k...I work for the county and we've start a new program that monitors a certain type of legal case (guardianships). he have no case management software. prebuilt stuff doesn't meet our exact needs and IT sucks. therefore, we're thinking about building our own system ( we have to be able to disseminate it to other counties for the regional program Texas is starting).
Yall: Anyone willing to create (paid) a db/management system that can be spread to other counties and yet have a central place access it? I'm not yet sure how much we can spend, so I'd like quotes on creating a system. If interested, call me at 575-640-7937 or 806-775-1720.
I figure yall are capable as shit, so why not ask. Off hand, I think we can only offer $3-5k for a system that will help use manage the 1400 cases we're currently trying to monitor based on paper and memory.
A contract and statement of work is a must have, since this would be work done for an actual government (local) client.
I agree with Sidoh- requirements are a must for this. Beyond the software's functional requirements, you must also consider general requirements (i.e. what platform(s)/ operating system(s) must be supported, is it a web application and/ or desktop application, etc.), security or IA (Information Assurance) requirements (i.e. what encryption, password standards, etc. must be adhered to- these kind of requirements may be necessary to meet compliance with state government IT policies/ laws), and legal requirements (i.e. who has ownership and liability over what, are there policies that exist which would restrict incorporation/ use of open source licenses libraries/ frameworks, etc.).
Another consideration you should be thinking about is what kind of future maintenance and support of the system you may require... If the software system becomes unusable due to a OS patch/ update, has a gaping security hole, bugs, etc. etc. who you gonna call? Is your existing IT staff going to have to support it?
My concern from what little information you've posted is that there's potentially a bigger problem at hand that should be solved instead: "no case management software"
Let's say that hypothetically you find someone to build this custom software solution to manage and monitor guardianship cases for $3-5k, and it works reasonably well and everyone is generally satisfied with it (
BELIEVE ME this scenario is highly unrealistic, lol). Well, what happens when inevitably management goes, "Hey, why can't we use this software to manage and monitor all of our other cases?!?!" What was originally 1,400 guardianship cases, may now turn out to be orders of magnitude more cases. Depending on the requirements that the software was originally built against and a whole bunch of other factors, especially how well the software system was designed and coded with performance, scalability, and flexibility/ extensibility in mind, this could be as simple as updating or creating a few GUIs or as complex as redesigning the entire front-end and/ or back-end.
As Sidoh suggested, hiring a competent summer intern or two to work on this may be the best route for you, especially if this hasn't been given a whole deal of preparation and though. It would be a good way of deciding whether or not you truly wish to pursue an in-house/ custom software solution instead of working with a COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) solution, because without having solid, defined requirements, and knowing exactly what the problems are you ultimately wish to tackle ahead of time means that this $3-5k could turn out to be double or more the cost in actual man hours. Especially if this software system is going to be connected to the local government's intranet and require support for multi-site deployments.
