Houston System Upgrades May Spur Additional Tech Procurements

Houston officials are advancing two major public safety technology projects involving a new records management system (RMS) and a 911 computer-aided dispatch (CAD) upgrade that are expected to generate new procurement activity.

The projects were detailed during a recent Public Safety Committee meeting, where city leaders briefed council members on the progress of the police department’s RMS replacement and a long-planned upgrade of its CAD system.

The RMS modernization effort will replace the city’s legacy Tiburon platform with a new system from Versaterm that integrates with more than two dozen other applications. Officials described the RMS as critical to daily police operations, housing incident reports, case information and interagency data. As part of a proposed $11.4 million funding expansion, the city plans to purchase licenses, analytics tools and mobile printers for field use, with the full package scheduled for council approval in December 2025.

Separately, the city is planning to replace its aging CAD system, which has been in place for more than 20 years and is currently managed by Peraton. The upgrade is intended to support enhanced 911 features such as text and multimedia submissions from the public, as well as improved geolocation and mobile data capabilities.

The CAD project remains in the contract negotiation phase. Although a vendor has been selected through a competitive process, city officials said the contract will not be finalized until early 2026. They expect to present it to the council in February.

Officials made it clear that full deployment of the CAD system will require significant additional work that is still being scoped. One area in particular that may generate future solicitations is the integration of the CAD with other city and county systems.

“There are a number of integrations that we need to do from CAD to a variety of other systems to make that fully functional end-to-end capability from 911 calls all the way through dispatch and RMS entry,” a city representative said. “Identifying each of those integrations is something that we're working on hard to maintain as well as planning those new capabilities.”

This integration work could involve linking CAD with mobile data computers used by police, fire and EMS personnel, as well as connections to records systems, emergency communications infrastructure, internal city applications and data platforms.

Both initiatives are being jointly led by the Houston Police Department and Houston Information Technology Services. Technical staffing is being supplemented by a contract with Mission Critical Partners, which is providing roles such as solution architects, programmers and data analysts.

Project leaders said the revised RMS go-live date is now set for October 2026, with CAD implementation targeted for 2028. Officials acknowledged that early staffing shortages and aggressive timelines required a realignment of project plans and resources.

As the city continues its multiyear effort to modernize public safety systems, additional procurements are likely. These could include tools to support agency collaboration, expanded analytics functions, training applications and data migration services.