Tuesday, March 30, 2004
By JOE CARLSON
The Express-Times

Northampton County judicial officials have hired a consultant for a quick analysis of how much work will be required to begin using a new computer system in the county's criminal court division.

When county officials switch over to the new state-mandated computer system in July, it will be the second time in five years that the criminal division has gotten all new software.

Officials from the Curtis Group, a private consulting firm based in Harrisburg, traveled to Cumberland County on Monday to see how officials there handled the transfer to the new statewide court software package.

"Their assignment is to tell us what the task is and how we can accomplish it," Northampton County President Judge Robert Freedberg said Monday.

Freedberg said the consultants, who were hired for $5,800 by the county's judiciary, are expected to report back with a report within "a week or two."

State officials have mandated new software in every criminal division in the state to ease cross-jurisdictional information sharing and to create uniform policies and procedures across the commonwealth.

In Northampton, where the system is supposed to go live in July, the changeover has created tension between District Attorney John Morganelli's office and County Executive Glenn Reibman's administration.

The controversy centers on the fact that Morganelli's office will no longer be allowed to enter data into the new computer system, but will still maintain the county's lists of witnesses and criminal trials. Reibman says Morganelli's office should transfer clerical workers to the administration's criminal court division to help with the extra workload of maintaining the new system.

Morganelli says his office has had the same number of clerical support staff for more than 20 years, and he has threatened to ask a judge to intervene if Reibman attempts to remove staff from his office.

So with three months before the new system is supposed to go online, no one in the county can say for sure who should be trained to do it. "I think it's safe to say the district attorney and the county executive have a different opinion on that," Freedberg said. "It's probably something that county council will have to resolve."

Council will have to decide whether to transfer positions out of Morganelli's office or to create new positions in the criminal office. Council will have to think hard about creating new jobs just three months after it voted for a budget that laid off more than 40 people and left about 150 jobs unfilled across the county.

The Curtis report will not opine on whether council should create or transfer jobs, but will only attempt to quantify the number of hours of work required in the new system.

"Experience tells us that each time you bring on new software there are numerous bugs and difficulties that the staff have to work through," said Court Administrator James Onembo.

County officials know firsthand about problems with new software. They installed a whole new computer database system called FACTS in the criminal division in late 1999 because of Y2K concerns. The criminal division's software was part of an overall software court upgrade that cost nearly $484,000.

But problems plagued various parts of the system. After the company that installed the software began having financial difficulties, it sold the rights to its software to another company based in the same city in Utah.

But the new company was not bound by the former company's service agreements, forcing the county to spend another $479,000 to fix the software.

Now county officials must install all new software again. And despite all the problems with FACTS, county officials say the state's new software will probably be a step backwards for them.

"The system that we have is much better than the system that we're getting," said Court Services Director Gerald Seyfried. "If it's extremely slow and (there are) delays, that's wasted time. Can that be corrected in the future? I hope so."

The Express-Times

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2004