We enjoyed speaking with Tonya Smith, jail case coordinator, and Tim Nolan, senior applications manager at Collin County, Texas. Collin County is known for its innovation in government technology processes. Not only have they harnessed automation, but now they implemented their first digital worker to eliminate bottlenecks in their corrections business process.
The Problem
At the time of an arrest, a deputy spent 45 minutes entering the arrestee’s personal information and charge(s) into their onboard cruiser software, Athena. Upon arrival to the jailhouse, the detention officers spent an additional 20 minutes transferring the same data into the jailhouse system, Odyssey, as part of the end-to-end jailhouse booking process. The two systems remained isolated for security and compliance purposes.
This process created a bottleneck for deputies and officers, who often spent up to two hours per booking.
The Solution
“Our population in Collin County is over a million, and so by definition, that tends to mean more crime. Our goal was to speed up inmate processing and get our officers back on the street quickly so they can continue to protect and serve,” stated Tim.
Through the RPA technology, a digital worker gathers the deputy’s cruiser system’s data, then completes the transfer of data to the jailhouse system – all done in a secure and compliant manner. The automated process creates the arrest entry and issues a notification to the jailhouse clerk(s) that an arrestee is en route. The jailhouse clerk quickly performs jail room assignments and preps for the arrestee’s arrival – taking advantage of the digital worker’s lead time. There is now no need for the officer to complete the second round of data entry to create the record’s jailhouse system.
In 2019, Collin County deputies arrested 10,366 individuals. After running the numbers, they found a savings of at least 6,000 hours with a price tag of approximately $180,000 thanks to their RPA solution.
“For over a decade, this has been a persistent problem for us, and we’re thrilled to have a solution, finally. From the IT perspective, digital workers solve this problem for every city and county with an RMS and jail system, especially in Texas,” emphasized Tim.
“If someone told me five years ago that we would have a digital worker completing this process, I would not believe it. Now, after seeing this process work, I am a believer in robotic process automation,” laughed Tonya.
Speaking about working with MCCi, “We leaned on their expertise to help us a lot. It’s not just basic tech support. When we call on MCCi, it’s at a very high-level technical skilled professional. The support team has been fantastic. We work with one specific person with each problem, and they are with you to the end. There’s no closing out the ticket or passing it to another person. They will always be the people we call on for Laserfiche, Blue Prism, and beyond,” said Tim.
