County magistrate court seeks new software to replace Iron Data

Polk County’s magistrate court is looking to switch their software and is asking for help from the public safety committee in paying for the upfront costs that promises to save plenty of taxpayer pennies in the future.

Magistrate court chief judge Jean Crane told the public safety committee on their first item on the July 30 meeting’s agenda that the software currently being used, Iron Data, is up for a contract renewal and that she wants a change for the court.

“They promised that it would be able to handle all that comes through magistrate court out of the box, and that isn’t the case,” she said. “There’s a lot more that we could be doing with different software, and that would save us a lot over time.”

Crane said currently, just to file a warrant for arrest, a police officer has to come back to the police department to type it out, deliver it in person to the judge and swear that the information within is valid, and that then those warrants have to be re-typed into the Iron Data system which causes means more work hours used.

“So if someone needs a warrant sworn out at 2 a.m. in the morning, we have to wake up and drive to Rockmart or they have to meet me or Andrew halfway in order to get the warrant,” she explained. “It’s a time consuming process, and this new software will cut down on our processing.”

Crane said with the new software – which the county is expected to pay for using savings found in the purchase of a new pumper truck (see “Public safety committee hears information on bids, progress on 911 facility” for more) – the way warrants and other paperwork handled by the court will be completely transformed.

Instead of having one of the magistrate clerks spend part of a day typing in new warrants and court documents, that time can now be spent on other areas of work to help the court catch up.

All warrants will be able to be filed electronically by officers from the web, and after swearing its validity before a judge on video conferencing software like Skype or Facetime, can then be sent out through the system to county police, the sheriff’s office and a forwarded copy back to the judge.

Saving alone, Crane said, would be found just by keeping officers out in the field and not having to drive back and forth to stations to write warrants, and in her own time on the road.

It would also require nothing more than a browser to run, and a $300 monthly fee to maintain, she said.

The $10,000 up front cost to get access to the system includes a year’s worth of monthly fees, Crane said, and is compatible with all the systems each city and county police force are using currently to file reports.

At least $2,000 of the initial setup costs also includes tranferring over warrants that are currently in the system or have been filed previously and acted upon.

“The whole system is based in the cloud, so we can pull up and print out warrants whenever we need to,” Crane said.

The up front cost will also partially be covered by the $3,000 the county saves by not renewing the contract with Iron Data, which makes it the second agency not to continue using software. Juvenile court has also moved away from the software, but were able to find a free program to use to replace Iron Data’s court filing system commonly used by other courts around the area.