OakVideo: efficiency and cost savings through cooperation.

• Author: Daddow, Robert

Consider the logistics behind arresting, arraigning, bailing, and remanding offenders. Transportation is traditionally at the center of the process, with police officers having to travel to other jurisdictions to get an arrest warrant, transport the prisoner to the appropriate courthouse to get an arraignment, and generally use valuable time on work that does little to enhance crime prevention or crime solving.

But what if expensive, insecure, risky, and time-consuming prisoner transportation and document handling could be replaced by an electronic process? Oakland County, Michigan, built upon a strong information technology (IT) infrastructure to deliver a system that uses teleconferencing instead of prisoner transports for obtaining warrants and arraigning suspects. This system, known as OakVideo, has achieved its goals so well the county has trademarked it. Furthermore, the county shares the system with other law-enforcement agencies in southeastern Michigan through a 30-year-old partnership for sharing IT applications.

OakVideo and its trademarked key component, DigitalArraignment, work by providing two basic functions: an Internet protocol-based records management system (RMS) to support document workflow and detective research, and multipoint videoconferencing for processing prisoner arraignments and arrest warrants. Court security has been enhanced because prisoners "appear" in court via videoconferencing, and police time has been saved by transferring dockets and arrest warrants electronically, so detectives do not have to go prosecutors' offices or wait in line.

The RMS and videoconferencing systems have saved $6.1 million in 21 months (including benefits derived by local police departments and courts). Returns on investment are expected to improve further as other videoconferencing applications currently under development go live over the next several years (see Exhibit 1).

Assisting and improving local government operations is a high priority for the county executive and the Board of Commissions, and their vision--along with that of court benches within the county--is responsible for the program's success. In addition, because the Oakland County IT department is a service bureau for county and local government applications, existing infrastructure and partnerships between local governments provided strong support for the OakVideo project.

The key physical development supporting the system was the completion in 1999 of OakNet, a 480-mile network of Gigabit fiber optics connecting all city, village, and township administrative, police, fire, court, and other facilities to a centralized service bureau. OakNet connects the IT department and local government units for high-speed data, voice and video transmissions, Internet access, and e-mail service. (See Exhibit 2 for the characteristics of Oakland County and the technical requirements for OakVideo and Exhibit 3 for a schematic of OakVideo and OakNet.)

CLEMIS ORGANIZATION

The existing partnerships among local governments had long been institutionalized by the Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information System (CLEMIS). CLEMIS has been operating for 30 years as a clearinghouse for shared applications whose IT infrastructure is operated and subsidized by Oakland County It is a consortium of approximately 225 public safety entities (police, sheriff, prosecutors, courts, fire, and homeland security) in a six-county region in Southeastern Michigan. CLEMIS provides 25 system applications to its members, including OakVideo.

At the outset of the needs analysis and design phases of the OakVideo project, Oakland County secured...