditures for that prior project were

outside the scope of this report and were not reviewed.)

Evaluation Methodology

The Bell County FIDO grant differs from other projects evaluated by TIDC in that it is not a direct client

service program, but rather an indigent defense process management tool. As such, this evaluation will

not review data from indigent defense cases, but instead focus on documenting the development,

implementation and capabilities of the FIDO system in the context of the stated program objectives. A

second objective of this report is to more fully address questions related to the exportability of the FIDO

system, and to shed light on how other interested jurisdictions would go about implementing FIDO. This

report is based on a review of grant documents, including the original grant proposal, statement of grant

award, grant progress reports, expenditure reports, and interviews with system users, including judges,

pre-trial services staff and defense attorneys. To shed light on the system in the context of the County’s

broader criminal justice operations, interviews were also conducted with the staff in the County

Auditor’s office, the District Clerk, the County Clerk and Technology Services director. Finally, the

county’s project consultant provided context and filled in some details about the system and its

capabilities. A draft of this report was provided to the county on June 10, 2013. The county provided a

response to the draft report on August 11. The county’s comments and clarifications have been

incorporated directly into the body of this report, often quoted directly. When not cited directly, the

incorporation of the county’s clarifications are noted in a footnote.

Grant Program Evaluation Questions

This report is organized around three basic questions:

1. How well did the grant project achieve its stated objectives?

2. How does implementation of FIDO impact each of the county departments and activities related

to indigent defense?

3. What steps are needed and what resources are available for other interested counties to

implement FIDO?

A number of more specific questions will be addressed in order to help answer each these basic

questions.


Stated Objectives of the Project

Bell County submitted a detailed grant proposal that outlined a number of general and specific project

objectives, including the following:

1. To develop and implement a system that facilitates the monitoring of compliance with the

requirements of the Fair Defense Act and the county’s Indigent Defense Plan.

2. To automate and more effectively manage attorney rotation lists, appointments and CLE compliance.

3. To make the submission, review, approval and payment of attorney fee vouchers more accurate and

efficient.

4. To develop a management dashboard module.

5. To develop an attorney performance module that provides increased monitoring capability via a

performance scorecard.

6. To reduce the time between arrest, magistration, indigency determination and appointment.

7. To reducing jail housing costs and transportation costs by facilitating in-jail integrated screenings for

personal recognizance bonds and eligibility for appointed counsel.

8. To save 20-25% in clerk time and an undetermined reduction in telephone, paper and other associated

costs related to attorney communication and follow-up.

9. To develop a standardized system integration layer that interfaces with any legacy/proprietary systems.

10. To automate manual processes, reduce redundant data entry and move toward a more paperless

process.

11. To implement the solution in Bell, Coryell and Lampasas Counties.

12. To develop a system that is exportable to other counties.

Bell County contracted with a consulting group, Managing to Excellence Corporation of Plano, Texas to

design, program and implement a portable, web-based indigent defense management system. (The

county had previously retained the same group to perform a comprehensive indigent defense business

process analysis that yielded a number of procedural and organizational recommendations.) The county

reports that the system has been developed with an open-source programming language, PHP, which is

“a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and

can be embedded into HTML.”1 The system database is built in MySQL, a very widely used open source

database. Bell County has opted for a cloud-based system hosting, so the system operates on a remote

server located in a secure server facility in Dallas. According to FIDO’s developers, the system could

alternatively be hosted on a county’s own network server as part of an intranet. The system was

planned to handle all felony and misdemeanor indigent defense appointments in the county;

appointments for juvenile cases were not part of the project. The Bell County grant proposal described

the proposed system to include the following modules:

Core Module, including indigency pre-assessment, indigency determination, attorney selection,

appointment and notification, and basic post-appointment monitoring.

Attorney Portal, including logging of contact with defendant and visitation compliance,

managing wheel status (attorney hold), attorney review and search appointed cases and

settings, updates of attorney contact information, and status of voucher approval and payment.

1 See PHP website, at http://us.php.net/.

http://us.php.net/


Attorney Billing Module, including attorney logging of hours/expenses against each case,

submission of vouchers, analysis screens/reports for IDC to monitor attorney activity per case,

support for export to County Accounts Payable system to prevent double entry, and support the

calculation of outstanding liability of unbilled attorney activity.

Management Dashboard Module, including key performance indicator driven reports / graphics

to show out of compliance areas and key indicators, different views for different stakeholders,

capture and collate inmate complaints and resolution, and (appointed) caseload summaries for

assigned counsel.

Attorney Performance Module, including automation of annual attorney performance review

and documentation, automated collection of CLEs, and additional performance metrics to be

defined by the steering committee.

Interface / ETL Module, including a “robust set of interface and translation tables that will allow

integration from/to most systems.” This layer “will use industry standards such as ETL, Interface

Messaging, and Documented Table Layouts.” “The system will utilize an interface layer that will

bridge the gap between any legacy software applications to the new indigent defense solution.”

Section 1. How well did the grant project achieve its stated objectives?

1. Did the county develop and implement a system that facilitates the monitoring of

compliance with the requirements of the Fair Defense Act and the county’s Indigent Defense

Plan?

The county mostly achieved this objective, but some magistration data is not tracked.

One of the central objectives of the grant proposal was to develop an integrated indigent defense

management system that tracked information regarding compliance with the provisions of the Fair

Defense Act and other requirements of the county’s indigent defense plan. Some of the most important

data elements needed for measuring FDA compliance include:

Timeliness of magistration (based on arrest date and time and magistration date and time).

Timeliness of ruling on application for appointed counsel.

Timeliness of appointment (and transmission of request to appointing authority, if applicable).

Timeliness of first attorney contact.

Timeliness of attorney interview with client.

In addition, demonstrating FDA compliance requires that certain processes are in place, such as a fair,

neutral and non-discriminatory appointment process, providing reasonable assistance to arrestees in

completing request for appointed counsel, and tracking of minimum CLE hours for each attorney eligible

for appointments. It is clear that the design of FIDO was shaped by these requirements of the FDA and

that FIDO tracks most indigent defense data elements, facilitates objective administration of key

indigent defense processes and documents them comprehensively. By capturing this data the system


has unquestionably increased transparency and provided monitoring capability that was impossible

prior to its implementation.

Although the system provides visibility into most key requirements of the fair defense act, there are

several data elements that FIDO does not track. For example, as the county reported in an addendum to

a grant progress report, “Because FIDO is not currently integrated into the front-end magistration

process, magistration information for all defendants is not currently in the system. The available

information in the system only tracks indigent defendants.” Therefore, the system as utilized does not

currently track all the information that would be necessary to demonstrate overall compliance with

requirements for timeliness of Article 15.17 magistration hearings. PTS manually looks up and enters

magistration and arrest dates into FIDO for all persons who request appointed counsel, providing

substantial, if not universal, visibility of timeliness of magistration hearings.

A second data element relevant to FDA compliance that is available to be tracked in the system, but is

not currently utilized in Bell County, is first contact with client. Section 26.04 of the Texas Code of

Criminal Procedure requires that an appointed attorney ”make every reasonable effort to contact the

defendant not later than the end of the first working day after the date on which the attorney is

appointed, and to interview the defendant as soon as practicable after the attorney is appointed.”

Although Bell County does not track first contact, the county does use FIDO to track what is arguably a

more important data element: the date of an appointed attorney’s first visit with an incarcerated

defendant. The attorneys report these dates when they create vouchers in FIDO. The tracking of initial

jail visits, while not directly required by statute, was driven by Bell County’s local Indigent Defense Plan,

which requires appointed counsel to meet with incarcerated inmates within 10 days of appointment. By

providing an opportunity for monitoring and measuring this key attorney activity, FIDO helps to avoid

problems associated with the lack of substantive communication between appointed counsel and

incarcerated defendants. Tracking of first contact with client, which is a statutory requirement,

presumably could be added with a Bell County policy change and a minimal modification to FIDO.

Additionally, while it is especially important for attorneys to visit incarcerated clients early in the process

(partly to help expedite case processing and to reduce unnecessary pre-trial jail days), the county should

also consider using FIDO to document the date of initial client interviews for all indigent appointments,

including those out on bond. While the statutory requirement for indigent client interviews does not

include a hard timeline, tracking this data element for all indigent defendants would enhance the

oversight of attorney performance for the entire indigent defense system.

Bell County may want to consider adding to FIDO several other data elements which are not directly

related to the Fair Defense Act but which would provide increased visibility that would inform

stakeholders about the efficiency and soundness of the indigent defense system and the performance of

individual attorneys. For example, FIDO does not support or track dates of confinement. The system is

configured to track disposition date, but this field is not used. Tracking these data elements would allow

monitoring of pre-trial jail days and time to disposition, two indicators relevant to assessing the

operation of the indigent defense system and the county’s criminal justice system as a whole.


Additionally, although FIDO does not support the tracking of case filing date, including it would provide

better information about the flow of defendants through the process and illuminate where delays occur.

2. Does FIDO automate and more effectively manage attorney rotation lists, appointments,

and CLE compliance?

Yes, the county achieved this objective.

FIDO has unequivocally improved the ability of the Pre-Trial Services office to manage multiple attorney

rotation lists and objectively make appoints of the next attorney on the list for the offense in question.

Automation of these functions has made some major elements of pre-trial services work more objective,

efficient and accurate.

FIDO is programmed to appoint the next attorney on the appropriate list for the highest charged

offense. The appointment of the next attorney on the list can be overridden for several reasons. One

of the more routine reasons is if the defendant already has an appointed attorney when he or she is

arrested on a new case. In that instance, efficiencies of having the same attorney provide

representation provide a reasonable basis for going outside the normal rotation, and the judges have

delegated PTS with the ability to appoint the defendant’s current attorney. If a judge wishes to appoint

an attorney outside of the regular rotation for any other reason, a court order making the appointment

and documenting the reason is issued and documented in FIDO. All appointments outside the normal

rotation are documented in FIDO and are available for periodic review. Because the appointment of the

next eligible attorney has been automated, attorneys can have a higher degree of confidence that the

system is being implemented in a fair, neutral and non-discriminatory fashion consistent with the

county’s indigent defense plan and as required by the Fair Defense Act.

The management of the appointment process is also enhanced by FIDO’s ability to allow attorneys to

place themselves on hold for new appointments when they will be unavailable for any reason. Allowing

attorneys to manage their availability directly in the system eliminates the need for manual tracking by

PTS. The system also simplifies the county’s tracking of attorney compliance with minimum CLE

requirements by providing the ability for attorneys to self-report CLE hours directly in FIDO.

3. Does FIDO make the submission, review, approval and payment of vouchers more accurate

& efficient?

Yes, the county achieved this objective.

Bell County has realized numerous efficiencies through FIDO’s electronic voucher submission, review

and processing functions. These benefits substantially impact attorneys, judges, and the auditor’s office,

and have also eliminated the need for some processing tasks by the District Clerk’s office. Voucher

submission, review and payment are now paperless, and attorneys, judges and court staff can track a

voucher through each step of the process. The staff in the auditor’s office has welcomed the time

savings and better controls the system provides. The system contributes to a more accurate process by

eliminating many opportunities for error, such as inaccuracies transposing handwritten vouchers or

double-payment of resubmitted vouchers. In addition to workflow benefits throughout the voucher


process, FIDO’s ability to export approved voucher data to the County’s accounts payable software has

improved the speed and accuracy of voucher review processing and payment. In addition, the Indigent

Defense Expenditure Report submitted annually by the auditor will be significantly streamlined. While a

full two-way interface with the auditor’s IT system has not occurred, the export of approved voucher

data formatted for ready import by the accounts payable software has generated enthusiastic

endorsements of the system for the improvements it has realized. Attorneys and the auditor’s office

report that payments are received substantially faster thanks to the system.

4. Does FIDO include a management dashboard?

The county did not develop an integrated dashboard, however the system runs reports on

appointment activity and compliance metrics.

FIDO has the capability to run a number of particular reports that assist the system’s administrators and

that provide information on compliance with most requirements of the Fair Defense Act. To date, these

reports have not been integrated into a cohesive “dashboard” style presentation providing a graphical

overview of compliance. In their final grant report, however, Bell County reported that work is

continuing on the formatting and presentation of reports to include graphs of key indicators, which

presumably will more closely resemble the sort of management dashboard described in the grant

proposal. This ongoing development work is being done in part under a new system maintenance and

support contract Bell County executed with Managing to Excellence, which provides for some ongoing

system development work as well as routine maintenance and administration up to a specified monthly

limit of hours.

District Judge Fancy Jezek provided the following comment on this section in the county’s response to

the draft report:

“The reports generated by FIDo provide administrators with detailed information about inmate requests for counsel, financial eligibility and appointment of counsel. Any deviations from the wheels are documented in these daily reports. Criminal judges are committed to insuring compliance with the FDA and monitoring individual compliance. While a dashboard would show graphic compliance in certain key areas, the courts currently have that information through reports available to them and are committed to improving the delivery of services by appointed counsel to their clients.”

5. Does FIDO include an attorney performance module that provides increased monitoring

capability via a performance scorecard?

No, the county did not achieve this objective.

At the conclusion of the grant period FIDO does not include an attorney performance module that

provides increased monitoring capability via a designed ‘performance scorecard’. Other than current

status of continuing legal education hours reported, the only attorney performance indicator currently

tracked in FIDO is the date of the appointed attorney’s first jail visit with incarcerated clients. This data

element is an extremely important one, and Bell County should be commended for tracking it and


developing a policy for following up with attorneys who do not visit incarcerated clients in a timely

fashion.

As Bell County progressed through the FIDO project it became apparent that there was no clear

consensus on how to effectively monitor attorney performance and what data elements to track. In

2011 Bell County applied for and received a technical support grant from the Texas Indigent Defense

Commission to design and implement an attorney training, mentoring and evaluation program (TME).

The evaluation portion of this grant project is currently working to define a set of measures for

appointed attorneys that will provide the judges with a more objective basis for reviewing attorney

performance and making decisions about continuation on the rotation lists and what levels of offense

attorneys are eligible to defend. In addition, the evaluation component will gather information that will

allow judges to address any problems that may not be apparent through routine courtroom encounters.

As this project comes to fruition in 2013 Bell County intends to add some additional functionality to

FIDO that will facilitate attorney performance monitoring. Some of the measures being discussed would

rely on data sources outside of FIDO. At this point, a more substantive attorney performance module

remains a work in progress.

6. Does FIDO reduce the time between arrest, magistration, indigency determination and

appointment?

The county achieved this objective, but partly through changes made prior to the funded project.

FIDO does not impact the time between arrest and magistration. FIDO enters the process after

magistration for all defendants who request appointed counsel. FIDO implementation has substantially

expedited the time between magistration, indigency determination and appointment. Defendants who

request counsel at magistration are typically appointed counsel within a few hours. Part of the reason

for this is simply the efficiency of automated financial questionnaires which immediately determine

whether a defendant qualifies for counsel, and the automated process of appointing the next eligible

attorney. In addition, several process changes that were implemented before the FIDO project, but

which FIDO in some sense facilitates, have improved the speed of the indigency screening and

appointment of attorneys. The two most important are, first the merging of the pre-trial services and

indigent defense departments, so that the staff do a combined financial screening to determine both

eligibility for appointed counsel and eligibility for a personal bond, and second, the placement of pretrial

services staff in the Bell County and Killeen jails at magistration so that indigency determinations and

attorney appointments can be done almost immediately after magistration in most cases. The web-

based system facilitates the indigency screening being conducted outside of county facilities: PTS staff

are in the Killeen jail as well as the Bell County jail on a daily basis, which expedites the screening and

appointment process. As a result of these changes, Bell County defendants are being appointed

attorneys very early in the process.


7. Did the program reduce jail housing costs and transportation costs by facilitating in-jail

integrated screenings for PR bonds and eligibility for appointed counsel?

The county likely achieved this objective, but mostly through changes made prior to the funded

project.

As described above, Bell County implemented a number of organizational and process changes

regarding indigent defense as a result of a report issued by the county’s consultants in early 2010. While

some of the changes this grant objective addresses pre-dated the grant-funded project, they have been

successful at improving the process, and the development of FIDO built on and in some ways facilitated

the effectiveness of these changes. Bell County should be commended for their efforts to critically

assess their processes and implement more cost-effective strategies for processing arrestees.

In April 2010 the county started assigning PTS staff to the Bell County Jail, and approximately two

months later also sent staff to the Killeen jail on a daily basis and the Harker Heights jail as needed.

Once staff was assigned to the jail they began to conduct integrated financial screenings for PR bond

eligibility and appointed counsel. The PTS and Indigent Defense departments were formally merged in

October 2010. The county reports that the ability to screen misdemeanor defendants for PR bond prior

to transportation and booking at the Bell County jail has reduced unnecessary transfer of jail inmates

and more quickly processes and releases those eligible, which contributes to keeping the jail census

down.

District Judge Fancy Jezek commented on the county’s earlier process changes and their relation to FIDO

in the county’s response to the draft report:

“While the county did evaluate and make changes regarding indigent defense prior to the implementation of FIDo, all changes were made in order to facilitate the delivery of FIDo's services. Prompt completion, evaluation and transmittal of financial information is solely a function of FIDO and provides PR bond with the information necessary to make prompt determinations regarding eligibility. This results in an earlier release from custody for qualifying defendants.”

8. Did the county save 20-25% in Clerk time and an undetermined reduction in telephone,

paper and other associated costs related to attorney communication and follow-up?

The county partly achieved this objective.

As described above in the context of FIDO’s voucher processing capabilities and the attorney portal, the

need for county staff to spend time on attorney communication and follow-up has been reduced

through several efficiencies realized by FIDO. First, attorneys submit and vouchers electronically and are

able to track their processing. Second, attorneys log CLE hours directly into FIDO, rather than submitting

records to PTS for processing. Third, attorneys are able to manage their status regarding availability for

new appointments through FIDO’s ability for the attorney to place a temporary hold on new

appointments. These efficiencies are difficult to measure, but surely exist by virtue of automating

previously manual processes.


Bell County District Clerk Sheila Norman reports that FIDO implementation has resulted in a substantial

reduction in indigent defense-related work by the clerk’s office, though it is difficult to quantify. The

benefit derives from removing the clerk’s office from processing and data entry of attorney fee vouchers

for cases in district court. Previously, approved vouchers were routed from the courts to the District

Clerk’s office, where staff would capture data before sending to the auditor’s office for payment. County

Clerk Shelley Coston reports that her office has not experienced any substantial changes because

vouchers from County Courts-at-Law have not been routed to her office for data capture prior to

payment by the auditor. While the source of the targeted improvement described in this objective is

not detailed in the grant proposal, presumably the clerks would also more efficiently handle indigent

defense related records by virtue of the planned interface between FIDO and the county’s main IT

system. As described below, however, this planned system interface was not developed.

9. Does FIDO include a standardized system integration layer that interfaces with other

legacy/ proprietary systems?

The county partly achieved this objective with ability to export approved voucher data, but most

planned system integration points were not developed.

The FIDO project succeeded in developing important functionality to export approved attorney fee

voucher data to the J.D. Edwards financial software system used in the auditor’s office. This

functionality has been an important part of the success of the electronic voucher processing capabilities.

Beyond this, however, the project did not realize the more robust system integration envisioned in the

grant proposal. The proposal described a system that would interface with and pull data from other

parts of the county’s IT environment, but FIDO does not pull in any data from any of the county’s other

IT systems, including the jail system, I/LEADS law enforcement system and the legacy system used by

the courts, clerks, magistrates and other county offices. Two main reasons were cited for this. First, the

Sheriff’s office announced that it would be transitioning to a new software system called New World

Aegis. According to Bell County’s grant report, county officials and their project consultants decided not

to proceed with the development of an interface to communicate with a system that would soon be

abandoned. Bell County also reported that no ability to communicate with the county’s “home-grown”

legacy data management system was developed, primarily because the county decided to transition to

New Word’s JustWare system. This transition is still in progress. The county’s Technology Services

Director anticipates that rather than building integration points with the new system, the county will use

in-house resources to program FIDO’s functionality directly into their new platform and host it in-house.

While the integration layer and the ability to communicate with other county data systems was not

developed as described in the grant proposal, the project expenditures did not reflect any reduction in

the grant project budget or expenditures. This is noted here because the integration that was not

implemented would provide the county with substantial efficiencies which will presumably only be

available to the county with additional investment that was not part of the original project budget.

10. Does FIDO automate manual processes, reduce redundant data entry and move toward a

more paperless process?

The county partly achieved this objective.


Automation of indigent defense processes in FIDO has made the core functions of the indigent defense

system, including managing rotation lists, processing of requests, indigency determinations, making

appointments, monitoring CLE compliance and processing attorney fee vouchers essentially paperless.

Indigent defense processes are much more efficient because of this automation. The one exception to

this is that appointment documents are still printed out for filing by the clerk’s office.

While the system is much more paperless than before, because the system integration capabilities were

not developed, some of the related objectives of the grant proposal addressing “extremely manual”

indigent defense processes and redundant data entry were not realized. The system as envisioned in

the proposal would communicate with other county systems in order to import relevant data

automatically. For example, basic information about indigent defendants, date and time of arrest, date

and time of magistration, charges, etc. are electronically captured by the jail during booking. As

operated today, county staff must log in to several other IT systems and manually transpose data into

FIDO, an inefficient process built on redundant data entry that introduces opportunities for error.

Because of the volume of indigent defense appointments in the county, completing the planned

interfaces with other IT systems described in the grant project documents would allow the county to

eliminate much of this inefficient and redundant data entry.

The current inability of FIDO to communicate with the county’s primary data management systems

requires that many data elements that were originally intended to populate in FIDO via interface with

other county systems are currently entered manually. The vast majority of this data is entered into FIDO

by pretrial services staff. While this data entry was not expected to be necessary, only part of it

amounts to a net increase in data capture, since the use of FIDO has replaced various other systems

used by pretrial services and indigent defense that themselves required data entry of much of the same

information in different formats (such as Excel spreadsheets).

District Judge Fancy Jezek further explained the lack of system integration in the county’s response to

the draft report:

“System integration capabilities were not developed because the county made a decision to replace its existing legacy system. A decision was made county-wide to reduce the number of updates and changes to the existing system and instead concentrate on preparing for the new system. While the intent was, and is, to interface with other county systems, the county is not updating its current system and FIDo will not interface until the new county-wide system is replaced.”

11. Was FIDO implemented in Bell, Coryell and Lampasas Counties?

The system was fully implemented in Bell, partly implemented in Coryell, and not implemented in

Lampasas.

The original grant project budget included $80,000 for implementation in Coryell and Lampasas

Counties. While core parts of the system were implemented in Coryell County, the system was not

deployed in Lampasas County.


Coryell County

Coryell County is located just northwest of Bell County and has a population of approximately 75,388.

The county has one district court and one county court-at-law. In 2012 the county paid $315,557 for the

representation of indigent defendants, including 544 non-capital felonies and 292 misdemeanors. The

county does not have an IT department.

Coryell County Judge John Firth reports that in August 2012 his county implemented the core

functionality of FIDO related to management of attorney rotation lists, indigency screening and

appointments. All indigent appointments for county and district courts are processed through FIDO.

When an attorney is appointed off wheel, the judicial order and reason are documented. As in Bell

County, the Coryell County instance of FIDO is cloud-based and does not interface with any other IT

system. Coryell did not implement the attorney fee voucher processing modules of FIDO because they

determined that the process was somewhat more complex and would require a number of changes the

county was not prepared to make at this time. Both Judge Firth and the county’s pre-trial services

director, Michael Hull, indicate that the system is performing as expected. The county reports that

because jail visits are logged in FIDO in the attorney voucher module, the system as implemented in

Coryell County does not assist the indigent defense coordinator in monitoring and following up with

attorneys on required contact with defendants.

As in Bell County, pretrial services staff manually enter in all data in FIDO. Automating the appointment

of the next attorney on the appropriate rotation list helps to ensure that the appointment is handled

fairly and objectively. Attorney CLE hours and the ability to allow attorneys to control their availability

through temporary attorney holds is also helpful, though the latter is rarely used. Coryell County does

not have an IT department, so a cloud-based solution that can be supported and maintained externally

is an attractive and viable way of bringing this kind of technology to smaller counties without a robust IT

infrastructure.

Lampasas County

Lampasas County is located just west of Bell County and has a population of approximately 19,677. The

county has one district court with felony jurisdiction. The county does not have a county court at law;

Constitutional County Judge Wayne Boultinghouse presides in misdemeanor cases. In 2012 the county

paid $97,782 for the representation of indigent defendants, including 157 non-capital felonies and 52

misdemeanors.

While Bell County’s grant proposal included implementation of FIDO in Lampasas County, work on this

did not proceed. 27th District Judge Joe Carroll announced he would retire in January of 2013, so plans

to implement FIDO in Lampasas were placed on hold to allow the newly elected judge to be involved in

shepherding any changes forward. Judge John Gauntt has since been elected to the 27th District bench.

12. Is FIDO exportable to other counties?

Yes, the county achieved this objective, although costs for other counties are unclear and full system

interfaces undemonstrated.


Clearly FIDO can work in other counties, as evidenced by its partial implementation in Coryell County.

Because the system is web-based, once set up on either a remote server or a county server it can be

accessed through a standard web browser by any computer connected to the internet. The system is

designed specifically for counties utilizing an assigned counsel model of indigent defense delivery, and

the core functionality of the system applies universally, since any county will need to determine

indigency, appoint attorneys from the appropriate list, monitor CLE, and process vouchers. While the

software has already been developed, it would need to be calibrated for use in particular counties for

variations in the number of rotation lists and the offenses they are qualified to handle, as well as

parameters for determining indigency used to qualify a defendant for appointed counsel. Section Three

below examines the exportability of the system in more detail, and explores the issues and questions

that will face counties interested in implementing the solution developed by Bell County.

Section 2. How has FIDO impacted county departments in the indigent defense

process?

FIDO Impacts for Pre-Trial Services

Among the several responsibilities of Bell County’s Pre-Trial Services (PTS) Department is the

administration of the day-to-day indigent defense functions of the county for both district and county

courts according to the Indigent Defense Plan adopted by the judges. The primary functions of the office

include maintaining the several lists of attorneys eligible to receive appointments for various levels of

offense, accepting and processing requests for appointed counsel, conducting financial screenings,

making indigency determinations, appointing attorneys to those who qualify, managing attorney

compliance with CLE requirements, monitoring attorney availability for appointments, and monitoring

attorney compliance with requirements for visitation of incarcerated defendants. PTS also keeps

centralized records of defendant complaints, although this is not done within FIDO.

Because of their responsibilities, PTS staffers are FIDO’s heaviest users. Prior to FIDO implementation

PTS relied on manual processes and recordkeeping, such as printouts of attorney rotation lists with

handwritten notes. Jailers provided assistance with the paperwork for requests for counsel. Counsel

requests and financial questionnaires were done on paper forms that were often forwarded to the

indigent defense office incomplete and, after follow-up with defendants, indigency determinations

involved totaling up income and assets with a calculator and checking figures against the county’s

indigency standards. Attorneys were selected by manually checking a printed list of attorneys that

included notes of recent appointments. Appointment orders were then prepared and sent to the court,

attorney, defendant and clerk.

Indigent appointments for all felony and misdemeanor cases in Bell County are now done in the FIDO

system. Applications for appointed counsel and financial questionnaires are now automated in FIDO,

which yields a uniform determination of indigency based on the specific standards adopted by the


judges. An order appointing the next attorney on the appropriate rotation list for the offense level is

automatically generated for qualified defendants. If a judge overrides the rotation and makes an

appointment out of order, the judge must issue an order and that exception is fully documented in the

system. Email appointment letters for attorneys are automatically generated and sent, and notice of

the appointment is emailed to the jail for incarcerated defendants and to the court to which the case is

assigned. For defendants out on bond, a printed letter is mailed notifying them of the appointment.

While all aspects of the appointment process are done electronically within FIDO, paper copies of the

appointment order and financial questionnaire with determination of indigency are printed out and

taken to the clerk’s office for filing, where they are eventually scanned. These printed documents

include a bar code to assist the clerk with filing.2

The original grant proposal stated that the system would have a “system integration layer” to interface

with the county’s other IT systems. Grant documents identify planned interfaces with the jail

management system, the I/LEADS law enforcement data system, and the legacy information

management system used by the courts and district and county clerks. Because defendant information,

arrest information, magistration information, offense data and other case data are already captured

contemporaneously in electronic systems at various other points in the process, particularly during the

booking and magistration processes, the proposal indicated that FIDO would interface with these

systems and pull in data to populate the relevant data fields in FIDO. These plans were not realized—

FIDO does not pull in any data from any other IT system. As currently operated, every data field in FIDO

is manually entered into the system. The vast majority of this data is entered by indigent defense staff

in PTS. A new FIDO case is created each time a defendant requests appointed counsel. When this file is

created, PTS staff log in to the jail’s information management system to look up defendant information

(name, address, phone number, birth date, arrest date and time, offense, etc. They then type that

information in to FIDO. PTS staff then log in to the county’s legacy IT system to find magistration date

and time, and transpose that information into FIDO. Thus, while PTS has realized some significant

efficiencies through the electronic management of multiple appointment rotation lists and electronic

appointments, all the data elements for each person requesting counsel must be entered manually into

FIDO, including many data elements already captured electronically in the county’s other data systems.

As a result, the population of data fields in FIDO is done through a very manual process, and results in

repetitive data entry.

This process may be compared to the data entry and processes in place before FIDO was implemented.

PTS staff have historically had to “start from scratch” in capturing data for the processing of requests for

counsel and subsequent appointments, so the need do so in the FIDO system does not in itself amount

to a totally new burden. Even so, additional data entry is now taking place because FIDO requires the

entry of data which was not tracked by PTS previously, most notably arrest and magistration data used

to determine some aspects of FDA compliance. So while there is more original data capture required in

PTS than prior to FIDO implementation, wheel management and appointment processes are now

2 County staff indicated that there have been technical problems that inhibited electronic transmission of these

documents to the clerk, however the county plans to eliminate this step.


electronically processed, better organized and more streamlined. Moreover, the additional data entry

PTS does allows tracking of compliance with key provisions of the Fair Defense Act that were previously

not systematically tracked. Although redundant data entry is part of the current process, the system

centralizes information in a way that provides enhanced visibility regarding FDA compliance that did not

exist previously.

PTS is also responsible for tracking compliance with CLE requirements. Bell County now requires

attorneys to enter their CLE into the FIDO attorney portal. PTS periodically runs a report in FIDO

showing attorneys whose logged CLE hours have expired and sends an email notifying attorneys of the

need to update their CLE. Having attorneys directly log updated CLE information simplifies PTS’s tracking

of compliance with this aspect of the county’s indigent defense plan.

One of the most important procedural changes that has occurred in conjunction with the

implementation of FIDO has been the monitoring of initial jail visits for incarcerated defendants with

appointed attorneys. Attorneys are required to enter the date of their initial jail visit with incarcerated

defendants in FIDO. According to the current Bell County Indigent Defense Plan, appointed attorneys

are required to visit incarcerated clients within ten business days. (Prior to June 2011 the rule had been

five business days.) If they fail to comply, a letter is emailed. If they still do not comply within several

days of the first notice, a second notice is sent and the judge is copied. Attorneys may be put on judicial

hold (suspended from eligibility for further appointments) for failure to comply. While this change has

mitigated a longstanding and common problem of delays in appointed attorneys visiting incarcerated

clients, the process by which this is monitored is likely amenable to streamlining. According to PTS staff,

many attorneys typically only enter the jail visit into the field of the FIDO voucher at the end of the case

when they are preparing to submit the voucher. As a result, reports generated by PTS and based on

attorney-reported jail visits are not a reliable list of attorneys out of compliance with the rule, requiring

PTS to follow a multi-step process of logging and verification including manual reviews of jail visitation

logs, in order to identify appointments that are out of compliance with the requirements for first

attorney jail visit. The FIDO report also do not distinguish between first and second chair appointments

when flagging appointments out of compliance, as well as whether the case is an appeal, and instances

when a defendant bonds out and is then rearrested. Cases with such features are often flagged as out

of compliance by the system, but usually are not.

FIDO impacts for Judges

Bell County’s judges have enjoyed significant benefits from FIDO’s capabilities. Judge Fancy Jezek of the

426th District Court reports several advantages, including welcome transparency to the appointment

process, streamlined judicial review of attorney fee vouchers and better capacity for judicial monitoring

of how the system is operating.

Prior to implementation of FIDO, attorneys submitted paper fee vouchers to the court. Judges would

review and forward to PTS after approval. PTS would then forward approved paper vouchers to the

auditor’s office for payment. Review and approval of all non-juvenile attorney fee vouchers is now

handled electronically. FIDO allows judges to approve a voucher as filed, to send a voucher back to the

attorney with questions or comments, or to approve a voucher with changes and explanation.


Approved vouchers then go to PTS for review before being put in a weekly batch for upload into the

accounts payable system by auditor’s office. Both judges and attorneys can see the status of a voucher

and where in the process it is without making phone or email inquiries. (If an attorney has investigator

expenses, expert witness expenses, or other allowable indigent defense expenses, paper invoices and

documents are routed to the judge, PTS, and eventually to the Auditor for payment.)

Judges can get a number of FIDO reports automatically via email on a daily basis, including attorney

rotation list status change reports, new appointment reports showing which attorney was next up in the

rotation and who was actually appointed, and reports on incarcerated defendants with appointed

attorneys awaiting an initial visit. Daily reports of all requests for counsel and indigency determinations

are also available, as well as reports showing compliance with the required timelines regarding requests

for counsel required by the FDA.

FIDO Impacts for Defense Attorneys

Defense attorneys use FIDO to submit and track the status of vouchers, see their current appointments,

manage availability for new appointments, submit CLE hours, and to log initial jail visits with

incarcerated clients. Prior to FIDO implementation, attorneys submitted paper vouchers to the courts

and had no way to track them through the approval and payment process. Attorneys turned in CLE

forms to the indigent defense office and notified staff of any temporary hiatus from new appointments,

which were tracked via handwritten notes on printouts of attorney lists. The primary benefits of FIDO

for attorneys are faster voucher review, processing and payment, as well as the ability to check the

status of any submitted voucher to see where it is in the process. One attorney commented that the

system is useful for keeping track of basic case data and billing for all appointed cases, and that filling

out vouchers in FIDO is simple and efficient. Bell County courts have placed computers in the

courtrooms to allow attorneys to access FIDO and finalize vouchers immediately upon disposition of the

case. Finally, FIDO has provided attorneys with greater confidence in the objectivity and integrity of the

appointment process because cases are distributed automatically, whereas prior to the system’s

implementation the process lacked transparency.

One of the data elements attorneys are supposed to enter into FIDO is the date of first client interview

with incarcerated defendants. According to PTS, some attorneys do not enter this information timely.

One apparent impediment to greater compliance is that this date is entered in the fee voucher, which

must be set up through several screens before the jail visit field is available. It may be the case that

many attorneys do not create a voucher and enter data for it until the case is completed and they are

ready to file the voucher. One possible modification that may increase compliance with attorney

logging of this data is to make the field more readily accessible to them in the system. Additional

training and/or judicial reminders may help as well. The lack of timely compliance is significant because

it requires a more labor-intensive process by PTS staff to track these required jail visits, including

manually looking up jail visitation records. While self-reporting of this data element is less than ideal,

when combined with some periodic audit it could provide a reasonably reliable monitoring capability. If

Bell County proceeds to develop the capacity for FIDO to interface with the jail’s information


management system as originally planned, the monitoring of attorney compliance with jail visitation

requirements can be made more efficient and less reliant on self-reported data.

FIDO Impacts for the Auditor’s Office

The auditor’s office is responsible for issuing payment of attorney fees and other eligible indigent

defense expenses based on vouchers that have been approved for payment by the judges. The county

reports that previously “attorneys provided paper vouchers upon disposition of the case. The majority

of vouchers were handwritten and often difficult to read. . . . Vouchers were occasionally misplaced or

lost or not transferred to the correct department for processing.”

FIDO has significantly streamlined this payment process. Electronic vouchers are now submitted by

attorneys in FIDO, reviewed by the judge and forwarded electronically to the auditor’s office. Once per

week the accounts payable clerk logs in to FIDO and extracts data on approved vouchers, which is then

imported into the J.D. Edwards financial software used by the auditor’s office to processes payments.

The electronic voucher data is formatted by FIDO to be readily exported to the Auditor’s financial

software. (This electronic data export is currently the only point at which FIDO interfaces with another IT

system.) As part of the voucher workflow analysis conducted to prepare for development of FIDO’s

voucher module, the county realigned general ledger codes with the attorney fee voucher billing

categories. With the click of a button, approved voucher data is imported into the financial management

software, eliminating repetitive data entry and coding that previously took the accounts payable clerk a

half day. Problems deciphering handwriting on paper vouchers have also been eliminated. Eliminating

the keying in of voucher data also removes another point at which data entry errors could occur. The

vast majority of attorneys have enrolled in direct deposit, so electronic funds transfers are utilized

instead of paper checks. Attorneys automatically get an email notice when the auditor has processed

payment for a voucher. Prior to FIDO batches of vouchers were paid monthly and the entire process

was paper-intensive and cumbersome. Processing and payment of vouchers is now substantially faster

and opportunities for error have been reduced. In addition to enhancing efficiency in both the courts

and the auditor’s office, the electronic voucher system has provided better controls to avoid errors, such

as potential double-payment of the same case because a voucher was resubmitted. The enhanced

visibility for attorneys and judges regarding the status of vouchers also reduces the need for follow-up

inquiries.

After payment, vouchers are printed out and sent to the clerk’s office where they are filed. Staff in the

auditor’s office indicated that as the county completes its transition to the new New World JustWare

system that they anticipate eliminating the need to send printed documents to the clerk.

In addition to processing payments for attorney fees, each year the auditor’s office is responsible for

filing the Indigent Defense Expenditure Report to the Texas Indigent Defense Commission. The report

includes the number of indigent cases paid in each court and total allowable expenditures for those

cases by category. Prior to the implementation of FIDO the Bell County Auditor’s office prepared this

report by pulling every voucher and constructing a massive spreadsheet based on vouchers processed,

and had to manually count cases paid. The electronic vouchers in FIDO have greatly simplified this


reporting by providing an electronic record of cases paid with costs itemized to map to IDER reporting

requirements.

FIDO Impacts for the District and County Clerks

Bell County District Clerk Sheila Norman reports that the implementation of FIDO has saved her office

significant time, primarily by eliminating tasks in the clerk’s office related to voucher processing. Prior

to the implementation of electronic vouchers in FIDO, paper vouchers from district court were routed to

the District Clerk’s office after judicial approval. In some cases these would be sent to the clerk’s office

directly by the courts, and in some cases attorneys would walk the approved vouchers over to the

clerk’s customer service counter. The clerk’s staff would then enter the data related to the voucher into

the county’s legacy IT system, including attorney name and payment information. Then the vouchers

would be forwarded to the auditor’s office for payment to be issued. Now the original electronic data

capture of voucher information occurs in FIDO when attorneys create a voucher for one of their

appointed cases. The electronic routing of vouchers through the judicial approval process and then to

the auditor’s office has eliminated the need for the clerk’s office to process vouchers and capture data.

Other than voucher processing, the District Clerk’s office still enters appointment information directly

into the legacy IT system and scans appointment orders and financial questionnaires which are stored in

the legacy system. Ms. Norman anticipates the need to scan paper copies of these documents to be

eliminated as the county changes over to its new IT system.

FIDO has apparently not had significant impact on operations in the County Clerk’s office. According to

County Clerk Shelley Coston, misdemeanor vouchers have always been forwarded directly to the

auditor’s office for payment. The County Clerk continues to receive indigent defense related documents

such as appointment orders and financial questionnaires on paper as they have prior to FIDO, and these

documents are scanned and stored in the clerks’ information management system and in paper files.

FIDO Impacts for the Magistration Process

Most magistration proceedings in Bell County are contemporaneously documented in the magistration

module of the County’s legacy software system, which does not interface with FIDO. Among the

organizational and process changes Bell County implemented prior to the FIDO project was merging PTS

with the Indigent Defense office and then assigning PTS staff to both the Bell County Jail and the Killeen

Jail in order to perform financial screening of magistrate persons to determine eligibility for personal

bonds as well as eligibility for appointed counsel. This process change has resulted in faster

determinations of eligibility for PR bonds and appointment of counsel. The county reports that the

ability to issue PR bonds to some arrestees in Killeen prior to transfer to the Bell County Jail has reduced

unnecessary pretrial jail populations and transportation costs. Although the magistration process itself

has not been impacted, pre-trial services accesses FIDO directly from the jails and most financial

interviews occur earlier in the process, and in most cases immediately after magistration.


FIDO Impacts for the County’s Technology Services Department3

Bell County is in the process of phasing out its legacy justice information management system,

developed and maintained during the past decade. In July 2012 the Bell County Commissioners Court

approved a contract with New Dawn Technologies to purchase the JustWare software system. The

county’s Technology Services Department is currently developing the Justice of the Peace , County and

District Attorney Office applications using the New Dawn software framework and is also supporting the

implementation of the New World jail management software application, currently scheduled for a late

fall 2013 “go-live.”

As described above, FIDO was developed and implemented by Managing to Excellence Corporation of

Plano, Texas. Because the funded concept was to develop a portable, cloud-based system that could

eventually integrate with any information management system once custom interfaces were developed,

the initial development of the project did not engage the county’s Technology Services Department, nor

does the current FIDO system receive any technical support from Bell County. The FIDO software

application was developed using open source technologies which are different from the current

Microsoft and IBM technology skill sets maintained by the Technology Services staff. Several months

after the grant period ended, in April 2013, Bell County entered into a contract with Managing to

Excellence Corporation to provide ongoing system maintenance, technical support and system

development up to a limited number of hours per month.

The recommendation of county’s Technology Services Department is to eventually reuse the FIDO

software functionality and re-host the application using Microsoft supported technologies and a virtual

server platform residing within the Bell County secure private cloud. Re-hosting the FIDO application

within the New Dawn software infrastructure with the capability to leverage shared criminal justice

database(s) resources within a secure environment is the preferred technology solution. The planned

strategy is to first re-host the stand-alone FIDO application on an existing server resource located in the

secure Bell County private cloud, assume System Administration responsibilities for the application and

eliminate third party public cloud hosting fees upon contract completion with Managing to Excellence

Corporation. The next step includes re-hosting the FIDO functionality during the New Dawn Court

software development phase expected to begin in early 2014. The Technology Services Director, Jim

Chandler, prefers to integrate FIDO functionality within a fully integrated criminal justice system

architecture as the approach versus spending the time to develop and maintain multiple interfaces to

integrated select data elements with the FIDO application residing outside the secure County

environment on a third party public cloud server.4

3 This section incorporates clarifications provided by Bell County Technology Services Director Jim Chandler in the

county’s response to the draft report. 4 In the county’s response to the draft report, District Judge Fancy Jezek points out that no final decision has been

made regarding this recommendation of the county’s Technology Services Department. Her full comment is included below on page 23.


Section 3. What steps are needed for other interested counties to implement

FIDO?

This section will explore in greater detail the “portability” of FIDO and assess resources that exist for

counties considering similar projects, identify questions counties should consider and the types of costs

they may incur in implementing FIDO or a similar program.

Because the development of FIDO was informed by both the requirements of the Fair Defense Act and

also because the system’s several modules align with activities in all counties utilizing an assigned

counsel system of indigent defense (indigence screening, wheel management, appointment, voucher

submission and approval) the system should, in principle, be exportable to any county using an assigned

counsel system, with some calibration needed for local standards and processes.

Stakeholders in Bell County involved with the project, together with the county’s project consultants

from Managing to Excellence, have provided numerous opportunities for interested parties to see a

demonstration of the system. The FIDO home page includes a brief video overview of the system

available at https://www.fairindigentdefense.org/video/. Bell County Judge John Burrows, District

Judge Fancy Jezek and project consultant Brad Sibley also made a presentation on the FIDO project at a

TIDC sponsored workshop, video of which is available at

http://www.txcourts.gov/tidc/videos5/images/Part5.jpg. Bell County has provided detailed

screenshots, reports, and system information in the final grant progress report to TIDC. This report

included an image of every screen and report available at the time of grant finalization. Attorney

training material has also been submitted to the Commission. A system manual or any additional

literature was not developed and was not a requirement of grant project. 5

Because the software is already developed, the implementation costs of FIDO in a new jurisdiction

would be expected to be much lower than costs incurred by Bell County for the development of the

software as well as its implementation. The process of exploring implementation for interested counties

should include addressing the following questions:

1. To what extent will indigent defense processes need to be changed to make implementation of

FIDO possible? What costs will be associated with the identification of needed changes and

their implementation (process consulting needs)?

2. Are system stakeholders willing and able to implement process changes and can they commit to

using the system for all cases/appointments/vouchers, etc. (stakeholder buy-in needs)?

3. What system programming will be required to calibrate FIDO to the local jurisdiction’s rules and

wheels, and what costs will be incurred (system calibration needs)?

4. What system integration points need to be developed, and what are the costs for developing

them (system integration needs)?

5 This section incorporates comments provided by District Judge Fancy Jezek in the county’s response to the draft

report.

https://www.fairindigentdefense.org/video/

http://www.txcourts.gov/tidc/videos5/images/Part5.jpg


5. What system maintenance and support needs would a county expect for FIDO after

implementation, and what are the costs?

6. How many system users will need to be trained for each “module” of the system, and how much

training will be needed (training needs)?

Answers to these questions will naturally depend on the circumstances of particular counties and the

cost models of the vendors who provide these services. Addressing them thoroughly in advance,

however, will be essential to a successful indigent defense process management project.

The FIDO system offers a comprehensive set of indigent defense process management tools that

provide a county with the opportunity to centralize and analyze indigent defense data, ensure a fair and

neutral appointment process, more efficiently process attorney fee vouchers, and monitor compliance

with the requirements of the Fair Defense Act. Moreover, the comprehensive analysis of Bell County’s

indigent defense system and the commitment among stakeholders to help understand each other’s

processes and improve the system made possible an application of technology that helped to transform

the culture in a positive way.

While the Technology Services Department in Bell County has recommended that the design and

functionality of FIDO should be reworked and hosted in the county’s new in-house system, key county

stakeholders have pointed out that no final decision has been made and that other options are being

reviewed. Other stakeholders support the continued usage of FIDO as originally envisioned. District

Judge Fancy Jezek described these deliberations in the county’s response to the draft report:

“From the inception, FIDo was to be a "portable web-based indigent defense solution." Obviously Bell County is mindful of the costs of maintaining and updating the system. Currently the county is participating in the Conference of Urban Counties' TechShare Program to determine the feasibility of offering the FIDo system to other counties. No decision has been made or is apt to be made in the near future that FIDo will be reproduced and hosted in the county's new in-house system. Bell County is hopeful that the CUC through TechShare can extend FIDo to a sufficient number of participating counties such that the program will be maintained as it was designed. While stakeholders within Bell County envision the future of FIDo very differently, the County is mindful of the original intent of the grant and is pursuing options to continue operation of the program as was contemplated by the grant.”

As the future of the system in Bell County is still being considered, other counties may consider pursuing

implementation of FIDO as an instance of the web-based system that exists today. While robust system

integration of FIDO has not yet been demonstrated, the system’s core functionality can provide

substantial benefits for a county’s indigent defense system.