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Judicial Department asks for $3.2 million in Phase 3 spending authority to modernize case management system
Summary
The Colorado Judicial Department asked the Joint Technology Committee for $3.2 million in cash-fund spending authority for Phase 3 of a multi‑phase modernization of its 30‑year‑old case management system; committee members pressed the department on costs, migration risks and security, and deferred a funding decision until Feb. 15.
The Colorado Judicial Department asked the Joint Technology Committee for $3,200,000 in cash‑fund spending authority to continue replacing its three‑decade‑old case management system, the department’s new chief information officer told lawmakers.
Gana Tesfaye, chief information officer and director of the Judicial IT Services Division, said the modernization will replace an antiquated IBM iSeries application that integrates more than 30 systems. "This request is specifically for Phase 3, dollars 3200000.0 of cash fund spending authority," she said, describing Phase 1 work as completed and noting Phase 2 had just kicked off with consultant Gartner.
The request is part of a larger, multi‑phase effort that the department and consultants have estimated at about $33,800,000 in total, with roughly $15.3 million already allocated, the committee was told. Steven Vasconcelis, the state court administrator, cautioned that the original plan had been a three‑year cycle at about $10 million per year but that state budget constraints stretched timelines and added cost risk: "I also can't sit here and guarantee we're absolutely going to stay within 33,000,000 given the impact of the timeline already," he said.
Tesfaye said the department has engaged Gartner to produce a procurement roadmap and that Gartner's charge is to scope work within the available budget; if "there are critical needs outside of that, we will address them as they come," she said. She highlighted migration complexity, saying much of the data is unstructured and will require extensive transformation to move into a modern environment. The department also plans a hybrid support model with vendor and internal teams across judicial districts.
Lawmakers questioned cost lines that could drive overruns. Representative Titone pressed the department about the high line item for "implementation and interfaces," and Jason Bergbauer, deputy director of services for Judicial IT, explained the work entails rebuilding more than three dozen data exchanges with other government agencies and configuring the system for Colorado’s statutory and operational requirements.
Security compliance was raised as a key constraint. Tesfaye noted the system holds Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) datasets that are federally regulated and require strict compliance; she said the department is about 60–61% complete in mitigating 46 recent audit recommendations.
The committee did not take a vote. The chair said members would hear other departments and expected to reconvene to decide on the judicial requests on Feb. 15. The department was asked to return at the end of Phase 2 with a completed roadmap and a revised cost analysis.
