In a request for statement of qualifications (RFSQ) released June 5, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department wants to hear from vendors capable of providing it with a new Jail Management System (JMS). As of 2021, the county’s population was approaching 3.3 million, making it second only to Los Angeles County in residential numbers. Sheriff’s deputies patrol 4,200 square miles of unincorporated county area, including nine contract cities and 18 reservations. The department also manages county jails and handles courthouse security. During the 2020-2021 Fiscal Year, the most recent period for which it makes numbers available, the department answered 312,187 calls to 911. Among the takeaways:
- The Sheriff’s Detention Services Bureau needs a JMS system to provide “critical jail services to Detention Services Bureau, law enforcement, and the public.” It handles about 80,000 bookings a year, according to the RFSQ, and has an average daily population of about 4,200 people who are incarcerated. The bureau serves seven detention facilities of assorted sizes and budgets — and levels of IT automation. What’s vital, the RFSQ said, is that the JMS have “several methods of reception, mechanisms to collect data” on people coming into custody — which are “compatible with multiple intake processes.”
- The JMS has to deliver the ability to collect, record and store information on “all aspects of jail incarceration”; and once implemented, the solution has to be able to follow processes closely, maintaining audit trails, creating and managing report needs and identifying and managing both routine and non-routine processes. The JMS has to serve as a “single source to obtain accurate and complete information on all aspects” of the bureau. Simultaneously, it should avoid and eliminate duplicate data collection and forms; track information in the system; and automate the production and dissemination of reports. The JMS should also improve quality by “automating and documenting chain of custody and supporting peer and administrative review of data, procedures, and reports.”
- The bureau is developing business requirements that include “prioritized implementation needs for a JMS,” and the need for a more coordinated system. Its current client-server-based JMS application has evolved but “lacks the flexibility required.” Collectively, its systems are now obsolete and unable to meet demand. Specific needs include collection of demographics and personal history; the management of arrest/booking information, charge/offense dispositions, sentence calculations and modifications, booking and release; “individual security classifications and assessments, special/high-risk indicators and housing management,” along with meal distribution and special diet tracking; and fund/account management. The overall IT strategy, per the RFSQ, includes identifying a “cloud-native system that is expandable and serviceable by technology personnel without lacking in functionality,” and can be scaled and integrate with existing legacy.
- Requirements include providing on-site support for implementation, training and support. End-to-end integration for the new system is critical to its success. The vendor must also meet “personnel background clearance” required by the Sheriff’s Department for contracts with facility and data access; be responsible for protecting data confidentiality; and be capable of “providing industry standard cloud-native technology and architecture.” The solution must be hosted in “cloud infrastructure designated for government” in the continental U.S. and come with a Service Level Agreement with “24/365 operational days for all cloud services used and overall composite SLA of the proposed application architecture.” Uptime requirement is at least 99.999 percent. Vendors must also “entertain the possibility of multiple cloud options and multi-tenancy and single-tenancy cloud options”; data sharing and separation management in a multi-tenancy environment; and dedicated virtual private cloud connection and wide-area network (WAN) infrastructure. Any solution must also offer two- and multifactor authentication, and single sign-on.
- The contract’s value and term are not specified. Questions on the RFSQ are due by 5 p.m. Thursday. Statements of qualification are due by 3 p.m. June 30.
