The City of Yakima Prosecution Division is a paperless office.  All of our case files are managed by JustWare, a software case management system we share with the County Prosecutor.  This City and County partnership has proved valuable for workflow and substantive prosecution purposes.  The paperless prosecution environment dovetails with the electronic complaint system used by police and the electronic court case management system.  On February 25, 2020, we received notice from the owner of JustWare, Journal Technologies, they are discontinuing service and support for JustWare effective June 30, 2021.

Faced with this challenge, the City and County began jointly searching for a replacement case management system.  An investigation of recent RFPs in Washington (Benton and Spokane Counties) for Prosecution Case Management Systems revealed that eProsecutor, Journal Technologies' new product, had been the successful program proposal.  The other proposals were not comparable to the eProsecutor product, and because Journal Technologies owns JustWare and eProsecutor, migration of our prosecution data is possible.

The County Prosecutor and City Legal discussed trying to get by with a non-supported JustWare.  However, County and City Info Systems discouraged this option because each of our agencies is paperless or nearly paperless and the stakes are high if we lose or have no access to our data.  Journal Technologies gave a remote demonstration of eProsecutor.  We found the program to be a powerful case management tool and we have checked references.  Journal Technologies has agreed, if we sign a purchase agreement before June 30, 2021, they will service and support JustWare until we go live with the eProsecutor.  The implementation process is estimated to take nine months to a year.

For Council’s consideration are agreements concerning the purchase of eProsecutor.  The first item is an Interlocal Agreement between the City and the County to jointly purchase e-Prosecutor.  The City would pay 25 percent of the cost and the County the remaining 75 percent.  The total cost of the system is $170,000.  This is considerably less than the first quote of $305,000, which the parties worked to reduce.  The City portion of that amount is $42,500, with $10,000 due up front and the remaining $32,500, due upon full implementation.  This split is divided by the number of program users and also applies to the ongoing license and service fees.  The second item is the Professional Services and the License, Maintenance and Support Agreement for the purchase and ongoing use of Journal Technologies, Inc. eProsecutor case management system.  The terms of these agreements are substantially settled.  The final format will be considered by the County Commissioners first, and then forwarded to the City.