The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) recently completed scanning 170,000 active offender case files comprising some 200 million documents. As reported earlier in Techwire, this was a major milestone in CDCR’s Strategic Offender Management System (SOMS) which will modernize legacy computer systems, enable access to accurate and complete offender information, and consolidate intake, history and tracking of inmates across its more than 30 institutions.
According to CDCR CIO Joe Panora, each document in an inmate’s central file was scanned into PDF format and tied to the inmate’s CDC number and applicable tab (section) of the central file. The scanning vendor — Fidelity National Technology Imaging of San Jose — was subcontracted through Hewlett Packard and used scanning sites in San Jose and Ontario, Calif.
Now, SOMS has moved on to the next step — scanning files for active parolees. “The scanning of parole files is expected to be completed in July, 2014,” said Panora in an email to Techwire, “and the final step is to scan all of the C-Files for discharged offenders. That process is expected to be completed by the end of 2014.”
The system is run on CDCR’s secure network and includes an identity management component. During the scanning process, said Panora, CDCR maintains oversight, quality assurance and control processes. Once the documents are in the automated system, only authorized CDCR and healthcare staff have access to the electronic versions of the central files. Users, depending on their access level can either view documents, edit and/or print them. Paper files are destroyed once scanned in a tightly controlled process to ensure no documents or information are compromised.
“We live in a digital world,” said Panora, “and as such this effort was a significant accomplishment toward going paperless and improving efficiencies.”
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