To: Board of Supervisors
From: David O. Livingston, Sheriff-Coroner
Report Title: Insight Public Sector (IPS)
☒Recommendation of the County Administrator ☐ Recommendation of Board Committee
RECOMMENDATIONS:
AUTHORIZE the Auditor-Controller, or designee, to pay $306,153.94 to Insight Public Sector (IPS) for services provided on behalf of the California State Sheriffs Association (CSSA) Microsoft Azure Cloud (“CSSA Cloud”) for cloud subscription and usage fees incurred by the Office of the Sheriff’s application, the Automated Regional Information Exchange System (ARIES), for the period April 1, 2023, through February 29, 2024.
FISCAL IMPACT:
Approval of this request will result in a one-time expenditure of $306,153.94 and will be funded 100% by the Sheriff’s Office General Fund allocation.
BACKGROUND:
The Automated Regional Information Exchange System (ARIES) is a proprietary software application owned and operated by the Office of the Sheriff, Contra Costa County (CCCSO). ARIES is used by the CCCSO and partnered law enforcement agencies for a wide variety of essential law enforcement functions which are accessed from sub-modules within the application.
These include:
• Live Search: This module allows officers to access persons information, including criminal history, whether persons are the subject of protective or restraining orders (either the protected or prohibited person), information on property (i.e., if said property has been reported as stolen) and information on firearms.
• Total Booking: This module streamlines the booking process, allowing for more efficient booking of a person, ensuring that timelines which affect areas such as offense charging and timely processing for issuance of citation and release of persons are met.
• ALPR (Automated License Plate Reader): This module allows for immediate checks on license plates associated with critical cases, i.e., child abductions or other cases regarding imminent threat to the public.
• Alerts: This module allows officers to enter and check for alerts in cases such as missing persons or other cases involving a threat to public or officer safety.
• Location Alerts: This module allows officers to flag a particular address for future reference, i.e., immediately advising the officer if the victim in an on-going domestic violence event reports that the suspect has returned to the flagged location.
• Person Alerts: This module functions on the same principle as the Location Alert, but tracks a person instead of a location, i.e., the suspect in the above-described domestic violence investigation is contacted.
• Documents: This module is a one-stop repository of important documents, such as the Domestic Violence Report Supplemental, Child Abuse Reporting Form, Suspected Dependent Adult/Elder Abuse Reporting Form, Strangulation Assessment Card and Domestic Violence Proof of Service (and Instructions) and Domestic Violence Resource Pamphlet.
The system also allows partners to manage arrest and crime data collected from law enforcement agencies, all of which are processed and stored in CCCSO on-premises servers. Over the years, ARIES has reached several technological milestones that have led to the modern interface that over 10,000 users from 105+ different agencies use today.
Much of ARIES’s modernization has been accomplished in the last seven years thanks to a partnership with West Advanced Technologies, Inc. (WATI). WATI was awarded their first ARIES contract in 2017 to begin the modernization process which involved improving, developing, and supporting the technology behind ARIES. In early 2022, WATI was selected from a competitive bidding process to accomplish the next logical milestone for ARIES: to migrate its aging on-premises servers to the California State Sheriffs Association (CSSA) Azure Cloud (“CSSA Cloud”).
The ARIES program received approval to migrate its on-premises hardware and network infrastructure historically located at the CCCSO to the CSSA Cloud as stated in County Contract No. 49752-01. While this contract is between CCCSO and WATI, the CSSA Cloud was named as its intended destination.
The CSSA Cloud program is owned by the California State Sheriffs’ Association on the Microsoft Azure GovCloud platform. It was developed by the CSSA for all Sheriff’s Offices across the state of California meeting stringent Department of Justice (DOJ) Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) government cloud requirements. In May 2022, the CSSA first launched the CSSA Cloud program offering to all California Sheriff’s agencies. Then, a year after the CSSA Cloud launch, the CSSA partnered with Insight Public Sector (IPS) to provide financial/billing services on behalf of the CSSA.
The CCCSO joined the CSSA Cloud program at its launch in May 2022, although it was not used until January 2023. Unfortunately, the original CSSA Cloud Agreement was signed by an unauthorized signer without review and approval of County Counsel and the Board of Supervisors. Then in January 2023, the CCCSO migrated the ARIES program to the CSSA Cloud from which the CCCSO started to incur CSSA Cloud usage and consumption fees. Since IPS is the CSSA’s designated partner to provide financial/billing services for costs incurred from CSSA Cloud program consumption and usage fees, payment of the invoices must be sent to IPS. This is a requirement for the continuity of the CSSA Cloud program as well as for the CCCSO to continue hosting ARIES and other applications in the CSSA Cloud.
Once it was discovered that the original agreement was not fully executed, all the necessary steps were taken to correct the issue. The contract is now with County Counsel for review and approval. Without an approved contract in place, the Office of the Sheriff has not been able to pay the vendor’s invoices for services already rendered on behalf of the CSSA for its CSSA Cloud program. Despite the delay in payment, IPS continues to provide services in good faith, while the final contract terms are negotiated. Once the contract terms are finalized and approved as to form by County Counsel, the CCCSO will return to the Board, if necessary, for approval to execute a contract.
CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION:
If the Board does not approve, Insight Public Sector will not be paid for services rendered in good faith and we risk the County’s reputation and relationship with the CSSA, IPS, and Microsoft. Additionally, the entire CSSA Cloud, a multi-year, multi-agency partnership program developed specifically for all California Sheriffs and several law enforcement agencies, will be in danger of shutting down. Other than ARIES, other critical applications already hosted in the CSSA Cloud will be adversely affected, such as the RIPA (Racial and Identity Profiling Act) application, another cloud-based application already in use by the Sheriff’s Office and multiple law enforcement agencies to meet Department of Justice (DOJ) requirements.