To call the technology and innovation committee to order.

Will uh the Secretary please call the roll.

Thank you.

At that time of recess, sir, we had all members present.

Now we do need a remote roll call.

Now we do need remote roll call for the next election.

Oh, you know what?

I'm so sorry.

I had those check to confirm that you had quorum.

Thank you.

I stand corrected.

Here is your roll call.

Commissioner Aguilar.

Here.

Thank you.

Commissioner Degna.

Thank you.

Commissioner McCaskell is absent.

Commissioner Miller.

Thank you.

Commissioner Um Morrison.

Is absent.

Commissioner Scott.

Commissioner Scott is present, but participating remotely.

Commissioner Trevor.

Thank you.

And Chairman is present.

Chairman, you do have a quorum.

Thank you.

Chairman, uh, I did add Commissioner McCaskill to your roll call.

Can we go ahead and do remote participation roll call, please?

Okay.

Uh I move her and seconder.

Uh, Commissioner Trevor moves uh to allow for remote participation.

Second by Commissioner Aguilar.

Thank you.

Commissioner Aguilar, your vote.

I Commissioner Deckman, your vote.

Aye.

Commissioner McCaskell, your vote.

Aye.

Commissioner Miller, your vote.

Commissioner Miller.

Commissioner McCaskell.

Is aye, right?

Commissioner Miller is absent.

Vice Chair Morrison, Sean Morrison is absent.

Commissioner Scott.

I thank you.

Commissioner Trevor.

Aye.

Thank you.

Commissioner Vasquez.

I and President.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Chairman, your vote is I.

Thank you.

We have seven ayes and two absent.

They are Commissioner Sean Morrison and Commissioner Miller.

And I am adding Commissioner Vasquez to the remote world call.

And the motion succeeds.

With that, I would like to call the Technology Committee into recess uh till one twenty.

Yes, sir.

Let's just give us a few minutes.

But please, those on committee, don't leave.

Commissioner Sean Morrison to the row and all members are present.

You do still have a quorum, sir.

Thank you.

Uh, first we have item twenty-six, eleven forty-six.

There were two speakers.

I don't see them at the time, but allow me to call them for their record.

They were Tywan Sims.

I don't see him present in George Blake Moore.

I don't see him present either.

No speakers, sir.

Okay.

Uh, first we have item twenty-six eleven forty-six, meeting minutes from our last meeting on March eleventh, twenty twenty-six.

Commissioner Trevor moves to approve this item, seconded by uh Vice Chair Sean Morrison.

Any discussion.

Um do we need a roll call amendments?

No.

Voice vote.

If not, all those in favor signify by voting for aye.

All opposed, nay.

Aye.

Aye.

In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.

Next, uh, I ask for leave to go out of order to take up item 260816, a proposed contract with Safeware Inc.

and the Sheriff's Office.

Um leave.

Leave is granted.

Commissioner Trevor moves to defer this item uh to our May Technology and Innovation Committee meeting, seconded by Commissioner Aguilar.

Any discussion?

If not, all those in favor signify by voting aye.

In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.

Uh next is item 260644, the fiscal year 2025 chief information security officer report.

Uh Vice Chair Morrison moves to receive and file, seconded by Commissioner Aguilar.

Can we please uh hear from a representative of the Bureau of Technology on this item?

Good afternoon.

I'm Chuck Ruling.

I'm the Chief Information Security Officer for Cook County.

Uh the Mr.

Chairman, Vice Chair, Committee members, the annual Chief Information Security Officer report to the Cook County Board of Commissioners for the period of February 1, 2025 through January 31 2026 is provided to the Technology and Innovation Committee.

The report outlines the information security office organizational structure, a highlight of major events over the past year, and a vision of cyber-related initiatives for the county in 2026.

There have been no changes from what was briefed, and I would ask the committee uh recommend the report be received in filed.

So that's your question, sir.

Any questions or discussion on this?

See none.

Um do we need a rule call call?

Uh roll call because we have remote participation.

Commissioner Aguilar, your vote.

Commissioner Degnan.

Hi.

Commissioner McCaskill.

Commissioner Miller.

Absent.

Commissioner Sean Morrison.

Aye.

Thank you, sir.

Commissioner Scott.

Aye.

Thank you, sir.

Commissioner Trevor.

Aye.

Commissioner Vasquez.

Aye.

Thank you all.

Uh following votes for all aye.

Chairman, your vote.

Aye.

Chairman's vote is aye.

Chairman, we have eight ayes and one absent vote for Commissioner Miller.

Perfect.

Next, uh, we will bundle uh the item succeeds uh and to receive be received and file.

Next, we will bundle the following items.

We have 260645, the 2026 Technology Strategic Report, 260837, the information uh technology projects report, and 260838, the software, asset, and technology hardware asset inventory report.

Uh Commissioner Degnan moves to receive and file these items, seconded by Commissioner Trevor.

And with that, we are gonna vote on this now and then hear the presentations.

Thank you, sir.

Uh Commissioner Aguilar, your vote, sir.

Aye.

Commissioner Aguilar is aye.

Commissioner Degnan.

Aye.

Commissioner McCaskill.

Commissioner Miller.

Following votes were all aye.

Commissioner Miller is absent.

Commissioner Sean Morrison.

Morrison, aye.

Thank you, sir.

Commissioner Scott.

Aye.

Commissioner Trevor.

Aye.

Commissioner Vascos.

Aye.

All votes were aye.

Chairman, your vote.

Aye.

Chairman's vote is aye.

Chairman, you have eight ayes, one absent vote for Commissioner Miller.

Thank you.

Uh the modem's uh motion succeeds.

With that, we're gonna go into the presentations.

We will ask each office to present all of their reports together when called to present.

I'm hoping that each of you could try to keep uh your uh uh reports uh to three to five minutes for each office.

And with that, uh can we please hear from a representative from the Bureau of Technology, Mr.

Chairman.

Good afternoon, committee.

Tom Lynch, Chief Information Officer.

Um, thanks for the opportunity to present our strategic plan for this year.

Um I'll be hitting the highlights, uh, but always as always happy to answer any more detailed questions.

So um, as I'm sure folks are aware, the Bureau of Technology has a dual role uh in that we are the IT support arm for offices under the president, just like my counterparts in the other elected offices, but we also focus on the enterprise level uh technology that is used by all offices across the county.

So our strategic priorities are focused on those enterprise-wide technologies uh that are used uh across the county offices.

Um the key principles can uh somebody advance the slide, please.

The key principles uh that we follow for acquiring technology are standardization across the county.

We work with all of the elected offices to try to uh procure software and hardware that is uh consistent and standardized across the offices, which improves both interoperability and the ability to support those technologies, and also to reuse and uh before we buy new and to buy before we build custom.

And again, same principle applies.

These are uh the intention of this is to ensure that these technologies will last in perpetuity and be able to be easily supported across the different elected offices.

So moving to the next slide, I'm gonna highlight a few of our infrastructure focused priorities.

First, uh in 2025, we worked heavily on uh county policies and procedures for acquiring artificial intelligence related technologies.

This is a highly uh sensitive and quickly evolving area of technology, so we wanted the county to ensure that we were being careful in our adoption of this technology, and we formalized policies and procedures that do that across the county.

Um in 2026, we will be uh doing projects that utilize this new technology, and again, this is not just for the offices under the president, but several elected offices as well.

Uh we're moving on to phase two of the wide area network redesign project.

This is primarily to add capacity or bandwidth to our network because of the vastly increased use of audio and video evidence across uh the justice agencies.

We need to bandwidth to be able to download and share that information very quickly, and we're adding the capacity to do that.

We've also been rolling out what's called our enterprise hybrid cloud strategy, which essentially is a combination of storage in the cloud, storage locally, and then storage in a colour or co-location facility where the county is able to leverage its its collective buying power to negotiate uh cheaper infrastructure.

Um we are rolling out disaster recovery.

In fact, as I alluded to, we are under construction right now for a COLO facility that is used by many of the elected offices uh countywide.

From a security perspective, next slide, thanks.

Um we continue to coordinate with the county clerk's office uh to ensure that all elections work smoothly and without any cyber events.

Um the primary was uh very very successful, and we expect and hope for the same in the general election later this year.

We've also moved from a vendor-led to a government-led uh uh security control assessment process uh which was contemplated at the beginning of that.

So now we are working with each elected office to ensure that their cybersecurity uh is as high as it can be.

And uh Chuck's team is also beginning analysis on quantum safe cryptography.

As I noted, artificial intelligence is uh moving very, very quickly, it's getting adopted very quickly, and as many of you may have seen in recent articles about anthropic, uh, it can be used for very bad and dangerous things.

What does that mean for us?

It means that the county has to prepare for the future, be it uh nation-state uh hackers or anybody really utilizing these new technologies to ensure that our systems are hardened and uh prevent any cyber events.

Next slide.

On the application side, we are nearing the very end of the integrated property tax system uh project.

Derek is gonna speak in more detail about that as part of our other uh presentation.

Uh the last part of the original scope is the clerk's redemption process, which is underway right now, as well as the tax sale, which was deferred from the original scope given the changes uh at the state legislature uh level.

Um we also are working quickly, and again, this is not just offices under the president, each of the elected offices are working to uh meet um ADA or um Americans with Disability Act requirements, which go into effect for large municipalities later this month.

Uh, April 24th of this year, uh, that goes into effect uh for municipalities, and this includes things like public-facing software applications and websites.

Uh last but not least, we are working with our financial partners uh to automate some of our ACFER reporting process.

Thanks.

Uh in the data services area, the I'll focus on one project uh which is a enterprise data platform.

The first project use case that we plan to roll out is with our budget office so that all of our financial data will be available in a in that standardized format for uh enhanced reporting.

In the administration area, um, we're focusing on uh formalizing and expanding our review process as part of the BOT concurrence process, uh including artificial intelligence as part of our standard review, alongside things like integration, uh uh hosting and uh cybersecurity reviews.

From a staff development standpoint, we continue to heavily focus on recruiting in cybersecurity and data services areas.

Those are where we have um uh some challenges in the past with hiring and vacancies, but we're doing very well in coordination with our Bureau of Human Resources.

And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Derek Thomas, my deputy CIO, as well as Hema Sunderum, my chief technology officer, uh, to speak about our major projects.

Um I'll be presenting on two major projects.

Uh affects all the offices in COP County as well as uh generative AI project.

We'll start with the IAM, uh, short for identity and access management.

There are three areas.

Sorry, could you pull the mic closer to you?

Oh, I'm sorry.

Forgot I'm kind of short.

Is this better?

Okay, thank you.

Um Identity and Access Management project um impacts all the agencies uh in the county uh in Cook County.

This is mainly in three areas.

One is to automate how we onboard and offboard our staff as well as contractors, and the second area is our security.

Our C So has led a team and put um wonderful security in place, but we're working on improving it further by making sure we know who's coming into our network, what they're doing, and making sure our um administrative team that has high level access is also uh going through something called privileged access management.

And the third part is uh resident portal.

Right now, our residents, Cook County residents come and do business with uh each office separately on their website.

We're creating a portal where they can create an ID for themselves and do all business in one place.

That's a future phase.

Uh, we have gone live at the offices under the president and Cook County Clerk, and now we are working on in a faced approach, implementing the same for all offices.

Okay, we'll move on to the next project, which is the generative artificial intelligence implementation.

This project mainly we worked with Guide House.

Um, instead of running in and implementing um generative AI solutions, we wanted to make sure that we did our readiness assessment, uh, got the resources needed, worked on policy and a strategy, looked at all the gaps we have technically resource-wise, created a roadmap, and we came up with a very detailed process to look at all the generative AI risks, which are many, as many of you know, and make sure that we have mitigation plan and the risk is acceptable to the Cook County.

Uh and we have established an advisory board that uh consists of uh members from every elected office to go through all of these uh projects as well.

Now we've closed that project out, and now we are working on, and we also collected business um needs use cases from um the bureaus and offices under the president.

Now we are working on uh procurement for professional services to start the implementation.

So in my next update, I'll provide update on how the implementation will go.

So I'll stop there and see if there are any questions on these two projects before turning it over to Derek.

Thank you, Hema.

Any uh questions on these projects?

See none.

Thank you all.

Good afternoon.

Uh I'm Derek Thomas, deputy CIO with the Cook County Bureau of Technology.

Uh all right, uh, thanks for that on the slide.

So this slide is a snapshot of where things stand uh for tax year 2025 first and second installment.

Uh the treasurer's office in collaboration with Tyler Technologies completed uh the mailing of the 2025 first installment on time uh this past March and distributions are underway.

I know there was a rather large uh I think it was over three billion dollar distribution that happened last week, but I'll defer to the uh treasurer's office to provide details on their operations.

Uh the assessor did complete uh their part of the process in terms of the initial valuation and appeals, and now the board review is actively working uh to to uh review appeals and complete their work.

Uh the other phases, the other parts will come later.

Um, but we're all working together with the president's offices, each of the elected officials to monitor uh the second installment as it relates to um major critical defects with Tyler uh that may impede uh second installment processing.

So so I believe we're working uh in earnest to uh stay on track, but uh a lot of the processes are out of the hands of the Bureau of Technology and Office of the President, they are which each with each of the elected officials.

Uh the next slide uh is really just a snapshot uh of where we are in terms of defects.

And this is not a pretty slide.

Uh there are a lot of production defects that Tyler and the elected officials need to continue to work through that impact just about every module uh for the uh particularly for the treasurer and certainly some for the clerk and the assessor.

Uh so uh you know, we're doing our best to uh make sure this is being coordinated.

Uh the treasurer's office is working directly with Tyler uh in a way to try to prioritize and expedite their defects.

Uh but um this is sort of where we are, and we're gonna continue working through this process.

Uh the next slide uh is focused on the clerk.

Uh the clerk has gone live with their tax extension process.

Uh that's how we were able to get the second installment bills out last uh year, uh, but they are not live yet with the uh redemption uh functionality, and it it spans several different areas as you can see on this particular chart.

Um so uh we're working um collaboratively with Tyler and the clerk.

Uh the focus, the push uh is for the clerk to uh work to resolve defects with Tyler as well as to complete data validation.

Um so those efforts are ongoing, and I'll talk a little bit about uh the the date we're we're we're working towards in terms of getting the clerk live.

The next slide are sort of the remaining project defects across the offices uh of things that are sort of waiting to be uh put into production.

Uh I'd also identify that the uh the tax sale for the treasurer uh is something that uh we're all need to get to work together, particularly the treasurer, the clerk, uh, and then I think you all are aware um Illinois State Legislature, they're working on some things too.

So ultimately we need to make sure we nail down the requirements uh for the tax sale to ensure that uh it's constitutional, and then all parties will work with Tyler to implement.

And then the last slide uh is uh next steps.

Uh very high priority is the focus is on the clerk, getting them live.

The mainframe uh decommission will happen at the end of July.

Uh and right now there are no plans to extend that.

And so it's imperative that we get live with the clerk so they get in the system, use the system, and if there are any challenges or issues related to legacy data or anything like that, we still have time to go back on the mainframe and move that data into IS world.

So we're actively uh working towards that end.

And right now, um, you know, it's really aggressive, but you know, mid to late May is what we're we're pushing towards, but right now the target we can't guarantee it until until we see better performance from all parties.

So uh so right now um, you know, there's just risk as it relates to the clerk going live in May.

We'll know more within the next couple of weeks.

Uh as I mentioned uh about the tax sale, uh, we need to nail down those requirements.

Tyler can't begin the work on post-sale processing, the tax certificates, until we have detailed requirements from the clerk and treasurer, and that involves the Illinois legislature as well.

Um, and then the last couple of items uh is that we're continuing to support efforts on second installment with Tyler and holding them accountable, and then we're uh just continuing to convene stakeholders on daily basis, track progress and identify issues.

And then um the very last slide is really uh the legacy migration is complete with the exception of property.

Um, the moment we go live with the clerk, uh we should be able to fully retire the mainframe.

It is in an archive mode right now, and that will result in over six million dollars, six and a half million dollars of savings on an annual basis once that's done.

I'm happy to uh take any questions.

Thank you, Derek.

Uh, any questions for Bureau of Technology?

Uh Commissioner Vasquaz.

I'm coming.

Thank you, Chair.

Um I had some questions about the uh slide regarding remaining outstanding go live critical issues under the uh agency of the treasurer's office with refunds.

Um first I just like to say that uh the Treasurer's office has been responsive to us uh regarding updates on specific refund requests I've had from folks.

But if you could please go into a little bit of detail, what are these defects or issues concerning the refunds?

So David Burns, I believe Chief Staff of the Treasurer's Office, uh he's right here.

Uh from our perspective, we know there are defects related to data, uh, particularly because the elected officials were in a siloed environment and legacy, and now a lot of that data, all of that data is now being present presented, and it needs to be managed in a centralized system.

That creates a ton of challenges that offices are working through.

But in terms of the specifics, I'll defer to David Burns and let him respond.

David Burns, Chief of Staff, Treasurer's Office, Commissioner.

Um, to answer your question, it's it continues to be a moving target as far as as refunds.

Our staff is is trying to process refunds in bulk uh to approximately 87,000 Cook County residents who are owed owed refunds.

And each day that that we use the system in order to try to process those refunds, we do encounter issues, some of which get resolved, some of which continue to to languish with with Tyler.

Um a lot of it is is data issues and and and a a layering of the data as as Derek said.

Um each one of these uh defects is kind of its own story, and there is no global fix for them.

It's as they come up.

For instance, there was a a matter yesterday that that I shed some light where Tyler said we don't see a refund in the system and explained that there was a refund, a certificate of error issue that was refunded, yes, but there was also a duplicate payment.

Taxpayer paid 11,000, their mortgage company paid, they paid.

The certificate error was issued properly, but they should still have a duplicate payment for that, and that wasn't anywhere in the Tyler data, even though the payment data was so it it varies on a daily basis.

As our staff comes across these, we report them accordingly to Tyler for them to triage and then come back down to us with a defect resolution.

And just curious because I know the county is uh continuing to invest in AI in different departments, but it does sound like some, if not many cases, require human review, human eyes.

And so I do wonder in terms of like the capacity for your staff to help out with these refunds.

You said 87,000.

That's significant.

And I know there's a lot in my district.

So just curious, in order to return the money that is owed to our residents, um, what has that staffing capacity looked like?

And is there a sense of a timeline?

Our staff has been making this priority number one, including staff that is outside of our refund department.

So we do have other members, whether it's in our our legal department or our finance department, to assist with this effort from a staffing standpoint.

That's that's not a question as far as the dedication.

The majority of the the items can't the refunds don't really need that much of a human interaction, meaning they were single payments, whether it was a specific objection where there was a court order for us to refund, whether there was a PTAB uh uh property tax appeal board decision to refund.

It's just that mechanism by which to bulk put these through without defects.

That's the problem, that's the holdup that we have.

So if we can get through that logjam, if they can resolve these defects, then we can we can move forward.

But again, I think there's some skepticism that we all have as far as making sure the process works.

So we are being overly cautious to make sure we don't over or under refund taxpayers accordingly.

So when we do refunds at this point, it's with a tremendous amount of scrutiny as far as the data.

And then could you also speak to, and this is also you know, information sharing with my constituents.

Um, how long does like an average review of a case take?

Um I've been getting a lot of questions about refunds.

Well, it's it's that's a difficult question to answer.

I'd say a normal case for a refund is is gonna be a matter of minutes, but there are varying layers in included in there.

Was the payment part of a a subsequent tax that was involved in an annual sale?

Was there a late payment?

So there's an interest component.

Is there earned interest that is part of the calculation for that refund, like a certificate of error as well?

So there are varying degrees of it.

I can't say that you know definitively that a single refund is gonna take five minutes or or or ten minutes of research for us.

Again, it's still a new system that there's a learning curve for our staff to also go through.

But again, that scrutiny is there and and that that level of of I guess validation that that we're doing is is paramount to make sure that we're getting it right and the amounts correct.

I don't want to refund someone five thousand dollars when they're owed six thousand, for instance.

So that's the that's the level of detail.

Thank you.

And I just want to, you know, mention here at the board uh you have been incredibly responsive, and I appreciate you taking my emails and phone calls.

Not a problem, not a problem, Commissioner.

And that's any members of this committee or or on the board, happy to do that.

That's that's my role within the office.

Uh Commissioner McCaskell.

Thank you, Chair.

Um you actually answered several of my questions, so thank you, Jessica.

We have the same issues.

Um, one thing that's happening, um, the municipalities they are beginning to receive their refund checks.

However, when they come, they no longer have the description on them.

Is that an uh issue in the system?

Yeah, did you mean uh distributions?

The distribution.

Yes, I thought uh David, I'll I'm gonna keep me honest here.

It burns chief of staff, treasurer's office.

So, Commissioner, your question about distributions.

Yes, we are sending the property tax dollars out to the agencies.

The dollars are flowing to them.

What they are missing, and we are what we are missing from the Tyler system is the detail by which they allocate those distributions accordingly.

We continue to work through defects with that distribution data in order for to provide that.

The most important thing is the dollars to go to the agencies, but they now need, and we hear it from on a daily basis.

Where are we with knowing which tax year for for what specific you know um uh fund or bond is do these amounts go to?

And we have various defects that are currently open with Tyler that we're working through.

Again, when they resolve the these defects, what we do is we'll go through a testing period where we will test it to make sure that it's adequate from our standpoint before we then go ahead and release that data.

So we're still working through as best as we can to have a resolution for these taxing districts.

Thank you for that.

Um it's good to know that it's happening everywhere.

But let me ask you also that this does that hold true for exemptions.

So for those that transferred over and some of the senior exemptions fell off, is it the same defect issue?

Well, the distributions to the agencies would would be their task pro tax proceeds.

So as far as the the exemptions like certificates of error, senior citizens, again, those would be what I took uh what I spoke to Commissioner Vasquez about those refunds that are varying degrees and and varying, I guess, complexities of defects that we're working through as well.

So let me ask you, would they need to for those seniors that were paying, let's just say $2,000 a year in taxes, and now their tax bill reads $10,000.

Should they go ahead and wait for you to do the the um to get the defects in order, or should they be proactive and go ahead and apply for appeals or certificate of errors now?

That would be I I think a question better asked by the assessor's office.

What I would say though is if a senior or or any property owner is not receiving their exemption that they should absolutely get that apply for.

What we don't want to have happen is the second installment property tax bills come out and seniors are missing their exemptions, and at that point in time they feel maybe pressure to get that reduced amount for the second installment done within a month's time before the due date comes out.

So right now, um, I think the assessors office sent out the the applications for uh exemptions in the month of March.

Seniors and property owners should be completing those.

Don't wait for prior year refunds to to be resolved.

And then thank you for that.

And then also with the new platforms that are going to be used for AI or things like that in other departments as well.

Uh does Tyler need to speak to those new platforms, or can we run these without Tyler's interface?

Yeah, at this point, none of the projects, at least that are near completion, um, have anything to do with the Tyler property system.

Um I think I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I'm pretty sure that we would be looking at that very, very carefully and let the board know what we were contemplating.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Commissioner Dagnan.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, and thank you for the presentation today.

So I had a number of questions again on the refund component.

I think a lot of the commissioners are getting a lot of questions.

My district is entirely within the city of Chicago, so I have special service areas that also need to get refunds.

So similar to um Commissioner, uh the other commissioners that spoke, I think the assessor's office has been very responsive whenever I um communicate with them, they're always really good about getting back to us.

Whenever I communicate with them, they're always really good about getting back to us.

The number one thing I'll say is that we were promised that Tyler would be here during every board meeting for technology.

And I had a number of questions today, and Tyler is not here.

So I'd like to renew that request to make sure that a representative from Tyler is here to talk about these issues until they are fully resolved.

I think that's a totally reasonable request.

And the fact that they're not here today kind of runs contrary to the good faith working relationship that we all expect.

So, second of all, you know, we were talking about the defects that were up on the screen, and um the workflow analysis that should have been performed initially and given to Tyler for them to work off of.

Is that workflow analysis complete right now?

Did does Tyler have a full workflow analysis from which to work from speaking to the original scope from the project, uh, with the exception of tax sale, which was deferred, and as Derek noted, uh is subject to what may happen down the road with the legislature.

The answer to your question is yes.

So from a go forward perspective, all of the touch points across the elected offices have been identified.

Uh the issues specific to refunds is stemming from legacy data from the previous mainframe environment where those offices were siloed and didn't uh cross-collaborate at the granular level that is required for these calculations to work.

Okay.

But right now, Tyler has all the information that they need in order to code and complete all of the refunds.

Or on a go forward basis, meaning applic uh new transactions created in IS world, yes.

Okay.

So, but the refunds, the historic refunds that people are owned.

Then no, no, I cannot no.

The the historic refunds are being worked right now, and uh I'm pretty confident that the clerk and the treasurer would agree that they are finding new data related issues on a daily basis.

So there is not a comprehensive list for Tyler or anybody to fix all of those at this moment.

Okay.

So let's back up a little bit.

There is a limited number of data points.

I mean, they're a large number, but it is limited, right?

It's not exponentially like a solar system.

There is a limited number of data points.

And at some point, somebody should have assembled those limited number of data points in order to workflow and perform an analysis exactly what was needed, whether it is a person's name and their address and you know how what the eligibility requirements are for a refund and then how how to assemble all of those.

So going forward, you know, shouldn't somebody assemble a workflow analysis now for us to have to work in perpetuity.

So as new issues come up or new laws are passed, we should have that documented somewhere.

Yes.

So the process of governance uh at the field level across the offices is something that we've all been talking about.

I don't think that it is it is fully baked yet, but I think we agree that we need such a document and process, and that then Tyler would follow that process.

Uh as David alluded to, since this is a new system, folks are getting used to it.

That it is a massive change to move from a 50-year-old system to a modern system, and uh the adjustments are happening real time.

So I think I speak for myself for sure, and I'm pretty sure all of my colleagues would agree with conceptually what you're saying, but none of us really have the time to stop the process as the train is moving to to do that.

Um the just the fact that three billion dollars were issued last week speaks to the the scale that this is happening.

And while I I think all the taxing bodies would prefer to get the money first rather than have the reporting.

So there definitely is some prioritization that's been happening.

Um the property offices have been directing Tyler with their priorities.

So again, I'm not speaking for David or any office.

I'm simply saying we can't do everything at the same time.

So in this case, we prioritize getting the money to the taxing botter's bodies before the reporting.

Both are important, but getting the money seemed more important.

I mean, and David can correct me if I miss state anything.

Okay, well, I would respectfully state that my expectation would have been to put out a full workflow analysis in advance of putting out the request for bid or even getting to a Tyler situation.

I think that we should have spent that time to figure out where that workflow analysis is and what those expectations are up front, having that document, so that everybody could have then come and said, here's my off-the-shelf that we can tweak, or really this needs to be fully recoded to give you your own system because you are unique.

And I would have we can't go back in time now and fix that.

But I would say given the limited resources that the county has with the number of personnel, as you move forward with the Tyler situation and when things are resolved, is my expectation that that workflow analysis is paperized, it's somewhere documented because situations will continue to arise.

There will be laws in the property tax act, and you know, things will change, and we can't keep going forward to say we don't have time to document those things.

Downstream issues will continue to occur if they're not documented.

And I think it's not really fair to the treasurer's office now to have them try to be coders and tech people at the same time for them being, you know, having all their own responsibilities in the treasurer's office.

So I think that they've done a great job with what they have, but they uh again have a limited staff.

I think Treasure Pampas has long said that she is her staff to 60 people or so, whatever it is now, but it's not that many, so to keep taxpayers from you know her being responsible to the taxpayers.

So I would, you know, it's I think it's a failure on the county that that that that workflow analysis wasn't completed up front.

Um, but now that we are here, you know, cobbling together all these things to make it work is not the best situation.

It isn't where anybody wants to be.

But on the front lines, I mean, last night I went to two community meetings, one for the Sheffield Neighbors Association, the other one for the Southport Neighbors Association, and the number one thing that comes up is either property taxes or public safety.

And so when I get those questions and people are angry at me for not doing more for not fixing this problem, you know, I share that responsibility with your office, and I want to know that every single thing is being done to get my residents and Cook County residents their money back that they owe that they're deserved that we're holding because of a tech issue, because that doesn't make a lot of sense to them in an affordability crisis.

So thank you.

Please have Tyler here next time.

Thank you.

Any other uh questions for Bureau of Technology, Commissioner Trevor?

Thank you, Chair.

I want uh most of my questions have been answered um or you've addressed them.

And uh the one I wanted to sort of go back on one more time is the issue of the distributions to the taxing bodies.

And um I got an earful from a lot of them in my district uh from the the second payment of uh the 2024 taxes.

And uh what I'm concerned about from what I'm hearing from you now is that we may be setting ourselves up for a similar scenario with the new distributions and that you said you're you're sending out checks essentially from the system that don't have the reporting.

Uh the the entity taxing bodies that seem to be affected the most in my district were the ones that were, and I'm not sure I'm describing this correctly, subordinate to others.

So, for instance, a library board that got its funding from the suburb that it was located in.

So the money was distributed to the suburb, and the library kind of never saw what of the money that they was likely directed to them, but instead delivered to the suburb.

And I'm wondering whether or not what's going on with the current distributions is dealing with that at all.

So I'm gonna answer from a technical perspective, and then David I'll refer to you on the order of here.

Okay, Jim, do you want to just take it?

Yep.

Okay.

And as much as we have been emphasizing we've need to get this this level of detail and granularity to the taxing districts, it hasn't been resolved yet to our satisfaction.

The agencies, the parent agencies are receiving a lump sum of money, and then that allocation as to what goes to specific subagencies or bonds or or different funds under their control.

Yes, that is what is is missing, and we're trying to hold Tyler accountable to get that level of detail.

So that's the balls in Tyler's court to resolve it so that there is no question as to if we send out 200,000 dollars to his taxing district, how that should be allocated among their agencies.

Is there any way to do that independently of the Tyler system?

The data, the data has to come from that system.

There's no way that we can discern how that breakdown should be without that detail in that setup from the integrated property tax system.

Is there any kind of estimate that could be done?

What I'm wondering is, you know, obviously we're getting this money out, and my worry is we're setting up the exact same scenario this round that we had last round.

Um and it seems to me that that there's at least a you know on a manual standpoint for some of these taxing that we could I that we could identify the lists of taxing bodies that would fall under this category and kind of pull them out separately to try and address this this issue manually if if necessary.

Another workaround with Tyler.

Unfortunately, that's what you know we we had considered, but we don't have that detail even to try to discern a workaround that would be coherent to the agencies to give them that.

Unfortunately, the answer to that commissioner is no, as far as the time frame.

I I don't want to offer a a guess as to when it's going to be done.

Uh and this is a more broad question about how to deal with this in the future.

Is there any way to do a data dump out of the Tyler system?

So for instance, let's say we're looking at Elmwood Park.

Okay, so or uh so we know that Elmwood Park's library system is you know underneath the Elmwood Park Village Board.

Um we know how many people live in in Elmwood Park, how many how many pins are in Elmwood Park?

We know how much how much each of those pins paid in property taxes, and we know what the proportions are.

The that data's all in there someplace.

And I'm just wondering whether or not there is a way within the Tyler system to simply do a data export that could be read by some other from what I know.

From an Excel spreadsheet or something.

F from a technical standpoint, I know that it's not just data, but it's also calculation as well.

So there's there's a data element, but there's also some type of a formula or function to arrive at the magic number that is that is needed.

And unfortunately, that would have to be basically all unraveled.

I don't think that we could take take that upon ourselves properly, because again, we go back to the to the root source and and the numbers are coming from Tyler, the overall numbers.

That level of detail is what they need to be held accountable and what they're holding them accountable for.

They need to be able to give us that data combined with the formulas is the output, and then we can pass it along to the taxing districts.

But I still think that again, you know, somewhere in that system is data that could be extracted and used um by another system, and that there could be ways that we could construct, yeah, we would probably have to go back in and figure how to do the calculations.

Um we we did try that several weeks ago, our finance department, and I don't want to say gobbledygook, but commissioner, it was gobbledygook.

We could not discern exactly the the bifurcation of each one of the bonds and agencies in order to give it.

We we we did attempt that and not effective.

Anyways, I think it's something to keep in mind though, because I th what I also worry about is that this chasing down of these defects is could literally go on for years.

It has gone on for years.

Um, and so it seems to me that we need to have we we need as we're going through this to also start thinking about a plan B.

Um anyway, those are all my questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Any other questions for Bureau of Technology?

I see none.

I want to thank uh Tom uh Derek and Hema.

Um I do have one question though, Tom.

Uh just thinking of it now.

Uh in terms of uh, you know, we had defects that were impacting second installments going out.

Umce second installments went out.

How has the pace of the you know current defects that are in place uh been addressed?

Has the pace kept bar with how they were being addressed before second installments?

Um for the items that required Tyler development works, they have definitely sped up both in terms of uh delivery speed and accuracy, meaning the amount of retesting and rework that is required for those items.

Uh in that sense, there is progress.

On the other way of looking at the same data, we're finding many, many more defects which come from edge cases.

Even as many of the questioning here is about it's not just that we can't issue mass refunds.

We can issue some types of refunds, but not for every sort of corner case.

And unfortunately, given the scale that we're operating, um, it's it's just taking a long time to get through those.

So Tyler, I definitely want to give credit where due, has moved faster for the things that are directly in its control.

Things broken, fix it, now it works.

But as we run into these data-driven defects, it's considerably slower because as David explained, in many cases, it needs manual uh review one by one out of many thousands.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

And next, uh, we're going to be hearing from a representative from the treasurer's office.

And maybe you've already discussed some of what you wanted to say.

David Burns, Chief of Staff, Cocaine Treasurer's Office.

Uh Commissioners.

We have no real major IT projects for 2026.

Our focus has been and continues to be on the Tyler system, its implementation, and the resolution of the defects.

As previously mentioned, our ability to issue refunds is impacted uh by by defects, so are the distributions and the data that is necessary for the um transactional distribution data uh to the taxing districts.

And as Tom said, there's there's no annual tax sale module that is developed within the system.

One thing I do want to point out though is that the BRDs, the business requirement documents for the tax sale and for every single one of the processes by which the treasurer's office um uh operates had been given to Tyler years ago.

So Tyler has our business requirements for the annual sale as it existed in its most recent form.

If there are changes to tax sale reform that is passed in Springfield, that will have to be fleshed out.

But it's not for a lack of requirements for the way that we had been doing and operating the annual property tax sale.

The uh some of the other uh items that we are working on post-Tyler, what we would like to work on would be continuation of artificial intelligence and and AI, the online payment shopping cart, uh making an enhancement there, and also issuing bulk refunds via ACH.

So electronically instead of paper checks.

Once we do get our refund processes resolved with Tyler, they are still going to be paper checks.

We want to be able to issue them electronically so that there is no um no delay in getting funds to taxpayers, they can get their money directly into a bank account there.

And as far as the the inventory, we have um uh all the software and and hardware that we need in order to work through our operation, you know, right now, uh whether it's uh you know partnering with vendors or or in-house from a standpoint there, we've we're relatively stable.

So I'll be happy to answer any other questions that uh uh Commissioner Morrison or any of the other members may have.

Questions from any of our colleagues for the treasurer's office.

David, I have one.

Uh the three billion dollars that went out uh within the last few weeks for the taxing bodies.

Uh that's a it's a it's a good amount, it's a great start.

Um how does that pertain though to those refunds that are due to to the homeowners and the property owners?

Okay.

Um go ahead.

So with with money that we collect, the treasurer's office collects, all that money is taken and it's distributed out to the taxing bodies.

When there are refunds that are issued, that money is is clawed back from a future distribution of funds.

So if we issue, say, you know, 200,000 to to a library district, and then there's refunds within that library district amounting to $5,000 on a future distribution, we will have to reserve $5,000 from that taxing district's distribution.

It won't impact the dollars that they already received.

We're not gonna say you need to send us a check for $5,000.

It is deducted from a future distribution.

It would be a credit from a future distribution.

Okay.

Um let me let me see if I can clarify that though.

So we've gotten a I've gotten a lot of calls from um different different taxing taxing representative groups uh that uh operate within within the commercial residential side where they're doing refunds and that type of work that said that they've not that they've got that.

There's almost a few hundred million sitting that has not been refunded in months, many months.

So in other words, they've gone through the process, they fought it.

They're issued a refund, but the refund has not been distributed to them yet.

Um the numbers that they've cited to me is in the last 90 days, there's only been uh roughly 1,300 refunded uh out of almost 200 million dollars, like 1,300 refunds distributed.

Uh can you comment on that or what's what's going on with that?

So this is so this is the residential commercial property tax owner, not the taxing body.

Those are the individual property owners that are intended to receive a refund again from one of those, you know, whether it's a a court ordered refund, property tax appeal board, a direct duplicate overpayment or missing exemption, correct.

We continue to struggle with with defects.

There are currently 61 open defects within the Tyler system that are preventing us from issuing the bulk majority of of those property tax refunds.

As we are able to get some out, we are doing that.

But again, it's not to the volume that that we want because we don't have a reliable system in order to do that, Commissioner.

I want to go down the road that Commissioner Trevor went down regarding um our ability to at least do estimates.

So a lot of that, uh a majority of those funds are through escrow payments that are tied in either mortgages or wherever the case might be.

So if we have an existing paper trail that existed for the previous tax cycle to amalgamated bank and they knew that their property tax is fifteen thousand dollars, do we not throw out a system have the ability to at least make that fifteen thousand dollar payment and then do the same thing for a credit or a or a deficit for the for the next tax cycle if we needed that?

In other words, there's a lot of liquidity that's sitting there that we've collected the money as accounting, we have it sitting in bank accounts somewhere, hopefully it's getting interest.

But that person that's due that refund is not getting it.

And I mean, these are the questions, and they're legitimate questions that that were being asked.

You know, so when are they going to get that money?

Are they gonna get are they gonna get interest on that money?

Um because those payments were due to them in some cases six, seven, eight months ago.

Yep, yep.

Those those are all things that that we've taken into consideration that and that we've we've talked about.

The unfortunate reality is that as we identify these defects, the hope is that they're resolved quickly by Tyler and we can get through these.

Unfortunately, we it's it's languished for months.

I I don't know what other extraordinary measures we can we can undertake uh in the meantime in until the the logjam is resolved.

Okay, and then two more points, and one might might uh invoke Tom, and you can just yes or no.

Was Tyler invited to be at today's meeting?

Invited or instructed either way.

Yes, Commissioner.

Um uh Mark Hawkins is uh the president of the property division.

He is typically at these meetings.

He had eye surgery uh two days ago and was not uh medically cleared to fly.

Uh but I I think as uh Commissioner Degnan uh alluded to, Tyler is a big company, they should have had someone else here.

Uh but it but it is it is accurate that Hawkins is typically here uh except he had just had surgery and is unable to fly.

Okay, and one more thing, I don't know when he has a the reason I bring this up is because we just had a hearing not even 60 days ago that was contentious perhaps at best.

Um those uh defects, the numbers that were given to us by everybody, by all the stakeholders here and Tyler itself, and y'all agreed upon it, those defects were less than a dozen.

And now you showed us slide number 12 that has several hundred again.

Can you can anybody give a little little flavor on what that's about?

Yes.

I think it actually uh speaks to the question that uh Chairman Morrison asked, which is is Tyler getting better or worse, faster or slower?

Faster, better, I would say, in things that are code-related problems that they need to fix.

But slower in that as they're running into those edge cases with all of the detailed data, some of which goes back literally decades, it it's just taking more time to investigate each of those edge cases.

Uh as David said, it's not that refunds aren't being issued, they are.

But they're not being done in mass in the way that I think any of us would want them to happen.

And at least right now they can't until all of the logic for each of those edge cases is addressed, which requires manual intervention.

So there is definitely a system meaning a technology component here, but I would argue a probably a bigger chunk of that problem is a data and a human analysis standpoint uh that is slowing us all down.

So can I try and establish this and so what we're hearing now is we have we have we have two different silos.

We have the taxable, the taxing body side, and we talk about drill down tax payments, goes into the village of Orland Park, and then the village of Orland drills down to perhaps their library board or their park district boards, right?

So there's a so there's a a a uh pass through.

And there's gonna be different different pins or different indications that are gonna identify each one of those.

Here's a hundred thousand, eighty thousand is for the village, ten thousand is for the for the for the park, ten thousand is for library.

So we don't have the ability to cue that information right now from a from a from a taxing body side to where we can make that payment.

We have the ability to calculate it, which is how the treasurer was able to distribute the can't identify.

But we can't report on it because it needs to be at a more granular level.

We could report to the parent level, that's available right now, but in order to address issues like you and Commissioner Trevor, we're talking about where there's parent-child relationships, we need to have the reporting at a lower level, more granular level of detail than Tyler's system currently provides.

At a high level, guys, the the excuse me, I should rephrase that.

Just trying to explain how things have happened in the past.

So the treasurer's office has had a portal where taxing bodies are able to go and view all of either what they're owed and when they're going to receive it, what they have and haven't received, and so forth at that granular level of detail.

And that's how the legacy systems calculated it.

It was at that level of detail.

Tyler's IS world product is not built by default at that level.

It's a level higher.

So the calculations are correct, but they're done at the parent level.

And in order for the accounting information, an example you said, you know, 80, 10, 10, then the reporting has to match the treasurer's portals logic so that they're able to see it.

So the data exists in Tyler, because that's how the distributions were calculated before they were distributed.

But the reporting is now what is currently being worked.

And have so clearly they identified that all along.

Clearly that dynamic.

I mean, we're not we're not nine years into this now and they've never identified that before.

Correct.

Yeah, it was in the original requirements.

I mean I'm looking to David to show yes.

Okay.

But yet they're unable to execute that as of today.

That's correct.

I think that's right.

Sure.

Yeah.

Commissioner, the requirements for the taxing agency extranet as as Tom referred to, those were signed off in 2022 to Tyler.

And they have all of the the requirements or or what we requested of them in order for us to populate that system.

They have not executed that.

So for the better part of four years.

Correct.

Okay.

And one one real quick thing that I just wanted to add here.

As far as the cadence and and the defects, the number of defects, there continues to be a problem with Tyler's ability to have resources that are treating these defects.

There are far too many defects and far few resources that are working to resolve these from Tyler's.

By resources, are you meaning analysts?

Correct.

Correct.

Analyst and technology, yes, technical folks that can resolve it at the at the root level.

It's it's simply it kind of appalling that that there are this many defects and so few people working to triage them, especially whenever you have as as Tom and Derek pointed out, the clerk's process for redemptions and and sold taxes, the older taxes, hasn't even gone live yet.

So we're talking about the same group of individuals that are working to resolve the production defects and working to put that into play as well.

And that's on that's on pre to current existing issues, not go forward ex issues.

Correct.

So that's another red flag alarm that should be out there.

I want to switch to again my term, silos.

Now we're gonna go to the residential, residential commercial, the the the private property taxpayers that are due those refunds through PTABs and others.

So the requirements for them, those are pin items as well, right?

Here's property, here's a commercial building, here's your pin numbers, here's your home, here's your pin number.

What is the slow up there then if that's just a single single pinned uh payment?

There's also calculation involved as well.

Certain refunds do require earned interest to go back, or if they were paid late, there's a a late payment that has to be deducted, or it's a layer where there are other transactions on it, like a certificate of error or or like a subsequent tax.

So it's it's at the pin level, multiple transactions there that we have to make sure that each one of those is factoring properly.

Transactions is into the total total uh uh uh not taxing assessed value, but the the actual capital liquidity assessed value of what you're gonna refund that property owner.

Okay.

Correct.

But the PIN number, the PIN number is the same.

It's it's the same pin number, building one, two, three main street.

Yes.

There's no way in which we can go off of the the most previous years um payment structure and make a make a general payment and go back and look to see if we can correct that ourselves internally later down the line, whether it be the next cycle or the or or or the one thereafter, because we have a hundred, we have you know, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of of uh uh agreed upon, gone through the gone through PTAB, they agreed they're owed the refund, and some in many cases are over a year, um, and that's money due to a property owner, different from a taxing body.

Is there any way that we could do that?

Is there any way that we could put a reference to that or look to that or at least look to see if there's some way we can address that?

Believe me we have.

And and we we had we had talked about trying to do that, but it wouldn't be without a tremendous amount of risk.

And the unfortunate reality is if we would do things like that outside of the system, then they have to find their way back into the system.

And we have known that even converting mainframe data and putting that into Tyler has been a pain point, not without tremendous difficulty.

So then going outside of the Tyler system and trying to triage and and to basically uh tie back and validate those numbers that would be going back in that we issued refunds would would be from an auditing standpoint, probably uh it would be a failure on on our point.

Because we'd have to make sure that every single dollar that would be given in a refund to a property owner would have to tie back then to that system, and that also impacts the distribution again from what's withheld as well.

So it it would be not without a tremendous amount of risk.

Okay, fair enough.

Um I'll pass on one second.

I just got one more follow-up here.

So as one of the stakeholders is one of the legs of the of the uh stool on the whole property tax system.

Um what percentage are you uh somewhat confident that our next taxing bills will be go will have the ability to go out on time given everything that we've talked about here so far today?

On time meeting August 1st?

Yes.

Virtually not gonna happen.

Um we we had met yesterday with the president, president's office and all the stakeholders, and the first step is for the assessor's office to hear the appeals which they've done, and now it's in the board of reviews court.

And the board of review indicated they wouldn't be done hearing their appeals until I believe the first week of June.

So that's already one month.

Well, it's an obvious byproduct.

I I kind of presumed that that was that was the case given what what we're hearing here now.

And I'll just and then I'm gonna turn it back over to you, Chairman.

Um this is just like the R rated version of the movie Groundhog's Day.

I mean, this is this is you know, this is we're we're we're we're really in bad in bad position here.

Keep in mind too, Commissioner, not to take away from what what you're saying or your line of thought is, but we still have not issued all of the property tax bills for the second installment last year.

I'm acutely aware of that.

So we've had defects there, and we've also with those pins, we haven't issued the 2025 first installment bills for those properties as well.

So we're talking about two due dates that have come and passed that a certain segment, about 3,500 taxpayers haven't received their property tax bills yet.

That's just gonna accumulate with every passing month.

Correct.

And and that's that should be given.

I think the next hand we had was Commissioner McCaskill and then I go.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you.

Um Sean.

Um you asked um the questions that I have.

So is there understanding that there is going to be a delay?

We understand that.

Is there something you can provide to the commissioners to tell us what your presumed benchmarks would be?

Like, okay, we know we have 100 and whatever number of defects.

Are we given Tyler actual benchmarks?

Are we telling them we need you to meet this by this day?

We need to have status reports.

We need I mean, so what is the flow?

What's the chain of command so that we know that it is actually happening instead of us waiting until the May meeting to get a report?

Commissioner, I think that would be better, sir for for Tom to answer from an overall project standpoint.

Thanks, David.

Uh, thanks, Commissioner, for the question.

Yeah, so um we have to bifurcate the data into those uh that are related to the production application, meaning the system that is live and is working and is generating those calculations as opposed to those that are related to the project uh that is still ongoing.

Uh as uh I think you've heard myself, David, and a few others us talk about the clerk redemptions and tax sale part of the original project scope are not yet live.

So all other functionality that was originally identified is live, but there are defects, meaning there's still work to be done on those.

So a lot of what you've particularly heard uh David describe in the treasurer's operations are systems functionality that's in production, but that have problems with some but not all of the data.

So in terms of prioritizate prioritization, essentially, what do we focus on and what do we tell Tyler to focus on?

The project tasks are very clear because we know we what the clerk requires.

Uh we've had detailed requirements with that office.

Uh Tyler is clear what they need to do, and they're building stuff, and the and the clerk is testing and validating right now.

So for the project standpoint, it's easier to to address the questions you're asking.

For the production defects, it's much more difficult.

And the reason why is because in part of the daily operations, particularly for the treasurer, but I think to a certain extent for all of the property offices, they may run into a problem that they hadn't seen yet, just because they hadn't dealt with that particular pin, for example, that then raises another defect.

So it's impossible for us to anticipate what the right number of defects is or how quickly Tyler should resolve them, because we don't know what they are until they come up.

And depending on what the nature of the defect is, there's some things that are totally in Tyler's control, but more commonly, I think at this stage, it's things that are a combination.

Uh data points that require both the clerk and the treasurer to agree whose data is correct as an example, which then directly feed into the calculations for the refunds, as you heard David explain.

So apologies for the long-windedness of the answer, but we have to consider both at the same time because we're still finishing the project for the clerk, but we need to make sure that everything is working for the production systems for those other offices that are live.

So we track all of it.

Um and in the daily uh tracker, the progress tracker, we're showing both, just as in the deck that you you saw us present here today, we have production defects and project defects.

It speaks to what I'm saying.

We're tracking both, but our role, meaning Bureau of Technology's role, is getting the platform live, managing the project.

Whereas the offices need to make sure that Tyler is working to solve their problems as they come up.

So the assessor's office and the treasurer's office have been self-directing Tyler to prioritize those items that are of most need for their offices, while the Bureau of Technology continues to focus on the project-related tasks.

So in a couple of months, it won't matter.

The distinction I'm drawing will be moot because once the project is fully live, then it's all going to be production defects, and for the most part, that'll be governance across the offices to ensure that they each get what they need.

As you heard David allude to, this is complicated because some of the Tyler resources may be doing work for the clerk and the treasurer, and then whose is gets priority is.

I think maybe I'm not asking the right question because based on what you just said, the answer is no.

That would have been the short answer.

No.

Very fair.

Once we get past all the other stuff, the answer was no.

But um more importantly, did we not have a plan in place prior to, like we weren't here at that time, so I think we're trying to gain understanding as to why, as Morrison pointed out, we're talking four years later or 19, 2019.

So is there currently, and I you should have some type of objectives to say, okay, within the next six months, this is what we anticipate or we project could happen if there not be an element X.

But in the event element X happens, meaning something happens that you're not aware of, this is how we're going to pivot to make this happen.

But the foundational principle of what should be happening doesn't change.

You can't keep changing the goalposts.

Yeah, I I agree with you in principle, uh, and I don't make excuses except to say where we are.

I would say that part of the challenge, I think, for the project as a whole, is that there were multiple rounds of data validation and testing that were signed off last year, 2025, that then have not been accurate.

We found all kinds of problems with data that had been approved by the stakeholders that they missed, or maybe they I'll just I won't speculate as to why.

I'll just say somehow it was missed and now we're dealing with it.

Similarly, there were changes in requirements.

Not saying anybody did anything wrong or malicious, but if it said you need one thing and then you actually need something else that slows things down, and we've run under a lot of those cases.

Um last point, uh, with regard to the new projects, completely oblivious to Tyler, just completely separate.

What the new projects going into these projects, have we actually mapped out a plan of expectations to how we're going to get the AI, what the installation process is gonna look like, who's gonna get it?

Is that somewhere written?

At this point, no.

Um, as uh Commissioner Degnan was asking, uh I agree, and I believe the stakeholders would agree that having particularly the governance processes between their offices is critically important, but that does not exist now, and it was not contemplated before the project.

Commissioner Aguilar.

Thank you, Chairman.

Um Treasurer Pappers was here uh the last month or so, and she said that she would not release any tax bills or any refunds because of the calculations would have been what was wrong.

And if she would have released any of the tax bill, it would have been more costly to correct them.

And again, uh pointing out to Tyler, but have you have they really put pressure on Tyler?

I guess someone should have been here from Tyler.

And it seems I mean are you are you pressuring them?

You know, putting putting it.

So I think I can only I can only answer in the context of technical project management.

That's BOT's role.

And in that context, we meet with them many times weekly.

In fact, we have daily standing meetings and have had it for gosh, I think probably a few years at this point, daily daily meetings, both working meetings and executive escalation meetings.

So from a project management standpoint, um, I believe we are holding them accountable.

Uh there's been uh multiple formal correspondence from the stakeholders to Tyler executives articulating exactly what was necessary for them to complete.

The larger questions you're asking about uh cost recovery uh or sort of priorities.

I I can't I don't think I'm the right person to answer that.

I'm sorry.

That came straight from the from the treasure.

Well, I understand, but I I can't speak for the treasurer.

I mean I'll certainly defer to the correct.

She said if if if she would have released any of the calculation any of the tax bill, the question would have been much more costly to correct.

Uh um the commissioner, can you re- restate, I guess?

She was here earlier.

She said she's not gonna she wasn't gonna release any of the tax bills or refunds because of the error, the error that the error that was not and it would have been more costly to correct them.

I I think that's kind of what uh Vice Chairman Morrison was was indicating.

Like, can we go back and and refund money um outside of the Tyler system and to go back and to do that go back then of a workaround would be you know probably too costly, too kind time consuming, and it probably quite frankly wouldn't be accurate to this.

That's what she was saying.

And that's what the accuracy, you know, with a relatively relative certain amount of confidence we issued the second installment tax bills with 8,500 tax bills that were excluded from that tax run because we didn't have the confidence in in though that calculation.

So it wasn't until you know Tyler had given us corrected tax bills that we sent out those.

We still have 3,500 that we haven't sent out because there's issues with those, but again, we have to have confidence that that the numbers work, both from a billing standpoint, from a refund standpoint, and from a distribution standpoint.

I mean she gave us a whole re I mean like a whole report and she circled all the errors.

I mean, she really combed it, just gave a real thorough report the last time she was.

I can I can use three minutes of my time to go through more than 200 pages that I have myself, if you want.

But again, have we put real real pressure on what's the reasoning why aren't they here?

Tyler.

I mean, have you are they putting pressure on Tyler?

Mark Mark Hawkins is the Tyler's representative.

He's the president of therapy division, and he is typically here.

He had eye surgery a couple of times.

I was just trying to answer your question, sorry.

But it's not one of the things that we're doing.

Tyler could have had more than there's more than one person that works for Tyler Technologies.

I agree with you.

Anyway, thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, any other questions uh for the representative from uh the treasurer's office?

See none.

Uh next up to the hot seat.

We have got uh can we have a representative from the assessor's office?

Good afternoon, commissioners.

My name is Nathan Bernaki.

I'm with the Cook County Sessions Office.

I'm the chief information officer.

Uh I do have presentation that I'm going to try to at the assessor's office.

We focus on three such as strategic pillars, distinguished service, teamwork culture, and data integrity to achieve our overall mission.

The following slides will identify the projects and plans we use to reach these goals.

So what I've done is trying combine the three reports into this one slide show.

So this works out.

Um as of the end of 2025, we have been doing all of our processes live in IES World.

Now, and we've completely removed everything from our mainframe and AS400 processes.

Now, we still are working through some of the data issues and working through those problems as a progress as the as the uh project progresses.

Uh website enhancements, some of the things we're doing.

Um we're working internally with our website partner.

Uh the assessor's office has achieved significant compliance with the mandate.

Um, all of our web pages and back end code are fairly compliant.

Uh the remaining work that needs to be done is third-party software such as PDF files and our data visual and tools and tableau.

We're working to redesign our pen detail page on our website to fully reflect how our data is now handled with the new IS world data.

Um mainframe data no longer available.

Uh, we are also redoing our paid data subscription service that will streamline and accommodate the new data and eliminate the obsolete data fields.

The application will also aim to have a better customer interface and experience.

We're also looking into new web on, I'm sorry, we're looking to new street level imagery as our current photos are quite dated.

Um, and Google Street View sometimes has errors or has obstructed views.

We're also always looking to improve our customer service, and as part of our IVR system, um, we've upgraded using to continue to add features to our call center for better call management, improved analytic data, and also including a callback option for taxpayers to avoid experiencing long holds.

Um, our QLess queuing system has been a success.

Um, it allows taxpayers to make appointments online or in person.

Um, and it also includes a ready notification.

So if you don't have you don't need to be in the office to get notification when your appointment is ready.

Um we continue to work with the gov delivery team through Granicus, it's a countywide contract uh to improve our outreach communication to taxpayers.

Um, and we're also at the same time looking into a new CRM option as we aim to improve these communications with the public.

Uh, some of the office productivity we're looking to.

Um, we've worked towards an internal AI governance plan on top of the countywide AI AI governance that will oversee any of our artificial initiatives.

Um possible pilot programs that we've looked into could be document processing, customer service improvement, decision assist, and workflow automation.

The IT team continues to improve the digital workplace experience by providing tools to our staff to do their jobs more effectively.

We have deployed again tablets to our field staff.

We've been doing code repositories for our app development team.

Uh we continuously update our internet for our staff to have valuable resources, tools, and documentation.

We've also expanded our use of ITSM software to better track our assets, our IT services, contracts, and to build our internal knowledge bases.

We've also added a dedicated security analyst position to our team to focus on cybersecurity and liaison with the Cook County Security ISO team and remediate our identified risks.

Um as our asset inventory, currently we have just kind of a read-through of 250 laptops, computers, 47 tablets, 10 all-in-ones that we use for customers that come in taxpayers that come into our office to use.

Um, that includes 600 monitors, and we currently have 13 server and backup uh appliances.

Um last year we salvaged 163 of these computers, 31 desktops, 300 plus monitors, and five of our server nodes.

Um, this year we plan to purchase 70 more laptop computers with monitors as our setups, and eight more server and backup appliance nodes to refresh uh out of warranty and out-of-date hardware.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions for the representative from the assessors office?

See no hands, thank you so much.

And next up, uh, can we have a representative from the board of review?

Good afternoon, everyone.

Uh Chairman, uh, vice chair, member of the board.

Uh, my name is Adnan Meman.

I'm the director of IT with the board of review.

Um, the board of review IT department presents three reports uh to the committee, uh, which are the technology strategy, uh strategic plan, major IT projects, uh software and hardware, asset inventory.

Together, these documents reflect a mature forward-looking technology posture built on system integration, process automation, compliance, and public transparency.

On the technology strategic plan, we have six strategic IT IT priorities, starting with property tax system integration.

The BORIT has deepened automation and data synchronization with the assessor's office, IS World Platform to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure consistency across all integrated applications.

PRC or the property record card enhancement.

Aligns the board of review data processing with the assessors system, improving user experience and reducing reliancy on IS world for routine lookups.

PTAP automation, automating taxing district notifications for appeals exceeding 100,000 in value, accelerating overall the PTAP appeals timeline.

Workflow automation, new workflows for omitted assessments, enhance decision letter reflecting HIE values, which is the home improvement exemption, and automated pro se letter printing to boost staff productivity.

BOR is ADA compliant.

Data transparency and public access.

BORIT continues publication of certified data sets on the Cook County open data portal, reducing FOIA volume and enhancing taxpayer engagements.

Will further improve account management and customer service.

BOR is looking into a file conversion utility, a utility to streamline FOIA response packaging, PTAB brief transmittals, and data subscription bundles, reducing man hours and accelerating response times.

We are also looking into DAPS, public portal account management enhancements.

This will improve public facing portal with username recovery, password resets, email integration for duplicate emails, and validating during registration to reduce helpers calls.

This will help our HR representatives for onboarding, offboarding, time off approvals, reducing manual errors, ensuring compliance and free staff to focus on strategic HR initiatives.

On software and hardware asset inventory.

BOR has 177 FTE, which includes 251 work stations, 214 docking stations, 388 monitors, 17 multifunctions, and 30 iPads along with 33 mobile devices.

Our software, our core software is Onbase, which is the enterprise content management, document governance, and process automation, along with SQL Server Enterprise and GovQA for FOIA.

FOIA automation intake, routing, redaction, audit trail, and compliance.

The outlook and summary.

Thank you.

And I'll take any questions, please.

Thank you.

Any questions for the board of review?

See none.

Next, uh we are from a representative from the county clerk's office.

Do we have someone from the clerk's office?

Yes, good afternoon, Commissioners.

Uh Andrew Bukowski, director of IT for the Cook County Clerk's Office.

I'll be submitting a report for the technology strategic reports and inventory for uh today.

Um the agenda.

Uh can everybody see my screen first off?

I just want to make sure.

Yes, we can.

Okay.

And agenda I'll be speaking about the current cashiering system, document management system, uh, our current progress with MIS MS Dynamics GP replacements, some AI initiatives, and the take notice portal in our tax services division.

The first item on agenda is our new in-house unified cash sharing platform.

The clerk's office built this application from ground up in all in-house.

What makes this especially powerful is that it's completely customizable.

We can shape it to meet the exact needs of any department.

It could even be used by other agencies if need be.

Any questions for the representative of the clerk's office?

See none.

Thank you for your report.

Next up, we uh have the chief judge.

Thank you, Commissioner.

I'll be just a second, I need to share my screen.

Okay, uh good afternoon, uh commissioners.

Um my name is Mike Carroll.

I'm the director of information services for the Office of the Chief Judge, and I'm here to present uh the strategic plan for 2026 for the Office of the Chief Judge.

Uh before I get into that, I just want to speak to some highlights of our 2025 accomplishments.

In April of 2025, we completely removed all of our applications and databases off the AS400 and the mainframe at InSona.

And uh so we no longer utilize any of those hosting services.

Uh after that, we completed a full upgrade of our physical and virtual file servers that support all of those applications and databases that got migrated from insono.

So thank you all for your support in financing uh the infrastructure upgrades uh last year.

It was critical to uh getting off of the mainframe.

Um we also worked with Clarity Partners to bring the court's website into compliance with uh ADA web content accessibility guidelines.

Uh the website is substantially uh ready.

Uh we are still dealing with PDFs as well, um, as you heard uh others speak to.

Um also in 2025, uh all cook county courthouses are out retrofitted with Wi-Fi, and so there's public internet access at all uh courthouses across the county.

And finally, uh, we had completed the purchase and deployment of about 1265 computers and laptops to replace end of life equipment last year.

So key strategies for 2026.

Um we are beginning planning activities to migrate the court to its own M365 tenant.

Uh that's the email and SharePoint and uh OneDrive and Azure Cloud.

Uh we are going to pilot an eWarrant solution in Cook County with the state's attorney's office.

Uh we're while we are trying to develop a pilot uh in sort of parallel to that, we're going to develop an RFP uh to where we can uh uh competitively bid uh that solution, uh but the pilot will help us uh identify some lessons learned uh so that we can make sure that we incorporate those workflow requirements into the RFP uh so that we don't have those issues uh when we finally get into a contract.

Um from a security perspective, uh we are going to work with Microsoft to conduct Active Directory and SQL Server assessments and also work with uh the Bureau of Technologies Information Security Office to do a NIST security assessment, and we'll be conducting that beginning August 1st.

Um we are continuing with uh our collaborative stakeholder project to modernize AVIT inside the courtroom.

We are going to retrofit every all of the 400 courtrooms in Cook County with state of the art evidence presentation uh uh environments, and um that uh request for qualifications is still in procurement.

Uh all of the uh vendors have submitted their proposals, and hopefully the evaluation committee is getting set to uh make a decision on that vendor very soon.

Uh with respect to the M365 tenant, uh currently all of the judicial branches uh data are intermingled with the executive and legislative branches uh email system, and we're looking to separate that out uh to ensure data security and confidentiality of uh judicial work product and uh matters that are uh subject to sealed records and and such.

Um so we are working with the Bureau of Technology to begin uh that planning in 2026.

Uh the warrant solution again with the state's attorney's office.

Um while the state's attorney's office is partnering with the court, uh law enforcement is going to be a big partner in this.

The clerk's office is going to be a big partner in this as well.

And so we will be reaching out uh as a collaborative stakeholder group uh to include those other uh stakeholders in the process.

Um I just talked about the um active directory SQL Server Security Support.

Uh this will improve the overall security posture of the court within the county's uh network infrastructure.

And so we are going to work closely with the Bureau of Technology and ISO to make sure that we are compliant and that we're following all of the security practices uh promulgated by ISO.

Again, this is the AP AVIT project in the courtroom.

This is a this is one of the major projects.

It's the only major project on my list.

I just want to flag it so I don't have to talk about it again.

But again, each of the elected uh criminal justice stakeholders uh are part of the selection process.

Uh they are they are part of the uh the programming and um they will have a say so in the in the systems that we put into the courtrooms.

And again, the ongoing routine uh technology fresh for 2026 uh commissioners have uh appropriated about three million dollars in capital funding for 2026 to refresh all of the court's computers and infrastructure.

Umce we get uh that spent, we're going to be good for a few years, I believe.

And so I think we would have uh essentially upgraded all of our infrastructure with throughout the court.

That includes the judiciary, the office of the chief judge, and all of the non-judicial departments under the offices of the chief judge, including the JTDC.

Um and again, just to reiterate that we do follow a countywide uh equipment and security standards uh whenever possible.

We do participate in all of the uh countywide um uh procurement and and contracts to take advantage of uh uh pricing.

Uh as far as the projects, uh here's the ABIT upgrade.

I just spoke about that.

I'm gonna skip over.

Um we'll get into the asset inventory.

Um, this is the uh suite of software that we currently run within the office of the chief judge in all of those departments I just talked about.

Uh we do participate in the Microsoft Enterprise uh system.

That's the email and office products that we are talking about migrating to our own tenant.

Uh we do take advantage of the Adobe Professional Contra.

Um Trellix Endpoint Security, CrowdStrike Strike Falcon, and Absolute Visibility are all of the security software uh items that are on each of our devices uh throughout the court, and that follows the standards of the county.

We use Casilla inventory and audit.

Uh that gives us the ability to see our devices live on the network and to connect to them remotely from a centralized location to provide support.

Um our LANSA developer licenses are used by our application development team.

This is the software that all of our applications were developed on that came off the mainframe in the AS400.

Uh, we've been using the software for about 20 years.

Um third-party software, uh, these are uh vendors that we use to support some of our products.

Uh C5 supervisor for probation, that's adult social service and juvenile.

Uh Harris Computer is our resident management information system for JTDC.

Uh PANASOF is the public guardians uh adult guardian system case management system.

Uh General Technologies uh just entered into a contract recently with the public guardian for their juvenile case management system.

That system should go live at the end of the year.

Uh Clarity and BOT support the adoption case management system for us, and um Clarity also supports the circuit court's website.

As far as uh hardware inventory, we have 36 physical servers uh within the data center at 118 North Clark, 77 of them that are virtualized.

Uh we have an old three-part system that has about 90 terabytes.

This is not production data, this is uh offline data that we use to uh back off data that we don't need to keep anymore.

Uh but uh we have about 343 terabytes of Primera storage of that 276 terabytes uh were purchased by the Illinois Supreme Court's uh Court Technology uh modernization fund so that we can store all of our Zoom recordings for our court proceedings.

Uh so um we only have about 70 terabytes of storage for our uh file servers.

And finally, our backup system we use HP uh store months uh as a local appliance.

We also use rubric uh locally to back up our devices and Rubrik Cloud Archive to uh have immutable immutable backups to protect us against ransomware.

Um we have 2914 desktops and 1,719 laptops distributed throughout the court, uh 849 printers and 375 meeting awesome that support hybrid uh uh court proceedings uh in each of our courtrooms.

And that's my report, Commissioner.

Thank you, kindly.

Uh any questions?

Uh Commissioner Vasquez.

Thank you, Chair.

Um this was a very extensive um PowerPoint, and I appreciate that.

I know that it was recently uploaded, um, but would love to have this in advance if possible.

There was one particular slide that I found very interesting.

And if you could please speak in more detail about the pilot e-warrant solution.

Is there a timeline around that?

And what are the uh commissioner?

This is a new concept that the um uh there is a pretrial stakeholder group in Cook County uh that started a discussion on uh this E electronic warrant.

Uh currently uh e search warrants are very manual process where law enforcement has to actually go to a courthouse to find or actually first go to the state's attorney's office to get a search warrant approved, and then they have to go find a judge to approve it.

Uh this system would streamline those processes, which an officer in the field would be able to request online state's attorney review, um, and it would be an electronic workflow where they get a signature back from the state's attorney that approves it, and then there would go to a judge, a duty judge that would be available online to review those warrants in a uh more timely fashion as opposed to going around to try to find a judge to do the search warrant.

Um this would give us auditing tracking uh capabilities within the system as well.

Um and so this came up as a a concept to create efficiencies uh not only for the state's attorney's office and the judiciary, uh, because this is resource intensive for both of our offices, uh, but also for law enforcement at large.

We have 130 or so municipal law enforcement agencies throughout Cook County.

Uh we hope to get each of those agencies on board to participate in this program so that we can achieve those efficiencies.

Um it's really in the concept stage where we were talking about a pilot and going out to an RFP.

Um, and uh so we are still in early discussions on it, uh, but we think this will create a lot of efficiencies uh in the court.

Ultimately, we would integrate with the clerk system uh so that any warrants that are executed in return can be electronically sent to the clerk and stored in the electronic record.

And so um you're saying it you're still discussing this idea, so um theoretically, uh is it quarter, quarter three, quarter four for the pilot?

We're hoping to do a pilot this year, Commissioner.

Uh we know that RFPs are taking about 18 months or so within the county procurement process.

Um, and so we're really uh probably getting into 2028 before we would really see a system in place pursuant to an RFP.

Um, but we're looking to get a small pilot project just to really get lessons learned so that we can incorporate any of those lessons learned into an RFP so that we don't put out requirements and then come back and have to change those requirements uh based on some nuances that we just weren't aware of.

Uh so we're trying to do something this year with uh with a pilot.

And with the pilot, do you mean in terms of scope?

You're looking at one courthouse specifically regarding yeah, uh can you just is there any sense of the we would probably reach out to uh I suspect uh Chicago Police Department work within a district and a courthouse and assign a state's attorney and a judge and just see how this goes for a little while and just see how the process goes to to map it out.

Yeah, no, thank you.

Is someone from the clerk's office still here?

The county clerk.

Great.

Yeah, no, I um I did have a question that I think is maybe so you're talking about efficiencies when it comes to you know electronic access to warrants and being able to, you know, perform law enforcement duties in a timely manner.

Um we have had issue with um release times in a timely manner when it comes from our Cook County jails.

Um, and my understanding is that there's sort of a similar, you know, um issue where a lot of the um a lot of the ways in which we've relied to release individuals has been uh through paperwork.

Um and so I'm just curious if there's been any conversation to meet efficiencies in this way for release times through our Cook County jails through the clerk, and I understand it's an issue with the clerk and with the sheriff's office, and I know that's something I've been having conversations with them around.

Yeah.

And you're right, Commissioner.

That would be uh the eMIP, the e-mit process uh that would be part of that.

Um and I think uh Vivek and Nanda can speak to that from the clerk's office.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Um my name is Vivekananda, I'm the chief information officer for the clerk of the circuit court.

Um what you're referring to uh is uh it's a two-part question.

Um so we are extensively working with the sheriff's office and especially of trying to get them electronic data.

So if an individual is in the courtroom and has to be released because of a judge's situation, and I'm going to defer to the sheriff to answer it.

Their processes for the sheriff is they need the paperwork to actually take the individual back in and release them.

So that is always going to be that paper trail of it.

What we are working on, and right now we are we started with the pilot last year, and and now we have trying to make it in all our criminal courts is try to send that data as soon as possible electronically to the sheriff's office.

And now the sheriff's office is validating it.

And it's that it's not only for a release, right?

It could be for any type of decision taken on the individual who has come to court.

So they are going through and vetting out.

They have some scenarios and they're vetting it out, and we are happy to discuss with you.

We can even get the sheriff's office involved, and you can understand how detailedly we are spending weekly to going through with operations on our side, operations on the sheriff's side, and the technology people, including BOT, because we do use the service bus, which was built out for the judicial process for all of these agencies to interconnect.

So there is actually a lot of work being done where we are now kind of in a stage where we also have to understand one more thing.

I want to emphasize is for us, everything a judge does might be just an order or a decision taken on an individual.

Um and the sh and the sheriff's office might be seeing that as a as a disposition or something like that.

So we are working out those terminologies.

For me, a disposition means something else in the clerk's realm, where a disposition for a sheriff might be something else.

So those are those were the hard points which we had now that we have worked at very high level, including at my level and include at Amart's level, that we have actually come to an understanding is like, oh, this is what you meant.

And so we are able to satisfy what the sheriff needs so that they can actually be more efficient too, and to answer your question, get the release time much more faster.

I I I know I uh I I can we can go into detail with your office uh and give you exactly how much of detailed work is being going on this, but and we are also trying to expand this to uh other type of communications, not only uh uh communications when I say services, where we use the sheriff's office from the courts uh to try to reduce the paper time or try to let the other individuals in this big organization be aware that something is coming, so they are aware that you know they're not waiting for a person to come through and and save that time.

Yeah, thank you for that.

And I will be following up with your office.

You know, I think if we're able to provide efficiencies when it comes around to providing warrants, we should also be able to have efficiency so that people aren't released after midnight from Cook County jail.

I agree.

Thank you.

Any other questions uh for the representative from the chief judge's office?

See none.

Um thank you.

And if you want to stay up there, uh the next report is from the uh clerk of the circuit court.

Just give me a second to share the screen.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Uh this is my name is Vivekananda.

I'm the chief information officer once again from the clerk of circuit court.

Um, I'm trying to try to respect the commissioner's request of trying to keep it less than three minutes to give you a high strategy point of view.

Um, so the key projects, uh, and I've kind of clubbed everything together, one and we can definitely you can ask questions and I can answer it.

Um, is on our enterprise uh justice case management system.

Uh we uh with with clerks properties coming on, we we started this new initiative of trying to reduce the unfinished um modules, which should have gone live uh when when the system when the system moved out of the mainframe, and we took that as an initiative.

Uh I want to happily say that we did go live with e-citation, which is a big uh change, and which most number of traffic citations which are given out in in the county are now electronically ingested.

Uh, out of the 102 agencies, uh, we are already ingesting from two vendors, and that has brought our uh count down to about 60 agencies have already been successfully ingested.

We are already working with uh with another vendor, and I want to say is like next month we'll be having another 17 more agencies out of the 102 coming on.

So that that's going to be a very insight.

We are also parallel looking at other initiatives to improve any other digital documents that we could be getting from the citations the vendors are working on.

Um and then the other one we also want working on is the defendant access.

Uh this is a module to allow online payments uh is uh so that all these payments can go directly into the system uh and and also immediately get a closure on those cases.

Uh it'll also allow them uh the the defend uh the defendant to also request a code date or even automatically enroll into traffic safety school.

This this would avoid them uh of contacting our office and adding additional paperwork, so so that that would help.

The new other module which we are going to uh initiating uh later on this year is the e-noti.

This is for uh in lieu of sending uh snail mail.

Uh I hope everybody understands snail mail postal mail uh to reduce the cost of stampage so that if uh a lot of civil cases and and all of those other sites, we do have its attorneys and we already have their email addresses, so we could send information electronically and get rid of actually sending paper mail to them, which which would also in the long term reduce postage uh for the county.

Uh as Commissioner uh Versor mentioned about the justice partner uh projects.

Uh we are working on uh uh the e-mit project as as the commissioner mentioned.

Uh, we are also working uh at the ready use is uh I want to say is uh in the juvenile side with the state's attorney's office.

Uh to your point, Commissioner, is it's a complete electronic transfer.

Law enforcement Chicago police sends information of uh of uh defendants to the state's attorney's office, the state's attorney's office reviews it from their system, it is sent electronically to the service bus, which BOT manages.

It then is automatically ingested into our system, our clerks review it, convert it into a case, information is sent back to the state's attorney with the stamp document, all and also to the office of the chief judge because they have a probation unit.

All of this is done electronically.

So there is complete end-to-end electronic system.

And and this is this is the type of thing we are also looking on the criminal side.

Uh, but obviously there are some laws which we have to follow, and we have we you know, all the three offices are working together to see that that that is accomplished.

Just to just to emphasize on on how we are trying to utilize technology to improve uh time and efficiency.

It is done on the juvenile side.

We are working on the child protection side, that is kind of like the civil matters in juvenile.

Um we are trying to bring it up the same process.

This is being successfully worked out with all the three officers working together, satisfying all the systems, and the service bus helping us being all of us to be agnostic.

I can be on my own system, the state's attorneys can be on their own system, and and the law enforcement could be on the own system.

Uh so just wanted to emphasize on that.

And on the infrastructure side, uh, we are working uh on our uh hardware refresh uh uh from whichever is reached the threshold of four years.

Uh I I have submitted all the reports of all the inventories we have.

We are working with BOT of uh building out a new uh uh new uh DR solution with in the new co-location, which BOT has just started.

We are actively working with them, and we are also working on refreshing our uh server storage, which is uh which has already reached this end of life.

Um that's all I had, and hopefully I kept up to three minute time for if there is any more questions.

Thank you kindly.

Any questions?

I see none.

Thank you.

Oh, Commissioner Perskost.

No, I just want to thank you for adding additional detail, and you know, just for the record.

I am interested in learning more about the pilot.

I am not opposed to it, but I would love to see similar efficiencies in gusto for the release of people who have served their time from our cook county jails.

That's 100%.

Thank you for those comments.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Uh, next, uh we have uh the sheriff's office.

Do we have a representative from the sheriff available?

Good afternoon.

There we go.

This is a mark.

Uh good afternoon, Chairman.

Good afternoon.

Um Mar Patel COVID for the sheriff's office.

Um I know we have to keep it to three minutes, so I will run through our current major projects and then open it up for questions.

We we've got more than this on our plate, but these are the major ones.

Um accent equipment management and maintenance.

We continue to roll out the body cameras throughout the jail to train everybody.

Um, and and uh and that is a large undertaking, but we are nearly complete.

Um and and uh and that is a large undertaking, but we are nearly complete um as we also work with the county BOT uh to deploy the network uh and infrastructure for all the docs.

Um the jail management system continues to get enhanced.

Um we continue to uh modernize and capture more data.

Um the records management system uh went live on the migration this morning at about 1 30 a.m.

And we are officially off of uh CPD infrastructure and in the sheriff's office environment.

So now we can uh rapidly uh develop uh even faster with our internal teams.

Uh the CABS uh live scan, which is the fingerprinting uh that most uh police agencies throughout the county uh utilize the sheriff's office uh technology stack uh that uh should be completed uh within the next week and a half uh of deployment of of over a hundred and fifty uh live scan machines throughout the cook county.

Uh we knocked it out in about a month and a half, so that was uh a good project and a good win.

Um we continue to work on contraband substance detection and interception, um, which is uh you know utilizing the new technology for detecting uh drug stuff paper, um, and it's really detecting any liquid besides ink on a piece of paper.

Uh we have deployed uh this technology through all the divisions um and the courthouses, and we'll continue to work on uh secure mail um and heart rate monitors, uh which hopefully uh will go out uh in the next uh coming days.

Um we have uh started our UB key identity protection, which is multi-factor authentication for all of the sheriff's office devices.

Um, and uh that has uh expanded to all of IT so far, um, and we have an order of 1500 coming uh to start deploying all of our street units with the UBTs.

Uh we also continue to do the hardware inventory refresh um uh which is an ongoing project project um and to to maintain uh life uh the life cycle.

Um so I will uh open it up to anybody who has questions.

Um thank you so much.

Thank you so much for your report.

Any questions for members of the committee?

I see no hands, thank you.

And last but certainly not least, we are asking for a representative from the state's attorney's office.

Afternoon, Chairman.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

Um post the presentation.

Do we have the presentation?

Lynn, do we uh Chairman?

I don't see.

Do you have a representative online who's sharing it?

Or I don't see anyone connected, sir.

Oh sorry.

No one is connected at the moment.

Douglas, are you representing Sheriff's Office?

Can you hear me, Douglas?

State's attorney.

I'm sorry, state's attorney.

I'm sorry, state's attorney.

No, ma'am, I'm with the sheriff's office.

Thank you.

Ron Call, I apologize, but Chairman, no, I don't see anyone connected.

Okay.

We've been having the individual offices sharing their presentations online.

Um spoiled me in the past.

It's always been right.

Right.

Fantastic.

Sorry about that.

We've got it up.

It is.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Uh good afternoon, everybody again.

My name is Darren Ganier.

I'm the chief information officer for the state's attorney's office.

Um, I'm gonna go over our major projects and strategic plan, which is one and the same.

Um next slide, please.

Uh we have four things that we're working on aggressively right now.

Um, the case management system, the laptop refresh and hardware refresh project, the digital evidence management system solution, and as uh Mike Carroll said from the chief judge's office, a collaboration with the warrant solution.

Um next slide, please.

The case management systems, the juvenile justice or the juvenile bureau uh and child protection bureau's case management system is complete.

We're moving to a different solution going forward.

So right now we're um assessing all the vendors in that arena.

Um we're gonna we're our procurement team at the state's attorney's office is working with OCPO to um work on demos and different assessment tools to find the right solution for us going forward.

We hope to have work started on that by Q4 of this year.

Next slide, please.

Laptop refresh project.

Uh we have almost 1400 users uh at this point, and we are about 55% complete with the project.

Um we plan to be done by the end of August of this year and uh have the complete refresh done for the office going forward.

Next year should just be um any tail end new hires and uh replacing vacancies in attrition from uh attrition and uh interns and new positions.

Next slide, please.

Axon.

Uh the Axon project kicked off on January 1st.

Uh right now we're in the middle of training and working on data migration from the legacy system.

Uh we're plan on going live with all new cases being entered into the system as of June 1st of this year, and then we will work on the archive and closed cases in Q3 and Q4 of this year.

We can we'll be completely off the legacy system by Q4 uh by November 30th of this year, and Axon will be live and uh available for all the state's attorneys.

Next slide, please.

And finally, the automated search warrant solution.

Uh again, my carold kind of took my thunder on this one.

Uh we're working on collaboration with them.

Uh the pilot program with a small group of uh officers.

We're still working out the details on that, and judges.

Uh we want to be able to make sure that we have all the proper requirements gathered and that we're going into an RFP with our eyes wide open.

So that's the end of my uh strategic project plan.

Thank you kindly.

Any questions for the States Attorney's Office?

I see none.

Okay, that concludes all of our reports.

Thank you for uh everyone uh submitting the report today.

We already voted to receive and file, and before we move to adjourn, uh we're gonna circle back to public comment if uh Mr.

Blake Moore would like to speak.

Thank you very much, Chairman.

Uh, that you realize that you are a public servant.

I was a little late, but you said I'm gonna I'm gonna listen to Mr.

Blake Law.

I'm gonna let him speak.

Always be in a position to listen to the people.

You are a public servant.

And I waited, and and I'm glad that you allowed me to speak uh because I was probably out by spinning this mic, I probably would have left.

But I stay.

And by me staying, I was able to get an education about how anything government works, not in fact, and special with that tailor, a cower.

Oh, yes.

I say, now look uh, what's going on here?

And the same elected officials.

I uh I feel in office.

I would think that they would have voting uh uh uh Miss Prepwinker out.

But she's still here, everybody's still here.

And why Calic didn't show up at Taylor today?

Oh, somebody was sick.

A few teachers are sick, they're gonna substitute teacher that gives somebody else there.

That's unacceptable.

He should have been here somebody.

It's unacceptable.

So Mr.

Oh, I got bored, but I'm getting the education.

You forced me to stay, and that's good.

Some of them would say, Oh, oh, oh, you should have been on time.

I was forced to listen.

And your job as the impetus.

Well, why there's no vote?

So they didn't have to mandate it, Paul Corum, but just the idea that they're gone.

That they they got bored.

And it's unacceptable.

Lady uh uh what's this lady name now, Mr.

Blake Moore?

You can petwinkle.

That Kyla makes the county look bad with these taxes.

Uh-huh.

Make the county look like it's not a functional government.

And I was shocked when one of your men came up one of your steps saying, Mr.

Blake More, we're gonna let you speak.

You and I have had difference.

Yes, but you was wise to let Mr.

Blake Moore speak.

Why would you want to sell on him?

That was a wise move you made.

And I'm beginning to change my opinion about you.

Maybe you might have more sense than all of them.

You say, let him speak.

Let him speak.

And thank you, sir, for serving the public.

Not serving me, but serving the public.

Once the public come, you are here to serve them.

We don't work for you.

You work for us.

And I was shocked when you uh when your staff say, Mr.

Blake Moore, we're gonna let you speak.

Thank you, sir.

And as you live, you learn that you perhaps you you can be uh uh uh uh an outstanding county commissioner.

Oh yes, you can if you serve the needs of the public.

So thank you again, and it's unacceptable for Tyler Keller to not be here, and the money and the taxes uh uh it's ridiculous.

And guess what?

The citizen did put them right back in something, maybe it's not wrong with these uh commissioners and ultimates.

Maybe it's something wrong with the people.

They allow you to do this.

You're supposed to educate the people, inform them and have them here.

You you should be welcome, the people, it should be taxed here with with the citizens that has been effected by this non-functional government, a child and this contract.

Now I'm through.

I'm through.

I came to DC.

I wanted the attention, and thank you, thank you, thank you, and good night.

Thank you as well, Mr.

Blake Moore.

You have a good evening.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Uh and with that, that concludes public speakers.

It concludes our meeting.

Uh Commissioner Vasquez moves to adjourn, seconded by Commissioner Trevor.

All those in favor signify by voting aye.

And the pinning of the chair, the eyes have it.

This meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

We only voted on.