Clara Shortridge Foltz Wi-Fi Pilot Project

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2012

Alternate Public Defender (APD) and Public Defender (PD) attorney staff spend a substantial part of each day in court waiting for their cases to be handled. This “down time” is mostly unproductive time. The APD and PD believed that substantial increases in productivity could be made if attorneys could work on laptop PC’s and access the Internet and their department proprietary systems while in court and away from the office. The APD and PD, in collaboration with the Information Systems Advisory Body and the Internal Services Department, selected the Clara Shortridge-Foltz Criminal Justice Center (the largest and busiest criminal courthouse in Los Angeles County) to test the concept in a pilot project. Funding was approved by the Chief Executive Office and provided from the County Information Technology Fund to purchase the necessary laptop PC’s for the APD and PD, and for the Internal Services Department to provide Wi-Fi connectivity at the courthouse. Attorney time once spent waiting in court is now recovered through remote access thereby improving staff productivity and quality of service. This project increases productivity and generates annual cost savings of approximately $ 725,000 in actual APD and PD attorney staff reductions.