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Saturday, March 03, 2007

Ind. Courts - More on: Supreme Court Chooses New Computer System Vendor

Updating this ILB entry from Nov. 6, 2006, the Bloomington Herald Times reports today, in a story by Marcela Creps:

Indiana’s plan to launch a statewide case management court system will start with help from Monroe County.

The Indiana Supreme Court hopes to link all courts and clerk offices across the state, and it approached Monroe County to serve as the initial test site.

The new system will not only allow courts to operate more efficiently, it will give the court employee the ability to analyze their own work to ensure its effectiveness.

Initial work was completed last week as representatives from Tyler Technologies Inc. worked with court staff.

“We have a team of five people, and we’re spending a day in the life of Monroe County,” said Linda Low, project executive for Tyler Tech.

Low said each county court system has its own processes, so the challenge will be creating a system and then training employees in how to re-engineer their current methods.

According to Indiana Supreme Court Justice Frank Sullivan Jr., more than 1.5 million cases are filed in Indiana courts each year. The project will help everyone from law enforcement officers to private citizens receive more accurate and timely information.

“We must ensure that all the functions required by properly managed cases and to produce court information for others can be met by Tyler’s system,” Sullivan said. “That is why this work in Monroe County is so important.”

Rand Lennox, project manager for the Indiana Supreme Court’s Judicial Technology and Automation Committee, said Monroe County was chosen because it is large enough to see high volume. Marion County’s small-claims court was also chosen.

Now that initial information has been gathered, Tyler will start building a test system, which it hopes to deliver in April. Over the summer, testing and training on the new system will take place, with the final version completed by the end of the year.

“This promises to be a huge step forward, compared to the present state of our technological resources,” said Judge Kenneth Todd, presiding judge of the Monroe Circuit Court Board of Judges.

A check of the Indiana Court's JTAC website shows that currently the most recent information there on this project is from Nov. 6, 2006.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 3, 2007 12:44 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts