Another computer system lagging

Friday, Oct. 15, 1999 | 2:17 a.m.

A second major Southern Nevada government computer system installed by the national firm of Deloitte and Touche has been riddled with glitches since its installation 18 months ago, sources say.

The $20 million-plus Family Tracs computer at Clark County Family Court Services apparently has had failures comparable to the poorly operating Genesis system at the Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety. The vendor for both systems is the New York-based consulting firm.

Clark County officials, however, argue that the Family Court computer system is simply going through growing pains and already has been an improvement over the 23-year-old system it replaced.

While people who go to Family Court are not standing in the long lines like those at the DMV, problems with a system that monitors both delinquent and abused and neglected children could have far more profound effects on society.

"I predict a lot of problems as a lot of the juvenile delinquency and abuse and neglect cases did not transfer from the old 'Juvi' system, All-In-One System, or Child Protective Service Hotline System," said a Family Court employee who asked for anonymity.

"I'm afraid eventually Clark County will be sued because a child will die because a caseworker couldn't see the previous abuse or neglect record because of computer errors or a dangerous child will be released and hurt others."

Files for about 150,000 juvenile delinquents and victims of child abuse and neglect are programmed into Family Tracs, said Fritz Reese, the assistant director for Clark County Family Court Services and the original director of the Tracs project.

He says Tracs is "not a turnkey system" like the DMV computer, where outside consultants install it and then turn the finished system over to state employees. Instead, it was intended to be a system in constant change with phases of improvement, Reese said.

"It's not operating at 100 percent because it is constantly refining," Reese said. "I'm happy with the ground we have made (in the last six months) correcting the entry and conversion errors."

Mike Alastuey, the assistant county manager who has closely monitored the progress of Tracs, says because it is a consolidated system it is a much better concept than the old system that monitored juvenile delinquency cases separate from abuse and neglect cases.

"It is better to have a consolidated system than two stand-alone systems that do not talk to each other," he said.

Tracs was installed in April 1998 by Deloitte and Touche Consulting, which Alastuey and Reese say has taken a more limited role in the project as the county takes over complete ownership of the system.

Reese said Deloitte is in the process of creating more software for Tracs, while county employees work out the glitches. Deloitte's service contract for fixing major bugs in the $35 million Genesis system at the DMV runs out Nov. 7. Both systems are meant to be Y2K compliant.

Attempts to reach a Deloitte and Touche spokesperson for comment about Tracs were unsuccessful. However, county officials are not critical of the role that company has played in getting Tracs going.

Reese called the relationship the county has had with Deloitte on the project "a positive partnership." He called the company "responsive" when help was needed.

Alastuey called the transition of the system from Deloitte and Touche to the county "smooth, level and clean."

The computer system is designed to keep track of such things as juvenile court calendars, bench warrants, arrest warrants, citations, juvenile delinquency records and the termination of paroles and probations.

Family Court officials receive daily requests for such juvenile records from the United States Armed Forces for background checks on recruits. Also, county, state and federal parole and probation officers rely on Tracs to write sentencing reports.

Nevada Child Protective Services caseworkers rely on Tracs for adoptions, foster care placements or return of abused and neglected children to their own families.

Reese said one reason for employee complaints about the system is that significant operational changes were involved and that workers, especially longtime employees, are not always open to major changes. He also said human error has played a role in the computer problems.

But it is statements such as that which seem to anger Family Court employees more than the glitches.

"What upsets me is that management keeps telling us it's not the computers, but us who are making the mistakes," said a Family Court worker. "It's the fault of the computer at least 94 percent of the time. And we are tired of being blamed for it."

A source from a local government agency that deals frequently with the Family Court said: "There are a lot of problems with the (Tracs) system -- it's a mess."

The source, speaking under the condition of anonymity, said Tracs software "crashes all the time, it is slow to load and new versions of the software come out at least every week. Eventually we are all going to have to get used to it because they (the county) are too far into the process to abandon the system now and start over."

Some of the other purported problems with Tracs since it was installed include:

Reese said entries made in the new system are compared to those in the old system to make sure conversion indeed took place. He also said management and supervisors were trained by the vendor and in turn adequately trained about 400 Family Court workers on Tracs.

Reese acknowledged that there is a backlog of microfilming of records, but said it is not six months worth and it is not because of computer problems. He said new equipment is en route to replace 15-year-old microfilm machinery.

Reese disagreed that too many parties have access to the system, noting that Tracs has "built-in security walls" and that different levels of security are required to make major changes in the data.

However, one Family Court employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that on two occasions citations they entered "were tampered with."

"I am very concerned that other people are changing the names, date of births and intake dates, or completely deleting a citation I entered before probation or the district attorney's office can see it," the worker said.

Reese said he could not recall a duplication of numbers for the same case but did not dispute that something like that may have happened.

A Family Court employee said in one such case the Tracs computer listed five arrest numbers for a single juvenile charged with battery.

However, when the worker looked more carefully at each case, it was apparent that all of the numbers referred to a single suspect, a single victim and a single Metro Police event number.

In such instances, a Family Court judge could incorrectly interpret that the youth had committed a series of batteries during a brief period and then order a stiff sentence against the boy because he would be perceived as a danger to society.