Podcast #4: Project Communications with Multiple Stakeholder Groups
Total Run Time: 44:30
 [intro music]

Moderator: Dan Hawkins, SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice 
Information and Statistics

Participant:
Speaker: Cliff Gronauer, Chief Information Officer, Missouri State 
Highway Patrol
SEARCH Narrator: The following is another in a series of recorded audio 
interviews distributed on  lessons learned and best practices from 
projects funded through COPS technology grants. These podcasts are 
presented by SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and 
Statistics through funding from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of 
Community Oriented Policing Services, COPS. Cooperative Agreement # 
2007CKWXK002.  Today's Project is Project Communications with Multiple 
Stakeholder Groups. Our guest today is Cliff Gronauer, Chief Information 
Officer, Missouri State Highway Patrol. Your moderator is Dan Hawkins, 
Public Safety Technology Specialist for SEARCH.

Dan Hawkins:  Missouri has undertaken an extensive project to modernize several of its 
criminal justice systems used by both state and local agencies. Cliff, we'd like to welcome 
you today. Can you tell us a bit about the Missouri criminal justice modernization project 
and share your background with the project?
Cliff Gronauer:  Sure. Well, I'll start with my background first, I guess, because that is 
the easiest. I'm the CIO for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. I've been here about nine 
years now. I have about roughly 30 years in IT doing anything from programming to 
system administration to networking, help desk training. You name it, I've probably been 
there, done it. Might even have a t-shirt for it.
But I've got a staff here of approximately 80 people and we run a full service shop, which 
means we do our own application development, we do our own networking, server issues. 
We have a 24/7 help desk, et cetera.
Most of our current systems have been around since the '70s and are running on a 
mainframe which is housed and managed and run by the Missouri Office of 
Administration which is a separate entity. We essentially act as a customer or client of 
theirs to use that facility.
And the systems, as I mentioned, are fairly old. They still function. They work. But we 
were looking to bring things up into a more modern picture. We're having issues getting 
staff that are knowledgeable in things like COBOL and CICS and JCL.
The computer science programs just aren't turning people out with those skills today. So 
we started looking around a number of years ago. Oh, maybe seven years or so ago, 
looking around to see what was available.
And looked at a variety of places, started talking to various folks in the industry, 
attending various conferences and such and just basically trying to get a feel for whether 
there were viable products out there from vendors that we could implement as essentially 
a COTS, or a commercial off the shelf type of a system.
And after a bit of investigation, we determined that "Yes, there are, in fact, a variety of 
these available." So we started pursuing the process of funding and getting all of those 
issues ironed out, or at least trying to get them ironed out.
Working on RFPs [Request for Proposal] to acquire the products and all those things and 
that took several years. Which, again, should not be a surprise to anyone who has worked 
in a government agency for any length of time.
Most of my previous background has been in private industry, so it's taken me a little 
while to get used to the red tape and a lot of the other issues that are involved in 
government procurements and things, but we finally got over those hurdles.
We issued our RFPs for all these various products and what's included in this 
modernization project is a replacement for our criminal history system, our message 
switch, our CAD [Computer-assisted Dispatch] or dispatch system, records management 
and mobile. In other words, what is used out in the cars. 
So for all intents and purposes, we're replacing about somewhere around 90-95 percent of 
our applications and infrastructure, all in one fell swoop. It's an exciting project from a lot 
of perspectives because we're getting to do lots of new things.
We're looking at new technology, new applications; new functionality is probably more 
important than anything else. But this is really keeping our staff going. We've got folks 
from a variety of other departments and entities involved in the project. So it's really been 
exciting.
And then, of course, we did have success in getting the funding which was also a major 
hurdle and accomplishment at the same time. Because obviously without the funding, 
these kinds of projects go nowhere.
So, at the moment, we've got all the contracts awarded. All of them are in various stages 
of work, and we're excited about the initial implementations of some of these coming up 
later this fall.
Dan Hawkins:  Now Cliff, that's a huge project. I appreciate how broad it is. Yet you 
have to have a broad array of stakeholders both within the state highway patrol, 
elsewhere in state government, and widely through criminal justice agencies with the 
types of systems you're talking about across the state. Generally, how have you gone 
about planning changes to those services that are relied on by all those people and the 
potential impacts of the changes?
Cliff Gronauer:  Well, it's been kind of a gradual process. As we've gone through the 
various stages of investigating what's available and talking to vendors and looking at 
other potential users of the systems. What we've done is tried to actually get some of 
them involved. For example, it was as long as maybe five or six years ago, we brought a 
variety of vendors in just to do some demos of the various component pieces. For 
example, we had a CAD vendor come in. We had an RMS [Records Management 
System] vendor come in.
We had more than one of each, but the whole idea there was just to give everybody here 
and some of the other stakeholders a flavor for what's available. Nobody had ever seen 
any of these other systems in action; they had no concept of what they were like. And so 
the thought of "Oh, we can take this system that we've been using for the last 30 years 
and replace it with something off the shelf? No, that's not going to happen. There's 
nothing out there." And then, when we brought the vendors in and everybody who was 
in the meeting got up later and went "Wow! I had no idea."
That's a good feeling to know that at least the initial impressions were positive, and that 
maybe the battle for change wouldn't be quite as dramatic after all. Anybody that's been 
through significant projects like these knows that sometimes the biggest battle that you 
have for acceptance is overcoming the fear of change.
And it's not the fact that the system won't do what it needs to do, or that the 
functionality isn't there, it's just that the folks that are impacted are very resistant to 
learning something new or changing the way they do things.
So, that was a very positive aspect from our perspective that people were looking at it and 
thinking "Wow! We could actually improve the way we do things with some of these 
systems,“ so that was great.
The other thing that we're trying to do is getting a lot of people involved. The other thing 
that we're trying to do is getting a lot of people involved. The criminal history system and 
the message switch, for example. Because the highway patrol is the named repository for 
all criminal history data in the state of Missouri, any law enforcement agency or criminal 
justice agency for that matter that has a need for that kind of data has to come to us.
So we have about 10,000 users state-wide that access the systems that we run. A lot of 
those are sheriffs, police departments, et cetera, so we've been working with the Missouri 
Police Chief's association and the Missouri Sheriff's Association to get some of their folks 
involved and that we've seen what's going on.
Getting them to participate in a variety of presentations, meetings, discussions, design 
sessions, et cetera, just so they can see "here's what's coming down the road, " and so they 
can help to communicate that information out to their membership.
We're providing them with written information, other documentation to help get the word 
out as well. We're also working with other state agencies such as capital police, the water 
patrol, conservation -- you know, the park rangers and stuff.
So we're trying to get everybody onboard here, so that when this stuff starts to happen 
it's not a surprise. Nobody's going to be able to sit back and say legitimately, "We didn't 
know anything about it. What are you talking about?"
We're definitely making every effort we can to disseminate as much of this information as 
possible to as many interested or involved folks as possible.
Dan Hawkins:  Well, you're pretty much in the implementation phase, almost exclusively 
and there's some risk always in projects this size with too much information. Have you 
made any particular decisions about what information's important to share with 
stakeholders and different stakeholder groups at different points in the project?
Cliff Gronauer:  What we've been trying to do is, if nothing else, give a status update 
periodically to let everyone know where we are and what's going on with the project. 
Along with that, trying to pass along at least some rough information about time lines. As 
far as the functionality goes, there really shouldn't be a tremendous difference in the 
functionality that's offered with the new systems. The way you go about processing 
certain transactions may be slightly different, but let's face it, criminal history information 
is criminal history information and there's only so many ways you can slice and dice and 
present it.
It's essentially looking at the back end piece and how it's stored and how it's retrieved. It 
will give a lot more flexibility in things like inquiries and be able to relate more events, 
people, places and things to one another than the current systems do but the functionality 
is not a whole lot different.
So as we're communicating with all our customers. We're trying to present them with 
current status updates, approximate timelines for what's coming down the road. For 
example, we're looking at perhaps implementing our dispatch system in November of this 
year.
So we're passing that information along so that folks can put it on their calendar, know 
that they can expect things to be happening somewhere around that timeframe. And then, 
as we get to the next major step in each project, we pass that information along to those 
interested or involved users so that they know what's going on.
We're trying not to get too far down in the weeds with most of the information because 
the vast majority of folks aren't interested or even would maybe understand most of that. 
So trying to provide the appropriate level of detail to the right folks.
Dan Hawkins:  Have you used existing communications vehicles like newsletters or 
created new ones to accomplish this?
Cliff Gronauer:  We've actually tried to approach this from a variety of angles. We do 
have an existing newsletter that we've been using. It's a quarterly publication from the 
highway patrol and it goes out to all the criminal justice community throughout the state. 
So we've been putting articles out there periodically about "Here's the project. Here's 
what's going on in each of the various areas. Here's what you can expect in the next 
quarter or so."
We also have been sending out emails depending on the interest level and the level of 
detail that folks are interested. Because there are some people that are very interested into 
the inner workings of how all these things function.  So they want a little more detail. We 
provide that to them separately so that we're not cluttering everyone with all of the detail. 
We've been sending our letters. Basically, a more formal approach to all of the law 
enforcement agencies to let them know that we have changes coming down the road, and 
be prepared, and that we will be working very diligently to make sure that all of the stuff 
goes out without a hiccup.
We also have conferences that are held in various parts of the state. For example, there's a 
dispatchers' conference held once or twice a year. A variety of other industry 
organizations like APCO, and NENA, and such that are involved with law enforcement 
or dispatching.
We've set up a booth or a table at those events and pass out information. We've had folks 
do presentations at those shows so we're getting the information out to more people, 
providing handouts and things along those lines. So we've been trying to approach this 
from a variety of angles to try to get some maximum exposure so that everybody knows 
what's going on and we get the information out.
Dan Hawkins:  Well, from our past conversations, I understand that in addition to your 
extensive state responsibilities, you also chair a local 911 board. That's got to be a pretty 
rare combination of responsibilities around the country. Has that affected your approach 
to project communications at all?
Cliff Gronauer:  It has to a certain degree. Probably more than anything, it's just given 
me more work to do. But in the last three years, the county 911 board that I chair, we also 
purchased property, built a new dispatch facility, put in new towers and repeaters to reach 
across the county, replaced the radio system and all of that in my spare time kind of 
thing. So it's been an interesting volunteer job, but it's also given a different perspective. 
Because, as we start going through this project here at the patrol, one of the things that 
can very easily get lost in the shuffle is what impact will all of this have on the local law 
enforcement agency. We're definitely focused on what this will do for the patrol and for 
the state because that's basically the intent of the system replacements and upgrades. 
Though by the same token, it will have an impact on all the locals as well, and we want to 
make sure and address that.
Having my involvement in that 911 Board has been good because I can go back to my 
dispatch staff, my 911 director for the county and say we're talking about doing X, Y, or 
Z, what do you think? How will that impact what you do every day? Would that be 
better, worse, or are you indifferent? So I can get a pretty honest assessment and get 
good feedback from them. That's kind of a direct line back to what I would consider a 
fairly typical county environment or even a 911 center environment. It has been good 
from that perspective.
Every once in a while somebody will look at me and say, well, who are you working for? 
And I say the taxpayers! That's who I'm working for. [laughs] And it doesn't matter 
where they are. If they're city, county, local, state, that's who we're all working for and 
that's who we should be concerned with. All of this stuff ties together eventually and 
that's one of the other big goals, to have an interoperability. Everybody's looking toward 
interoperability and I think this will be a big outcome of this project. We'll improve that 
tremendously throughout the state.
Dan Hawkins:  You have a good point about the taxpayers, most certainly on that. 
Talking a little bit more about interoperability, from our prior discussions, I understand 
that you've led off the modernization project generally first by changing the user 
applications for the state highway patrol. That including the computer aided dispatch, 
records management, and mobile computer systems. Other state user and local agencies 
will have access to your state contract pricing for those products and many of them will 
take advantage of that, upgrading their user capabilities. Presumably, adopting these 
products will also help and prepare for the future changes that you make to the back end 
state systems.
How have you communicated upcoming changes in the user applications themselves to 
agencies that you support directly and use those back end systems?
Cliff Gronauer:  Well, the front end systems, the CAD, the mobile, and the records 
management, those are available to any other agency that wants to buy off the contract. 
There are certain limits and restrictions I guess would be a good way to put it. For 
example, the records management system is pretty pricey if you're going to do your own 
implementation. So it's probably limited to the larger municipalities or the larger 
population areas like St. Louis or a Kansas City or Springfield. If they want to do their 
own local implementation. I think right now Springfield has already contracted to do a 
RMS implementation. The other thing that we've done is negotiate and look at vendors 
when we did the RFP so that, for example, once we get our RMS up and running, we 
have the capability of essentially becoming a service provider for smaller agencies.
So if a rural county, for example, wanted to, they could contract then with us and we 
would be their RMS provider. All the software, the servers, everything that's involved 
with that would be in our shop and they would just connect in and do their business. The 
software is set up in such a way so that all of their information is kept separate from 
everyone else.
The nice part, though, comes in that operability scenario where when you want to do 
statewide reporting, for example, or NIBORS or N-Dex or any of those kinds of systems 
that look for some common thread, all the data is in the same format. It's in the same 
repository. You can collectively sweep through it and roll up the numbers pretty easily. So 
a lot of good could come out of that.
The CAD system, very similar. We can manage and run the CAD environment here, the 
dispatch environment here. Each of the individual municipalities or whoever wants to 
contract with us, then they could just run their application from our boxes.
It's a very different approach from what's currently being done where most small entities 
have set up their own servers and do that. We're hoping that, in the long run, this will 
prove to be a much more economical approach to those folks. They'll have to pay a certain 
license fee to use the software but they won't have to provide their own servers, won't 
have to spend time doing administrative work like updating, patching software, making 
sure that all their antivirus are up to date and all of that stuff.
All of that'd be handled here. We'd provide that as a service to the local entities. We're 
hoping that the CAD, the RMS, and the mobile will help provide some other advantages 
to the smaller agencies out throughout the state. We're providing a lot of that information 
in these newsletters. We've already hopefully made everyone aware that this is available.
Obviously, from a service provider perspective, we have to get our implementation up and 
running first before we can provide that kind of a service to anybody else. So it'll be a 
little while before that's available.
The other thing that... For example, the records management system. The city of 
Springfield decided to do their own implementation so they're working on that project 
right now. They purchased off of our contract. We try to make it a cooperative venture so 
that it wasn't just an exclusive highway patrol contract. We try to put a little flexibility in 
there that local entities could take advantage of it. Hopefully, that'll come to pass here in 
the next year or two.
Dan Hawkins:  Have you addressed user agency administrators separately or any 
differently on the impacts and potential costs of upcoming technology changes?
Cliff Gronauer:  We have provided them all information about what the cost will be for 
the software licensing. So they know what's involved there. Until we actually get things 
up and running ourselves, we don't really know what other impacts there will be as far as 
technology changes. What other changes it might entail or require as far as do you have to 
have a certain level of active directory running, for example? Do you have to have a 
certain flavor of Windows to access this? We don't know all of the ins and outs and 
details yet. As those become clearer and anything that is significant, we'll definitely pass 
those along. For example, is it going to require a certain version of Internet Explorer? 
Because a lot of the systems have a web-based component to them. We're trying to make 
sure that whatever technical requirements we have, we'll pass those along as soon as we 
know them. Right now, we haven't gotten anything up to a point yet where we have any 
of those requirements nailed down. But they will be passed along.
Dan Hawkins:  Very good. A lot of work and technology goes into, say, backend 
systems like message switches and criminal history systems that supply end user systems 
like CAD and RMS. Have you spent much time so far communicating your anticipated 
fundamental, underlying changes to end users?
Cliff Gronauer:  The criminal history system in particular, the end users really don't have 
direct access to it. They do get output from it obviously because, whenever they do an 
inquiry, it searches through the criminal history and provides output. Probably the biggest 
change in that system from a user perspective will be things like doing background 
checks. What we're anticipating with the new system is that we'll have a web portal 
available for not only other law enforcements agencies but the general public to be able to 
request background checks and actually get back rap sheets and whatever other kind of 
information they need directly through the web without having users here in our criminal 
records section doing those checks, printing out the information, emailing to people and 
all that sort of thing. That’ll probably be the biggest change that the users will notice, the 
self-service option, which we've been getting lots and lots of requests for over the years. 
The message switch, however, now that's something that everybody throughout the state, 
all the criminal justice agencies touch.
In Missouri, our base system is called MULES. It stands for Missouri Uniform Law 
Enforcement System. That's where all the inquiries are done on license checks, people 
checks, things like that. The new system will have a much different interface because 
right now we're running off of that mainframe environment. It's still essentially a green 
screen mainframe application.
The new one will be a Windows GUI web-based approach. So it's going to be a much 
different appearance, but the functionality will still be the same. As a matter of fact, 
they're looking at the distinct possibility that, from a user perspective, they'll still be able 
to do virtually all of their transactions exactly the way they do them today. So the 
downtime, training time, adjustment time, all those kinds of things should be very 
minimal for the folks.
Particularly the ones that are accustomed to doing the command line type queries. They 
should be able to just pop right into this and move on without missing a beat. For those 
that are new, everybody has turnover in their dispatch area. For the new dispatchers, 
they'll be able to take advantage of the GUI-type interface which allows you to skip from 
field to field, it has drop-downs, boxes, and pick lists and things like that.
So they'll be able to actually be pretty functional from day one. Then, as they learn more 
about how the system works, they'll be able to zip right in to doing the command line 
type entries sooner which usually improves their performance, makes it quicker to do the 
entries and queries and things like that. Those two base systems are probably the keys to 
the success of the whole thing because they're the repositories for all the data that all the 
rest of them use.
There's going to be quite a lot of work involved in getting all of the data from the existing 
systems converted, processed, and loaded into the new environment. That's probably 
going to be one of the most time consuming tasks that we have going down here in the 
next year or two is getting all of that old data. 30 plus years of history data on a 
mainframe converted to the new form, plugged in and ready to go.
Dan Hawkins:   I know from my own experience in moving from mainframe platforms to 
other clan server and multi-tier systems that there are some changes in cost. Maybe not 
necessarily cost savings but that they move from one location or another or such. How 
have you been communicating those changes in cost to the broad array of stakeholders 
you have from agency administrators to legislators to whomever?
Cliff Gronauer:  What we've been doing is focusing more on the functional perspective. 
We're not necessarily engaged in this project on a cost-saving basis. It's more of a survival 
and functional basis. We look at these five big systems that we're getting ready to roll and 
the functionality that exists in those far surpasses what we currently have with our older 
systems. The ones that we've been using for the last 30 plus years have been quite 
successful. They're very good. They're accurate. They're fast. They're just very solid 
production systems. But the needs and the functionality of today's officer on the road is a 
little different than what it was 30 plus years ago. I almost liken it to looking at Andy 
Griffith versus RoboCop, it's a very different perspective. 
.The tools are different. Functionality is different. Being able to look up an individual and 
be able to tell that, 25 minutes ago, 30 miles down the road, he was pulled over and given 
a warning by an officer in a different county, in a different jurisdiction.  That's something 
that we don't have today and I don't know that there are too many other places around 
that do. This system has the potential to be able to handle something like that, being able 
to do an inquiry on an arrested individual and finding all of the vehicles that person is 
associated with, all of the locations that person is associated with, all of the other people 
that that person is associated with, all in one inquiry.
Today we can't come anywhere close to that but that's the kind of functionality that we'll 
be able to have once we get these new systems up and running. And that's going to be a 
really big improvement for our investigative officers, for our undercover agents, et cetera. 
They don't have that kind of capability. So we're hoping to make their lives a lot easier 
and hopefully safer by being able to tap into a lot of this information.
So we're not really looking at a cost saving measure here per se. We're looking at it 
primarily as an updated functionality and getting into an environment that's supportable. I 
mentioned earlier that trying to find people that have mainframe COBOL, CICS, JCS 
type skills is like pulling hen's teeth. It's just not there.
So this will put us in a much more modern environment that we can find people to 
support it, that the skills are readily available. We won't have to sorry so much about if 
something breaks at two in the morning on a Saturday, that we will be able to find 
somebody that can help us out.
Dan Hawkins:  So is it fair to say then, Cliff, that your communications, the project 
communications, have been able to focus on the advanced functionality, advanced 
features you'll bring essentially at the same cost or without having to change that cost 
equation for people?
Cliff Gronauer:  That's correct. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I mentioned is 
that to do this entire project we did not go through the budget process to ask for any 
more money. That's, I think, how well we've planned and budgeted for this. We went 
after a couple different grant sources. We were able to get some grant funding in place. 
And that grant funding is going to help us get over the initial cost hurdle before we start 
to see any sort of revenue stream coming back. For example, we pay a certain amount of 
money every year to the Office of Administration for mainframe computer access. Once 
we get off of that mainframe, that money that we're currently spending there will become 
available then to pay for the ongoing maintenance and upkeep of the new systems.
But for the implementation time here this first year, year and a half, we obviously needed 
some seed money to get us over that hump. And that's where the grant funding comes in. 
It's going to essentially pay the bills for the new systems up to a point until we can start 
using our own core budget to start picking up tabs. So it's really been a nice project in that 
regard that we did not have to go forward and request additional funding from the 
legislature to do the project. It's essentially funding itself.
Dan Hawkins:  Very good. Well in closing, Cliff, what are your takeaway messages for 
the success of others in communicating during their projects, similar sort of projects?
Cliff Gronauer:  I think the key is to get people involved early. As I mentioned before, 
even five, six years ago when we were just starting to look around and see what's out 
there, talking to other people in similar positions, talking to people in the other agencies, 
talking to people in the municipalities, in the law enforcement agencies, the courts. We 
have a relationship here with Department of Revenue because they're the issuer of all the 
drivers’ licenses and car licenses and things, talking with all of those folks to see what are 
they doing. If we were to go down this road, what kind of an impact would it have on 
you and your systems? I think the real key is just getting as many people involved as early 
as possible. We've probably all had those experiences where you get a phone call one day 
and it's, "Surprise! Guess what we're doing?" And it's like, did this just fall out of the 
sky? No, it didn't. They've been working on it for a long time and just failed to 
communicate.
You know how that makes you feel so why would you want to do that to somebody 
else? That's kind of the mentality that I've tried to take in managing the project is keeping 
people up to date, let them know what's going on so that there are no surprises. Or at least 
if there are surprises it's because somebody wasn't paying attention, [laughing] and that's 
they're fault, not mine.
So we've been trying to get as much information to as many people as possible, and in as 
timely a basis as we can, and in as many different forms as we can. We have information 
up on our website of people to look at. It's basically just some project summaries and 
things like that. We have all of the vendors involved simultaneously.
We have periodic conference calls where we have all the stakeholders here at the patrol, 
some external stakeholders and all five of the vendors, all on the same conference call. So 
everybody hears the same story and there should be no confusion.
Obviously we're not done yet. We still have a ways to go. But it is, in spite of all of our 
best planning and intentions, still an everyday process to make sure that everybody stays 
on top of things. There's no rest on this one until it's done. And even our own internal 
staff here, we have days when we're challenged to keep just our own staff informed 
about the details of what's going on, much less the overall picture to the external 
stakeholders.
It's not an easy job by any stretch and it's not something that's going to take care of itself. 
You have to be actively involved and engaged to make sure that people stay up to date. 
So, we try. We try our best. I'm sure that as in most things we will find some happy 
customers and we'll find some unhappy customers. But we do the best we can.
Dan Hawkins:  Sounds like good advice. We want to thank you, Cliff, for taking your 
time, sharing your time with us to do this podcast. I appreciate you being here with us.
Cliff Gronauer:  Well thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. 
SEARCH narrator:  This project was supported by a cooperative 
agreement number 2007-CK-WX-K002 by the U.S. Department of 
Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Points 
of view or opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the 
guest and moderators and do not necessarily represent the 
official positions or policies of the U.S. Department of 
Justice. 

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