DAMION software training started

EPHRATA — Members of the Grant County Prosecutor’s Office and Technical Services started training to use the new DAMION software package.

The prosecutor’s office and defender’s department purchased new case management software for a total of about $120,000, according to county commissioner’s office. The software is manufactured by CJS.

The software was recommended by former prosecutor, now Grant County judge, John Knodell to the county commissioners during the 2008 budget hearings. It replaces a program becoming too old for technical support.

“It was becoming unusable,” Knodell said. “(Technical services) went to the commissioners and said, ‘We can’t work another year with this system.’ Then we got the money for DAMION.”

When he and his staff sought out a new program, they wanted software allowing people in the district, juvenile and superior courts to use the same system.

Software installation began June 15, said Gary Baker, the county’s director of technology, adding it was put on a server purchased with real estate excise tax funds for the assessor’s office. The server was purchased between by early April. The server was “virtualized,” allowing it to act as multiple servers at one time.

“You don’t buy a server for a specific program any more,” he said. “You get a get a fairly powerful server and virtualize it … In the world of (information technology) you virtualize everything. It gives you better capabilities.”

Baker said virtualizing cuts down on the cost of purchasing multiple servers for multiple programs and cuts down on air conditioning costs because there are fewer servers generating heat.

“Whenever we have a server with spare horsepower. We don’t have to buy another server. We can add another load to it,” he said.

There doesn’t appear to be any problems with the system or the installation, Baker said, adding the department is in the process of training people to administrate the program. The program is being installed on computers in the prosecutor’s office.

“Things are fine. If things go wrong, we’ll be the first to know … We’ve been using the interface on at least seven notebooks all week,” he said. “If people have questions, they might not rely on rumor and innuendo. They might try asking the people working with the system.”

Training is expected to last until November.

The software is being used in 12 offices in Washington state and 350 offices nationwide, said Steve Robichaud, CJS’s general manager. Some of these include Douglas, Thurston and Skagit counties by their prosecutors, as well as the cities of Seattle, Everett and Bremerton.

“What (the software) allows you to do is track any information without having to track down paper files,” he said. “We have a very, very strong success rate.”

The software allows police to send files to prosecutor’s offices electronically, Robichaud said. While Grant County police agencies use a database system produced by a competitor named Spillman, Robichaud said CJS has an agreement with Spillman.

“Spillman is not controlled by us. We have to work hand-in-hand with them … We do quite a few interfaces with Spillman,” he said.

Robichaud said about 25 percent of the agencies using DAMION are the size of Grant County.

“We have some customers that have five users. We have some offices that have about 500 users. Based on how we set up the system, we pretty much go end-to-end as far as our customers are concerned.”