This morning, in a continued show of confidence, the Commissioners Courts of Dallas County and Tarrant County voted to approve the revised addendum for the development of the TechShare.Court application. This is a huge milestone for the project, and a reflection of the hard work the team put forth during Release 1 of the project.
The decision to move forward with development of Release 2 is supported by the following basic principles, which were also the foundation for the original decision to participate in the project from the beginning.
Ownership & Control: Dallas, Tarrant and Travis counties already own the software and associated intellectual property. The participating counties that approved the new agreement will continue to guide the software development process so that—when completed—the system will have been built, maintained, and controlled by the counties.
Cost Savings: As with any TechShare project, Maintenance and Operations costs will decrease over time as more counties participate in our programs. The cost of M&O for each participant is based on population size. Dallas and Tarrant counties have benefited from this cost model with projects such as Juvenile Case Management System (JCMS), TechShare.Juvenile and TechShare.Prosecutor.
Return on Investment: Another benefit to counties that participate in TechShare projects is the costs returned to them when other counties join. Fees paid by counties to join projects like TechShare.Court are returned to the participating counties.
Proven Software Methodology and Delivery: TechShare has a proven track record with systems like TechShare.Juvenile and JCMS, which are in use in more than 210 counties statewide, and TechShare.Prosecutor, currently in use in Dallas and Midland counties.
On behalf of the Texas Conference of Urban Counties and the TechShare program, we’d like to congratulate the project team and thank the participating counties for their steadfast support of TechShare.Court.
Onto Release 2! Stay tuned for more updates on the TechShare.Court project in the coming weeks.