BEXAR COUNTY, Texas — Bexar County officials called an impromptu press conference Thursday afternoon to address ongoing concerns regarding delays affecting the county justice system brought about by a long-planned software upgrade.
The delays are the result of the county implemented a new program called Odyssey that officials say will bring Bexar County records into the 21st century.
In the press conference, Judge Peter Sakai explained how the existing program that had been used dates back 50 years.
"The county has spent a lot of money to get it upgraded," he said.
That upgrade is to a platform Sakai and his counterparts in the conference referenced as "state of the art technology."
That technology is officially known as Tyler’s Odyssey court case management and SoftCode civil process solutions meant to enhance civil offices and departments, according to an article published in 2021 by Businesswire.
The article goes on to quote Mark Gager, chief information and technology officer in Bexar County. It quotes Gager as saying, in part, that "upgrading to Tyler’s solutions brings increased efficiency and accuracy to our processes, and we look forward to realizing even more benefits over time. The go-live process was smooth despite having to implement the solutions mostly remotely during the pandemic.”
Last Thursday, May 30, the county utilized the program in the criminal justice sector, which caused what 379th Criminal District Court Judge Ron Rangel called a "blackout period" from the time it was launched until earlier this week.
This period of time caused a backlog of cases in the jail system—800 cases, to be exact.
Thanks what Sakai, Rangel and Gager are calling "around the clock work" by IT teams in the county, they've been able to reduce that number to 200 as of Thursday afternoon.
The human toll of that backlog was evident this week. On Wednesday, it amounted to frustrated Bexar County families who told KENS 5 their loved ones were unable to be released from jail despite having the money to post bail.
“People have been in there the past three days because of the new system they've implemented,” one man said. “If you've been sitting in a cell for three business days, that's a substantial amount of money that you're missing out on. You're not going to be able to cover the necessities of life.”
Asked if anything would be done to help those who posted bond but still had to wait in jail for days, Bexar County Chief Deputy Joel Janssen said he had no comment.
Sakai emphasized that public safety was never endangered during the setbacks in the transition.
At the time of the meeting, he also mentioned progress that had been made in getting things back up in running, included in a few courts.
Sakai and Gager amounted the mishap to a glitch that was expected with such a drastic technology change, comparing it to going from a flip phone to an iPhone. They also said Bexar County's sheer size could have played a factor in the "hiccups" that have occurred.
They said IT teams would continue to work 24/7until the issues were resolved.
The number one thing they reassured the public of was that everything was being done to get the portals online and their IT team would work 24/7 to ensure every issue is resolved.
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