Orange County launches Niche records management system; three agencies live, county aims for all by year‑end

Orange County Emergency Services and Information Technology officials said the county’s new Niche records management system (RMS) went live with three agencies and will be rolled out to dozens more this year.

Commissioner Peter Scigliano and Deputy Commissioner Robert Doss told the Public Safety and Emergency Services Committee the county relaunched the stalled project as an IT priority and completed the first deployment in under five months; they said the typical implementation takes about 18 months.

“Less than five months ago we did the kickoff meeting and we said we’re going live February 10 and we did it,” Doss said, describing the county’s focused schedule. He and other officials credited the county’s newly hired IT leadership, a systems integration manager placed inside Emergency Services, and heavy participation from municipal police departments.

Orange County officials said the deployment includes an interface that transmits tickets and accident reports to the DMV and, once configured, will allow one‑button record transfers to the district attorney’s office to streamline discovery. Three agencies — the Village of Monroe, the City of Middletown and the Town of Warwick — are already writing tickets and reports in the system. County staff said probation and the district attorney’s office are next in the onboarding sequence.

Officials described several operational goals: a single unified record that improves officer situational awareness for traffic stops and domestic calls, a shared CAD dispatch environment so 911 can see officer locations across the county, and reduced duplication of dispatch software. Deputy Commissioner Doss said the county set up a 24/7 help desk to support the rollout and was not seeing critical service interrupting calls as agencies transitioned.

Commissioner Scigliano said training was a major lift: roughly 200 police officers, dispatchers and records staff have been trained in the initial phase; county staff held four‑day “business fit” sessions to prepare agency trainers and produced local training materials. The county expects to bring departments on in clusters of three to five and aims to have all municipal departments using the system by the end of the year.

Officials said they have budget projections for ongoing maintenance in the Niche contract and that some configuration work remains for the sheriff’s civil modules and district attorney interface. The committee asked for clarification about how tickets appear in DMV and how dispositions are recorded; staff said the RMS transmits tickets and that court dispositions subsequently update records.

County officials asked for continued cooperation from municipal police departments and noted the project included a DMV interface already working in the fast deployment.