Justice awards contract for automated debt collection program
The contract, awarded by Justice's Office of Debt Collection Management, will help the office better coordinate thousands of collection cases nationwide. ODCM supports lawsuits Justice brings against companies and individuals that owe money to the federal government. The contract has a base term of 28 months and five one-year options. It has a fixed-price component and task orders.
The contract, awarded by Justices Office of Debt Collection Management, will help
the office better coordinate thousands of collection cases nationwide.
ODCM supports lawsuits Justice brings against companies and individuals that owe money
to the federal government. The contract has a base term of 28 months and five one-year
options. It has a fixed-price component and task orders.
The contract will let ODCM use the Recovery Management System, a product from London
Bridge Software Systems Inc. of Charlotte, N.C., a CACI subcontractor.
Using RMS, attorneys and debt collection agents in federal financial litigation units
in U.S. attorneys offices nationwide will be able to consolidate and track
collection lawsuits.
ODCM now uses two separate systems, Collector and Talon, to track civil debt.
But the two systems often overlap and duplicate debt collection efforts across
jurisdictions, ODCM director Kathleen Hagerty said.
RMS will consolidate debt collection data and let ODCM assign and track debts, even
when debts are shared between jurisdictions.
It will [eliminate overlap] by storing all of the information in one place, and
with the workflow process, attorneys will be able to flag a particular debt and send it on
to the correct judicial district, said Glenaca Saison, senior vice president of
legal services and information management at CACI.
Hagerty said the system will streamline her offices efforts.
I think it is going to make our people more productive and more focused in their
debt collection efforts, and it also makes it, in the consolidation of all our debt
collection activity, far easier to generate statistics that are departmentwide, she
said.
RMS will also automate data entry and payment processing, Saison said.
RMS runs on PCs and employs several levels of security to protect against intrusion
from hackers, Saison said. RMS will be accessible via the Web and Justices WAN. CACI
will customize the RMS software to ODCMs specifications.
RMS will be integrated with the Collection Litigation Automated Support System at the
Justice Data Center in Rockville, Md.
During the first and second phases of the contract, the server will be an IBM AS/400
Model 600 with 500M of RAM and 20G of storage.
A mirror server will be an IBM AS/400 Model 620 with 1G of RAM and 100G of storage. In
the third phase of the contract, CACI will upgrade the server to provide 1.5G of RAM and
100G of storage.
To mirror the data, Justice will use three products from Vision Solutions Inc. of
Irvine, Calif.: Vision OMS/400 Gold Object Mirroring System, which synchronizes the two
databases; Vision ODS/400 Object Distribution System, which synchronizes the files stored
on the databases; and Vision SAM/400 System Availability Monitor, which monitors the main
server and switches to the backup server when problems arise.
Users in U.S. attorneys offices will connect to the system from their desktop
computers through the Justice Consolidated Network.
JCON is being upgraded to a TCP/IP network.
Users in offices not directly connected to the consolidated network will dial up with
28.8-Kpbs modems.
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