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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Indiana Courts - Still more on "New computerized courts case management system went live in Monroe County Monday"

The JTAC pilot projects in Monroe County & Washington Township, Marion County went into operation two months ago, in mid-December, 2007. (See a long list of entries about the Court's computerized case management system project here.)

So, how is it going in Monroe County? The Bloomington Herald Times published a long story ($$) by Bethany Nolan on Feb. 9th. Some quotes to the story, titled "Computerized system proving a challenge":

Monroe County is still working out a few bugs in its new computerized court case management program. The Odyssey system, launched a few months ago, is planned to eventually be used statewide.

“The magnitude of the project is difficult to adequately describe,” Monroe Circuit Judge Kenneth Todd said. “We didn’t totally realize fully how complicated and how large a challenge this was.”

He continued: “But all in all ... when you take into consideration the magnitude of the project and what needed to be done to make it work, things have gone as well as could really be expected. We anticipated these kinds of things and, sure enough, here they are.”

Here’s a look at a few of the issues:

• Initially, the system didn’t properly convert all the data from about 600,000 old cases to the new system. Essentially, the two computer programs didn’t match exactly, so some of the old data didn’t fit into the right spots in the new program. “Ninety percent of it converted great, but there were some issues,” Todd said.

• Court calendars didn’t convert initially, which made for some interesting days for court personnel as people appeared for nonexistent hearings or others failed to appear for a hearing they didn’t know were scheduled.

• Third, there were some hardware and software issues with the system. Since it’s Web-based, if the Internet goes down, it does too. The county and Texas-based program creator Tyler Technology are working on the issue, county technology director Larry Smith said. The strategy has included upping the county’s bandwidth by nearly 10 times its former strength, and there’s a plan to do a traffic study to better understand usage and other details about the network connection.

“I’m highly confident those little glitches we’re seeing will be resolved, and we’ll have a system everybody will find acceptable and that will meet their expectations,” Smith said.

• Fourth, the public access component has generated some grumbling from local attorneys and others who use it regularly.

Bloomington attorney Geoff Grodner said some are concerned about the access, including that a criminal case search for a person by name can turn up dozens of both current and disposed cases in no particular order. Members of the bar are planning a meeting with the board of judges to discuss concerns. [ILB: As the ILB has noted before, subscribers to DoxPop no longer have access to the Monroe County files, because the Court has failed to permit outside access to its CMS, and the public must now depend on the limited information available through the Supreme Court site. See footnote at the end of this entry.] * * *

Eight counties are next in line to hook onto the program: Huntington, Allen, DeKalb, Hamilton, Madison, Harrison, Floyd and Clark counties, the first perhaps as early as June. The state Supreme Court’s Judicial Technology and Automation Committee [JTAC] has said it hopes the program will be used in all 92 counties within five years. * * *

An Odyssey upgrade for Monroe County is planned March 17, which will include streamlining how entries are made so court reporters don’t have to type some things twice, implementing a better system to notify attorneys of upcoming hearings and creating a financial calculator for the clerk’s office so people can obtain a payoff amount for monetary judgments, said Donna Edgar, project manager with the Judicial Technology and Automation Committee.

A story in the New Albany News & Tribune, reported by Chris Moss and dated Feb. 8th, reports:
Courts in Clark, Floyd and Harrison counties will be linked through a new statewide automation system beginning this summer.

The three will be part of a pilot program which began last year in Monroe and Washington counties. The Web-based program, called Odyssey, will manage court cases and will not require a new computer server for the counties.

“They want to put counties on in clusters. This will allow us to pull court cases from other counties,” said Floyd County Clerk Linda Moeller. “That is really a plus.”

Some of the items available through the system will be tax warrants, jury management, marriage licenses and protective orders. Moeller said once a protective order is signed, it will be placed in the system immediately, which will allow other counties to have access to that order.

“This is really cutting-edge technology and we are really pleased to be one of the counties selected for this pilot program,” Moeller said.

Currently, counties use different systems and software to file and track records. Eventually, all 92 counties in Indiana will be connected through the new system, Moeller said.

“Things will be uniformed,” she said.

Several computers in the Floyd County Clerk’s office will have to be replaced in order to use the new system. However, Moeller said she tries to replace three or four each year anyway. She said as a pilot program, Floyd County will be eligible for grants to help pay for the computers.

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*This footnote contains information from a Feb. 6 mailing from DoxPop on its Monroe County status:
On October 25, 2007, Doxpop submitted a request to the Division of State Court Administration to obtain access to Monroe County court information from the state's case management system now being used by the courts there. That request is under review by the Indiana Supreme Court, since ours appears to be the first application for information from the state system.

Unfortunately, Monroe County's permission to publish historical case information through Doxpop expires on 2/15, so we will be removing Monroe County court case information from Doxpop on the evening of 2/15. We continue to work with the Division in hopes that we may include public information from the Monroe County courts at the Doxpop website in the future.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 12, 2008 09:25 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts