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Friday, October 26, 2007

Ind. Courts - State court plan to link county courts by 2015 may not permit interfaces by long-existing private company that already links more than 40 counties

Over the years, the ILB has posted several entries mentioning Doxpop, an Indiana company with which many ILB readers are familiar, that has put the court records of many Indiana counties online. The most recent, from July 10th, indicates that currently Doxpop has "about 40 counties and 125 courts on-line."

Here is the Doxpop Court Cases introductory page. it notes:

Doxpop provides access to over 7,066,093 current and historical cases from 133 courts in 42 Indiana counties in the Doxpop Network. During the average working day a new case is added every twenty seconds.

You can use our court case search features to find basic information about open cases, or you can subscribe to become a registered user and access all available information about current and historical cases.

The historical case information extends from three years to twenty years back depending on the jurisdiction. Most courts have at least ten years of historical case information available though Doxpop.

The court case information provided through the Doxpop Services is not the official public record. Our mission is to provide an accurate and current copy of the official record by maintaining a mirrored copy that is updated regularly.

Here is information from a posting the ILB published on March 10, 2005 (Note that it appears the number of counties Doxpop links has more than doubled since 2005.):
If you are a lawyer in one of these twenty Indiana counties -- Bartholomew, Brown, Clinton, Daviess, Delaware, Elkhart, Howard, Jay, Johnson, Marshall, Miami, Monroe, Montgomery, Putnam, Randolph, Spencer, Sullivan, Sullivan, Vigo, Wabash, and Wayne -- you probably already are aware that for $39/month you can have online access to not only current case tracking information from your county's courts, but to the same information in the other nineteen listed counties. In other words, all these counties' courts are computerized and linked.

This service is provided by an Indiana business, Doxpop, LLC. According to its literature, Doxpop provides access to over 3,111,733 current and historical cases from 86 Indiana courts in the Doxpop Network (i.e. the 20 counties). During the average working day a new case is added every twenty seconds.

What exactly does Doxpop do? As explained in the same post:
Ninety of Indiana's ninety-two have counties currently have computerized case-management systems (CMS). A number of different vendors provide these services to various of the counties, including CSI Computer System, Inc., providers of judicial tracking software, and Maximus, court and justice solutions. Doxpop works on top of a county's case management system. * * *

What Doxpop does, in the most basic terms, is at 10-minute intervals take the information from these court-based case tracking systems and make it accessible, via protected internet access, to its registered users, wherever they may be.

Here is Doxpop's "testimonial page", which gives an indication of how it is used. Note several commenters from Monroe County.

If this sounds a lot like the Indiana State Court's Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC) plan to link all the courts in the State, it is, at least in part. As the ILB understands it, the JTAC plan is to install their case management systems (CMS) in county courts, and link them. It is the linking part that DoxPop already appears to have perfected, having linked as of now nearly half the counties, no matter what kind of CMS they use.

This ILB entry from Sept. 30th gives a good overview of the State Court's project. The JTAC timetable for installing its CMS in counties extends to 2015. According to an Indianapolis Star quote in the post:

The computerized court system could expand across the state over six years, beginning in 2009, if later pilot counties are successful. Counties won't be forced to make the switch.
In other words, counties will be able to continue to use their own CMSs. This has been, and continues to be, a matter of much concern in some of the counties.

This seems to leave two questions unanswered, however. (1) If a county, such as Marion County, does not switch to the JTAC case management system (CMS) for its own court records, will the county be included in the state web of linked courts? (2) If a county does switch over to the JTAC CMS, can it still be a part of the DoxPop Network?

The answer to the latter question, at least for now, appears to be "No", according to this memo sent out by DoxPop yesterday to all its users:

The Courts of Monroe County are planning changes that will affect your ability to access up-to-date Monroe County case information via the Doxpop system after December 17, 2007.

The Monroe Courts are planning to discontinue use of their current Case Management System (CMS) as of December 17th in order to pilot the use of a CMS provided by the State Court's Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC). The JTAC CMS is capable of sending information to other systems, including the Doxpop system, but some configuration on the part of JTAC is required to enable this data interface feature.

On January 29, 2007, Doxpop submitted its first written request for a meeting with JTAC to begin work on an interface between the two systems. This meeting was deferred several times by JTAC and we had our first meeting on October 11. At that meeting we learned from JTAC that it had a clear directive to go live in Monroe County on December 17, and that it could not accommodate our request to develop an interface without specific authorization to do so. With the help of Judge Kenneth Todd, Monroe County, we met with representatives of the Division and JTAC via conference call on October 24, yesterday. In that meeting we were told that the existing authorization for us to publish Monroe County Court data under Trial Rule 77(k) was inadequate, and that we must submit a new application under Administrative Rule 9 in order to authorize JTAC to consider our request for an interface.

Today, Doxpop has submitted to the Division of State Court Administration a formal request to authorize Doxpop as a recipient of information from the JTAC system. The Division has indicated its intention to bring this matter before the Indiana Supreme Court. If the request is approved, it will take some time to implement the interface between the two systems. Since both the JTAC and Doxpop systems are designed to support such interfaces, we are hopeful that this can be completed without significant delay.

We are working hard to prevent any interruption in up-to-date service. If we have not secured approval and established an interface with the JTAC system by December 17, Doxpop will continue to provide access to historical cases, but will no longer be able to keep you informed of new cases or events as they develop after that date. The change in Monroe County will not affect your access to cases in the 42 other counties that work with Doxpop.

We will keep you informed as we learn more and as this date approaches. In the meantime, we will continue to work with the Monroe Courts, JTAC and the Division to secure approval and establish a data interface.

With no working solution yet available to us, we believe it our obligation to keep you, our customers, and the general public informed of the situation so that you may prepare for a possible disruption of your access to Monroe County Court data. However, we remain hopeful that it is possible to preserve the public access to court records we have provided for the last five years on behalf on Monroe County.

Thank you for using Doxpop.

Ray Ontko, President
866-369-7671

P.S. If you have questions regarding access to ongoing matters before the Monroe County Courts, you may call the office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court at 812-349-2600 or the Circuit Court directly at 812-349-2615. If you are an attorney in Monroe County, Judge Kenneth Todd has requested that you convey your thoughts on this matter to the Monroe County Bar President.

P.P.S. A copy of this letter is available online at http://www.doxpop.com/prod/MonroeCounty20071025.pdf

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 26, 2007 06:00 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts