On May 24^th, 2001, CSI Technology Group, Inc. was awarded a contract for the purchase and implementation of a statewide case and document management application. InfoShare Public Defender will be installed at the State's data processing center in Sante Fe, New Mexico. The application will be accessed by two hundred concurrent users throughout the six judicial districts of the State. It will provide the Department of Public Defender Services with the ability to more effectively manage Appellate, Trial, and Mental Health related cases. It will also provide the Department with a full range of reporting functionalities and eventually incorporate the ability to manage the newly initiated State requirements of Performance Based Budgeting.

Contract Evaluation Result Comments:

Mandatory, Scored Mandatory and Desirable Specifications

CSI currently has its proposed software installed in other Public Defender environments utilizing Wide Area Networks (WAN). The Evaluation Committee felt that the knowledge and experience CSI has gained in this area would help insure a smooth transition to a new system. Additionally, the Evaluation Committee felt that CSI had the necessary internal technical staff resources to provide excellent maintenance and support services. The Committee also felt that CSI gave a very good explanation of the steps required to carry out the data conversion process.

The RFP stressed the importance of a system flexible enough to allow modifications to be made quickly by the Public Defender Department's Information Systems Staff. The Evaluation Committee felt CSI effectively explained how the Department's IS staff could easily make modification to its system without having to contact CSI for assistance.

Document generation and tracking is a vital part of any system, and the Evaluation Committee felt that the responses provided by CSI left no question that their product - InfoShare would generate many of the Department's required documents without any major programming changes. The Committee also felt that CSI's system provided the ability to remotely enter case information via a "dial-up" connection, through a Wide Area Network connection or through the internet. CSI clearly stated that no modification was required to meet this functionality.

Finally, CSI was awarded a high number of points for its response to Criminal and Appeals Case Tracking. The Evaluation Committee felt that the ability of CSI's system to provide much of this functionality with little or no modification would be advantageous to the Department in terms of supporting and extending the life of the system.

References

CSI scored the most points due to two factors: (1) three references were contacted and responded to the questionnaire and (2) the references gave positive answers to the questions asked from the questionnaire.

Summary Evaluation Results

Database Management

The Evaluation Committee felt that CSI did an excellent job of demonstrating their product's security features, its ability to add fields that were not part of the proposed system, and the product's ability to store and modify error messages within the system. The Evaluation Committee felt that CSI clearly and effectively demonstrated these functionalities.

The Evaluation Committee gave CSI a score of very good relative to this category. CSI clearly demonstrated their product's capabilities in this area. For example, CSI demonstrated the ease in which a field could be added to a form and added to a drop down list. CSI also demonstrated their product's capability to import and export data from external database, i.e., Infomix database.

Document Generation and Tracking

The Evaluation Committee scored CSI very high in this area. CSI demonstrated its product's versatility and ease of use when generating standardized reports. CSI clearly demonstrated the product's ability to create reports by using data external to the Case/Defendant Management System by utilizing Adobe Acrobat and Crystal Reports. Additionally, CSI displayed a list of numbers standard documents that are part of the software package, for example, Notice to Appeal, and a General Case Report.

Data Entry

The Evaluation Committee scored CSI very high in this area. The Committee felt that the product's "color coding" of data entry screens was very user friendly, and allowed the user to know exactly where within the system they were operating. The Evaluation Committee also felt that the drop down menus while, at times appearing cumbersome, were very usable.

Regarding the area of modification to data entry screens, the Evaluation Committee scored CSI very high. The Committee was impressed with the product's demonstrated ability make changes "on the fly".

The Evaluation Committee's gave CSI an overall score of excellent for this category. All thirteen demonstrated functionalities were judged to be excellent. The system's general User friendliness was evident throughout CSI's demonstration.

The Evaluation Committee scored CSI excellent in all functionalities except for the system's ability to weight cases. CSI demonstrated its system's ability to populate a new appeal record from an existing criminal record, to track multiple appeals related to a defendant, and demonstrated an excellent "tickler/email" feature. CSI's system fell short in its ability to weight cases. CSI stated that this functionality does not currently exist.

CSI's overall score was good. With the exception of its inability to generate exception reports, all other functionality was considered excellent.

The Evaluation Committee felt that the software solution proposed by CSI was the superior product, as evidenced by their higher score.

After a thorough review and scoring of all Offerors' proposals the Evaluation Committee recommends that Request for Proposal No. 10-355-00-00257 - Public Defender Department Case / Defendant Management System was awarded to CSI Technology Group.

CSI Technology Group
330 Mac Lane
Keasbey, NJ 08832
U.S.A
T: 732-346-0200
F: 732-346-0209
Email: sales@csitech.com