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Sunday, September 24, 2006

Ind. Courts - Vanderburgh County seeks to put court records online at no cost to public

Kate Braser reports today in the Evansville Courier& Press:

Court officials are hopeful county residents soon will be able to do their court bookkeeping from home.

For years, Vanderburgh Superior Court Judge J. Douglas Knight has helped lead an effort to make court records available online.

Now, Knight said, the time - and possibly the price - finally might be right.

"Yes, there is still hope," Knight said. "In the past, we tried hard to do this, but when we learned the costs, we backed away."

On Oct. 18, court officials will talk with Richmond, Ind.-based Doxpop, a company already providing online records systems for 34 Indiana counties, including Spencer, Warrick, Daviess and Perry.

"And we expect to add more by the end of this year," said Rich Sinex, business development manager for Doxpop. He said Pike County is "just inches away" from launching the system, too.

But Sinex said Vanderburgh County's proposed plans for the system so far are unusual.

"Other counties have a very limited amount of information available to unregistered users,"

Sinex said. "That's where the proposal we are now discussing with Vanderburgh County is somewhat unique."

Currently, unregistered visitors to www.doxpop.com can search for cases by name or number, but can access only basic information about a case.

Sinex said Vanderburgh County officials want to make fuller records available online at no cost to the public.

"So we need to figure out how we can do that," he said, explaining Doxpop does not charge county governments for services.

The system is fully funded by registered users who pay fees for special features. One feature allows a case to be bookmarked, then sends an alert when there are updates.

Previously, of making records available on the Internet took a back seat in favor of more pressing changes, said Vanderburgh County Clerk Susan Kirk.

Kirk said putting records on the Internet is "something we've talked about since I first took office."

She said new restrictions on which court documents can be public was the first wrench in the plan to put records online.

"Then, we'd start discussing again," she said, ticking off a list of speed bumps. "There were just always more pressing issues."

She admitted accessing public records entails long delays.

A court employee in Room 219 spends most of her days explaining to the public how to use the county's slow Courtview software system.

It is wedged between a wall and a copy machine. There are only three public-access computers in the room. Four others are in a roped-off area closed to the public, accessible only to abstractors and attorneys. Most days, a line spills into the hallway to use the computers.

"Hopefully this new system, if it happens, would save time for those investigating cases and the general public," Kirk said.

"I just hope it's easier for everyone."

I've emphasized "ticking off a list of speed bumps" to making the court records available online in the above story as a lead-in to this valuable ILB entry from a little over a year ago, Oct. 9, 2005, headed "Vanderburgh County plan to put records on line is stalled." Note that this earlier ILB entry also mentioned Doxpop.

Here is the Doxpop Court Cases page.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 24, 2006 08:17 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts