Cuyahoga County committee backs contract to replace jail management system with $3.99 million vendor deal

Cuyahoga County’s Public Safety and Justice Affair Committee on March 22 reviewed a nearly $4 million contract to replace the county’s jail management system and voted to advance the measure to full council for three readings.

County IT and sheriff’s office staff told the committee the chosen vendor is Executive Information Systems (EIS), an independent business unit of Harris/Constellation, and that the procurement followed an RFI and an open RFP scored by an independent committee. "This here is a contract for a new jail management system that will be located in the correction center," said Chris Costin of the sheriff’s department.

Sharon Faenza, manager of technical services for county IT, said the current system—known as IMAX—is more than 20 years old, runs on unsupported technology and is "noncompliant with CJIS," creating security and operational risks. "It is a system that we do use to manage our inmate life cycle, including our bookings and releases," Faenza said, describing the new system’s inmate classification, booking/release workflows and integrated dashboards.

Faenza outlined features the county sought and the contract covers: the JMS application, multiple dashboards, a public web viewer (with county-determined visibility), a secure law-enforcement portal requiring registration and agreement with the sheriff’s office, prebooking tools for municipal partners, and about 19 integrations, including connections with courts, MetroHealth, LEADS and certain visitation and commissary systems. She said the contract includes a warrant-servicing module integrated with LEADS that the county cannot do today.

County staff said the selected EIS solution includes a perpetual site license and implementation costs, plus maintenance and support estimated at about $1.5 million over five years and managed hosting on Azure Government Cloud. Faenza said service-level agreements include response times and economic penalties if the vendor does not meet obligations.

Sheriff’s staff described the budget posture for the item: the county has set aside roughly $2.4 million for the first two years (about $1.559 million in year one and $929,000 in year two) but the total contract across possible renewals is just under $4 million. "The total total contract price is, yeah, almost 4,000,000, but, again, that's over 5 years," Costin said. Payments will follow milestone completion and the county will return for additional funding if milestones are accelerated.

Faenza said the contract requires the vendor to perform data conversion and lists the migration as a statement-of-work deliverable with at least three iterations. The county budgeted training for 400 correctional center employees, and Faenza said the training is included in the contract price. "We have budgeted for 400 employees of the correction center to be trained," she said.

Associate Warden Kevin O'Donnell described current booking as "done by paperwork" with municipalities using different processes; staff said some Cleveland arrest data can be viewed via the city’s system. Questions from committee members focused on partner system compatibility, whether municipal partners pay to access county systems (they do not), and whether tablets used by residents will have internet or book access; O'Donnell said tablets have apps and there may be books, and the jail still accepts donated physical books on occasion.

Staff said the implementation timeline is aggressive: kickoff is planned for January 2026 with a target launch of 12 to 16 months if milestones are met. Faenza said a steering committee will be formed for governance and the statement of work identifies 51 independent deliverables with explicit success criteria before payment-triggering milestones.

Vendor representative Adam Missler said EIS does not plan to open a local office and will provide 24/7 remote support. "We do not plan on opening an office here in the county," Missler said.

At the meeting’s close the committee chair moved to forward Resolution 20250322 to full council for three readings; the committee approved the motion by voice vote. The item will proceed to the full council, where additional budget and contract approvals will be considered.

Votes at a glance

Resolution 20250322 (requisition 13840) — award to Executive Information Systems, not to exceed $3,999,756.96: forwarded to full council for three readings (committee voice vote: "Aye").