He’s in charge of propelling “due process” into the digital era at the San Francisco District Attorney's office. That means changing old ways of doing things into new, agile processes. It means moving away from paper records and into a world of information that can be securely accessed online from outside the office and courtrooms.
“We're going through a huge transformation here in the DA's office,” said Brown, CIO for the office of the San Francisco District Attorney (SFDA) in a video captured in 2020, when SFDA was moving to a new office space in the Potrero Hill District.
Brown explains how he manages the complexities of these data technologies and helps SFDA’s legal experts do more with less.
“I learn something new every day, and what we do here is, in some cases, a matter of life and death.”
Brown explains how he’s helping the city’s legal team move into the future, where smartphones, internet services and other digital technologies are the tools of the day. He’s pushing hard to modernize the SFDA’s IT – not only to boost productivity and bring efficiencies but to fight for justice.
“Criminals are becoming more tech-savvy,” Brown said. “We need to be more tech-savvy in order to capture information so that we can, without reasonable doubt, prove that the defendant is the person that we're actually seeking justice.”
“The world of technology and law has collided in a big way,” said Brown. “We're seeing a huge number of cases that are now involving video evidence or photos that people are taking on the street.”
He said police wearing body cameras, the rise of business and home surveillance video, and the quality of smartphone video being shared on the Internet means the SFDA must manage an influx of digital case material.
“Forensic tools that we have today help us determine where defendants may have been and place them at the scene of a crime,” Brown said.
Video transcript:
Herman Brown: The world of technology and law has collided in a big way. What we do here is, in some cases, a matter of life and death. San Francisco District Attorney's Office is a law firm first that happens to represent the government. We serve at the will of the people. Our primary goal is really to make San Francisco the safest city.
We have 26,000 cases per year, and we try roughly half of those cases. Criminals are becoming more tech savvy, and so we have to become more tech savvy to be able to capture that information so that we can, without reasonable doubt, prove that the defendant is the person that we're actually seeking.
I have a seat at the table with the executive team. So we sit down and we talk about strategy. We talk about direction and understand how IT or technology can actually help meet those goals.
The biggest challenge is how do you balance the budget to be able to implement technology to support the operation from day to day, keeping the lights on, to really being innovative and trying to continue to push that threshold.
We want to implement technology into the new space. We want it to be visible. We want it to be heard. We want it to be seen, meaning that going to conference rooms and having AV equipment mounted on the walls, having wifi throughout the building. We actually have a multipurpose room that we also dub as the DA press room that has a podium and microphone and a camera to be able to record press conferences or trainings or events in that room that we can stream, live to the DA Twitter account or Facebook. It was very important, some of the things that we've improved upon in moving from the old location to the new location.
We're seeing a huge number of cases that are now involving video evidence or photos that people are taking on the street. You're seeing these photos and YouTube videos and Facebook that people are uploading. So we have to manage that influx of data, and how do you manage all of these video sources?
Nutanix helps us address the security aspect of our jobs through encryption at rest, deduplication of data, which are very important for us, because we have to maintain all these digital records. So now being able to consolidate them to only having one actual record or source of truth, and then being able to have that data encrypted at rest is also important so that if there is a breach, then that information becomes useless to anyone who may have unauthorized access.
It's all about teamwork and that the only way that we can be successful from a technology perspective is if the agency is successful. So it really means that we all have to pitch in and work together for a common goal.
Ken Kaplan is Editor in Chief for The Forecast by Nutanix. Find him on Twitter @kenekaplan.
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