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Friday, December 07, 2007

Ind. Courts - Further update on: "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"

Today the Indiana Courts' Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC) has posted a progress report, announcing that the "Statewide system [is] to launch in Monroe County and Washington Township, Marion County." By now of course this is not news, there have been reports in the Bloomington paper and in the Indianapolis Star. See this Sept. 30, 2007, ILB entry, headed "Two courts set to test records system," which begins:

The ILB has a long list of entries, beginning with this one on March 8, 2005, on the Indiana Supreme Court's efforts to implement a state-wide case management system.
The JTAC announcement today says nothing about the issue the ILB has addressed in several recent entries, under the heading "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," posted Oct. 26th and Dec. 3rd. However, the announcement links to a "Project Overview - Case Management System: Project Overview & Benefits," which states:
Most Indiana courts maintain their dockets using a computer program called a “case management system” or “CMS.” But there are at least four major problems with existing case management systems:
  • Lack of consistency: existing CMS products differ from court to court;
  • Outdated technology;
  • Inability to manage information: while the existing CMS products store information, many do not manage it—for example, they do not automatically send out notices, set hearing schedules, or create reports.
  • Current CMS products exist only for the courts: they are not connected to law enforcement agencies; state agencies like the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV); courts in other counties (or cities, towns, and townships); lawyers or the public.
Given the issues JTAC has stated it has with Indiana county court's existing CMS systems, reported assurances that "Counties won't be forced to make the switch" may appear to be problematic. The question of whether counties will be able to continue to use their own CMSs, or will be forced to scrap what they are using and switch over, has been, and continues to be, a matter of much concern in some of the counties.

The answers to two questions raised in this Oct. 26th ILB entry appear equally problematic:(1) If a county, such as Marion County, does not switch to the JTAC case management system (CMS) for its own court records, but instead continues using its own system, will the county be included in the state web of linked courts? (2) If a county, such as Monroe, does switch over to the JTAC CMS, can it still be a part of the DoxPop Network?As reported at the end of this Dec. 3rd ILB entry, the answer to the second question appears to be a clear "no."

In this entry Tuesday, Dec. 4th, the ILB noted that another Indiana blogger, Richmond attorney E. Thomas Kemp, had also posted an entry on the Bloomington situation. As noted in this ILB entry from March 10, 2005, "Kemp does some legal work for Doxpop and is also a user of the service, so he knows whereof he speaks."

Kemp's Dec. 4th post resulted in a long reader comment from "Kevin," who turns out to be Kevin Cook, the president of CSI, a company which he reports has installed CMS systems in 48 Indiana counties.

Recall that the "CMS" is the case management system the court's use, while separate company, Dox-Pop, has a system that accesses and links the output of the various courts' CMSs. Cook writes that "At no charge to the county, CSI supplies Doxpop its information from those counties wishing to post their public case information to the Doxpop system every ten minutes."

The problem in Monroe County is that the new JTAC system will not allow Dox-Pop to link to it, so that users who have been relying on Dox-Pop for years to obtain information from Monroe County are now out of luck. JTAC has not addressed this issue or its decision in anything the ILB has seen.

As the JTAC plan is to install its CMS into local courts over a period of perhaps 8 years, it could be that the Dox-Pop system will go off line, one court at a time, with little or nothing replacing the existing connectively for some period of time.

Attorney Kemp had another related post yesterday, access it here. He references yet another blog which has now picked up the issue, Pin the Tail, a Bloomington-based blog ("Sophia Travis’ partisan take on local politics"), which posted this entry on Nov. 26th, which was simply a press release from the Monroe County Circuit Court, announcing "Justice Sullivan to brief Monroe County on Implementation of Court Management System."

The post resulted in 16 responses, including a number worth reading.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 7, 2007 01:58 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts