Public sector

Case Study:

Prompt processing at Hillsborough County

30 April 2008

Hillsborough County in Florida faced challenges maintaining efficient information flow due to its aging court-clerks’ systems. With the help of Catapult Systems and a new .NET framework it saw that justice was done.

Accurately processing paperwork for citizens as they pass through court is critical to a well-run justice system. Hillsborough County's existing paperwork and systems, based on Oracle Forms, were difficult for staff to use and time-consuming to modify to accommodate changing legislative requirements. In addition, the county managed its court traffic with an IBM mainframe running applications that had been developed in-house 25 years ago. The mainframe was nearing the end of its life cycle, and it was becoming more difficult to find staff people to maintain it.

Concerned about the effectiveness and reliability of its systems, the county decided to overhaul the supporting technology. “We wanted to update our applications so that they would be easier for staff members to use and give us a more flexible long-term solution,” says Paul Billingsley, Chief Information Officer for Technology for the Hillsborough County Clerk’s Office.

In February 2006, the county selected Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Catapult Systems to begin to rewrite most of the court-clerks’ applications and deploy the necessary infrastructure to support them. The applications were being developed using the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, an integral component of the Windows operating system. However, a few months into the project, the partner learned about the capabilities of the recent release of the .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly the WinFX application programming interface), and suggested it as a more comprehensive environment for development.

“I was definitely apprehensive when approached with the idea of switching technologies because we already had started the project and had been making good progress,” recalls Billingsley. “I wanted some assurance that there was a large enough trade-off for retooling the work that we’d already done. It seemed risky, and I wasn’t clear on the benefits of the newer technology.”

At the suggestion of Microsoft, representatives from Hillsborough County and Catapult Systems attended a Strategy Briefing and an Architecture Design Session over the course of three days at the Microsoft Technology Centre (MTC) in Austin, Texas. Held in July 2006, the engagement was designed to educate participants about the .NET Framework 3.0 and several other related technologies and how to apply them to the business problems that the county was trying to solve. Prior to the MTC engagement, a Catapult Systems consultant worked with an MTC architect to establish goals for the three-day session and validate the partner’s revised architecture for the first application module to ensure that everyone’s time at the MTC would be well spent.

During the one-day Strategy Briefing, Hillsborough County representatives learned first-hand about how Microsoft technologies could enable the county to deliver efficiencies throughout the court-clerks’ systems. The two-day Architecture Design Session included the county’s description of its needs and the application of Microsoft technologies to meet them. It also involved corroboration by the MTC architects of the plan to create a tiered architecture and to move forward with a smart-client application rather than a Web-based one — both of which would make system management easier. County representatives left the Architecture Design Session with a comprehensive plan that they knew how to implement immediately.

Therefore, Billingsley approved the switch to the .NET Framework 3.0 to develop the new court-clerks’ applications, along with heavy use of Windows Communication Foundation. The team of county and Catapult Systems developers is aiming to have eight other court applications complete by January 2009.

Hillsborough County now has a solution with greater functionality and flexibility, and yet the new solution will not require any additional time or budget to deploy or maintain. “Delivering a more comprehensive product in the same time frame as the original shows that we’re making the most of technology to provide greater value to our taxpayers,” says Billingsley. “We wouldn’t have even known about all the possibilities without the MTC.”

Billingsley entered the MTC engagement with reluctance about switching over to new technologies. However, he says, “I realised during the MTC engagement that we had a real opportunity to innovate, which isn’t something that government gets to do all that often. I left Austin satisfied that we had a smart, viable solution that would support us over the long term.”

The MTC engagement fostered a collaborative environment in which Hillsborough County and Catapult Systems worked together with MTC architects to reach a common goal. As a result, the county and partner forged a more solid relationship, and both parties were fuelled by the knowledge that Microsoft stood behind their collective solution. “The opportunity to work closely with both our partner and MTC architects furthered our understanding of not only our solution but also of the resources that we have available to us,” says Billingsley.

Although the original solution would have accomplished many of the county’s business requirements, the new, MTC-validated solution will offer expanded capabilities without extending schedules or budgets. For example, the county will be able to include full electronic case intake across all courts as part of the first implementation, as opposed to having to wait to add it later as an enhancement. “We’re getting more enhancements and a more efficient system, thanks to our time at the MTC,” says Billingsley.