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Monday, May 21, 2007

Ind. Courts - Another in a series of infrequent updates on the Indiana Court's case management system

This ILB entry from May 9th on the status of the Indiana Court's long-in-getting-off-the-ground case management system pointed out that "since the announcement of a vendor Nov. 6, 2006, there has in fact been no news - the official site has not been updated." There have been, however, two different stories in the Bloomington Herald-Times this spring indicating that something was about in Monroe County.

Now, however, there is some news, in the form of an e-mail sent Friday May 18 to all Indiana Courts and Clerks, sent on behalf of Chief Justice Randall Shepard & Justice Frank Sullivan, Jr. It reads:

We are pleased to report a small but very positive step in JTAC's quest to provide all Indiana courts and clerks with a statewide 21st Century case management system (CMS): We have successfully tested a small portion of the new system live in an Indiana court house!

We last wrote to update you when, after an intensive competitive procurement process, we selected Tyler Technologies, Inc. as the new vendor to provide us with a statewide 21st Century CMS. Part of the reason for choosing Tyler was that the company had developed and installed a statewide 21st Century CMS for Minnesota called "Odyssey Case Manager."

Our task now is to see what changes need to be made to Odyssey so that it meets the needs and requirements of Indiana law and practice. The best way to do this, JTAC and Tyler have concluded, is to use several Indiana courts as "proof-of-concept" (POC) laboratories where Indiana court and clerk staff can test Odyssey - and the changes Tyler makes to it at our request - as we go along. Using POC Labs has at least two benefits: JTAC will immediately learn how well the changes being made to Odyssey are meeting our needs and Tyler will immediately learn how well Odyssey is accommodating local court and clerk business processes.

The clerk, judges, and staff in Monroe County and the Washington Township (Marion County) Small Claims Court have generously volunteered to be POC Labs.

Tyler has now conducted interviews with many future users on local courts' and clerks' business processes and has programmed Odyssey with many Indiana-specific codes. On Tuesday, May 15, the civil case functionality of Odyssey as so modified was tested in real-time in the POC Lab in Bloomington. Tyler and JTAC officials joined Monroe County clerk and court staff to test the application and analyze the results. Although much work remains, everyone was quite pleased that the system worked as expected at this stage of development. Additional tests in the POC Labs will be conducted in the coming months in both Monroe County and Marion County.

Our current contract with Tyler requires a detailed assessment of the functions of Odyssey and the functions required by the Indiana Supreme Court. We are continuing contract negotiations for subsequent phases of the contract and specific statement of work requirements.

We'd be pleased to have you visit a POC lab, or provide any observations or suggestions you may have. Please contact Mary L. DePrez, Director and Counsel for Trial Court Technology, at mdeprez@jtac.in.gov. [emphasis added]

Readers may recall the initial ILB entry on the case management project, from March 8, 2005. It quoted from a front-page Indianapolis Star story by Staci Hupp headlined "Plan to link 400 courts hits a wall: Costly software glitch halts effort to computerize records statewide." A quote from that Star story:
The problem: Software designed by contractor Computer Associates International Inc. -- already paid more than $6 million by the state -- doesn't work. No one knew it would fail until 21/2 years into the project, said members of the Indiana Supreme Court's Judicial Technology and Automation Committee, which is in charge of the project.

"We very much hoped that by this point in time we would have at least an initial version of the case management system up and running," said Indiana Supreme Court Justice Frank Sullivan, who heads the committee. "It is disappointing that we do not. We're working very hard to try to get there."

The breakdown surfaced in December, as Marion County officials tested a piece of software designed for Indiana civil courts. They found it lacked a critical element -- the ability to keep tabs on court fines and costs. * * *

For its Indiana contract, Computer Associates used a software package the company had developed for five criminal courts in Florida. Programmers tried to adapt it to Indiana's web of courts, many of which follow different business practices. "It was difficult for them to get their arms around the way business is done in Indiana," said Court of Appeals Judge Paul Mathias, a member of the Supreme Court automation committee, which also oversees other technology projects.

A more cautious approach appears to be course selected for this second go-around.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 21, 2007 06:46 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts