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District attorney's digital‑evidence growth drives major cloud storage costs, IT says
Summary
IT staff told commissioners the district attorney's digital‑evidence repository has grown to roughly 156 TB, driving cloud backup and migration costs; IT presented vendor options with multi‑tier storage pricing and a recommended vendor quote that could raise recurring costs substantially.
Brian Crenshaw told the Commissioners Court that the county's digital evidence system—assembled from multiple pieces in response to COVID—has expanded to roughly 156 terabytes of stored evidence and is the county's largest consumer of cloud backup storage.
Crenshaw said the county paid about $17,005 in 2026 for cloud backup related to the evidence system and that recurring cloud charges are expected to rise toward $26,000 in the current budget year. He described vendor demonstrations of purpose‑built digital evidence management systems ranging from $102,000 to $500,000 in quoted annual costs; the group favored a Pine Technologies option at approximately $110,000 per year with upfront migration and ingestion fees. Crenshaw and DA staff warned that statutory retention and discovery requirements mean the county must preserve evidence for long periods and that storage demands will continue to grow.
Commissioners asked about migration costs, active versus cold storage tiers, discovery logs and the possibility of partial local cold storage, and they requested a plan that balances legal retention obligations against recurring expense. No procurement decision was made at the workshop; IT flagged the item as a high‑priority budget consideration.
