Aside from causing headaches for city officials overseeing the transition, the flawed system has resulted in longer waits for the thousands of residents, lawyers and bail bondsmen who navigate the courts each day, and frustration for those who work there.
The city is giving Maximus Inc. until Thursday to provide a plan for making its work meet expectations.
"We said, 'It's really up to you Maximus. You tell us how you're going to keep Houston as a long-term client, how you're going to satisfy all your requirements, or we're going to declare you in default," said Richard Lewis, the city's director of information technology.
Repeated calls to Maximus for comment this week were not returned. In the past, spokeswoman Rachael Rowland has said the company was working to fix system bugs.
The computer upgrade, a goal of city officials since the late '90s, was supposed to be completed within a year and a half after the City Council approved the contract in April 2003. More than four years later, it still is not working properly.
"The computer system slows the operation down and kind of makes it unpleasant" to work there, said traffic lawyer Lawrence Rousseau. Since the system went live in April 2006, he has nicknamed municipal courts "the tar pit" because it is easy to get stuck there all day.
While some administrative tasks have been simplified with the transition to electronic from paper, the system is cumbersome and slow. It often takes longer than it should to complete simple tasks, such as processing bonds and setting cases for trial.
To process a bond, for example, clerks must work their way through 19 computer screens, and it takes 7-10 seconds for each new screen to appear, Lewis said. Loading a docket, a common task for judges, can take up to 10 minutes, he said.
"We believed the system was going to make our jobs simpler and in some cases it has made our job more complex," Presiding Judge Berta Mejia said.
'Enough already'
Because the city has warned Maximus before that its work has not met expectations, some city officials do not think they should get another chance.
"Enough already," said Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck. "This does not meet the basic terms of the contract, we've got taxpayer money on the line and it's time to cut our losses and move on."
Lewis said it is in the city's best interest to be patient. "But it's not going to last very much longer," he said.
The company, based in Reston, Va., is one of the largest providers of outsourced government services software, said Charles Strauzer, an analyst with CJS Securities, who covers those companies. The systems business is a small portion of Maximus' workload, he said, adding that it has not been profitable the past few years.
Group suggested changes
Since the city is unsatisfied with Maximus' work, officials hired an independent group, The Mitre Corp., a nonprofit organization that helps governments use information technology systems, to assess the project this summer. Mitre found that Maximus met most of the functional requirements defined in the contract, but did not meet technical requirements, which are essential for user reliability. In other words, the system is not capable of dealing with the 2.1 million cases the court sees each year.
The group recommended that Maximus replace its technical software and create a separate system for parking citations to reduce the load. Lewis said the company is considering those suggestions.
"They (Maximus) have been saying the right things, and they've deployed a bunch more resources down here in the last six months," Lewis said. "Whether or not that's enough is another whole matter."
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