March 23, 2016
EDWARDSVILLE — Madison County Circuit Clerk Mark Von Nida and Sheriff John Lakin announce the launch of the digiTICKET E-Citation program in Madison County.
The program allows police officers to scan driver’s licenses, capture vehicle information and issue electronic citations. The program will also notify officers of warrants and stolen vehicles.
The driving force behind the purchase of this program was a time savings for officers and citizens being issued the citation. The average traffic stop using the traditional method of the officer hand-writing a citation takes approximately 15 minutes. Using the e-citation program will reduce the amount of time required to issue a citation to five minutes or less, Von Nida said. The digiTICKET solution also will provide time and cost-saving measures in the Circuit Clerk’s Office by automatically uploading the citation into the clerk’s case management system.
From the perspective of the sheriff’s office, officer and driver safety is the No. 1 advantage of the E-Citation program.
“The less amount of time an officer has to stay out on the side of a busy road issuing a citation, the safer the officer will be,” Lakin said. “Traffic stops can be extremely dangerous and this solution will improve the standards for safety both for the officer and the driver.”
In addition to the safety improvements, the data will automatically be uploaded into the Sheriff’s Office records management system, eliminating the need for Sheriff’s Office personnel to manually enter the citation data.
In 2011, pursuant to Illinois statute, the Circuit Clerk’s Office began collecting a $5 e-citation fee on all traffic tickets that required a court appearance. Three dollars of the $5 fee collected is deposited into a restricted fund for use by the Circuit Clerk’s Office for the purchase, implementation and maintenance of the e-citation program. The remaining $2 is disbursed to the issuing agency for the same purpose.
The $49,483 purchase was approved by the Madison County board in July 2015. According to Von Nida, the purchase included software, training, implementation and 15 printers for sheriff deputies’ vehicles.
The county IT department, along with the Sheriff’s Office and the Circuit Clerk’s office, spent numerous hours in preparation for the start of this program.
“I would like to thank the Circuit Clerk’s office and the County’s IT department personnel that have worked with us to successfully implement this program,” Lakin said.
The Sheriff’s Office is the first agency to use the system in Madison County. The Granite City Police Department will be next to join the digiTICKET program.
“The goal is to have all Madison County police agencies using the e-citation program by the end of next year,” Von Nida said.