Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Israel's New Court Automation System

Microsoft has posted a white paper and slide show on Israel's new court automation program. They write: "the Israeli Court House Management is replacing the manual administration of hardcopy documents used by Israel's courts with a paperless system. Electronic versions of all documents submitted to and issued by the courts will be created using optical character recognition (OCR). Known as the Next Generation Court System (NGCS), the solution will allow lawyers and the public to research case documents 24 hours a day."

Friday, June 17, 2005

AIJA Conference Announcement

Our friend Anne Wallace at the Australian Institute for Judicial Administration passed along this announcement for their next conference:

AIJA Annual Conference, 7-9 October 2005, Wellington, New Zealand

This year, the AIJA will return to New Zealand for its 23rd Annual AIJA Conference. The theme for the conference will be 'Technology, Communication, Innovation,' with a focus on issues arising from the use of the technology in courts and tribunals - in particular, the delivery of electronic services, communication with the media and the public, privacy and access to data, transformation of business processes, and computer-simulated evidence in the courtroom.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

CATO Reminder

Mike Adams, Treasurer for the Conference of Appellate Technology Officials sent us a reminder to register for their annual conference as soon as possible! The conference will take place in Key West, Florida, August 5th - 8th, 2005 in conjunction with the National Conference of Appellate Court Clerks. Registration is $350 and the registration form and agenda are both available on their website.

The conference will be held at the Wyndham Casa Marina Resort. For hotel reservations using their group rate go to www.wyndhamevents.com/casa/nca31.htm . (Please reserve your room as soon as possible as space is limited!)

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

GJXDM Users' Conference Wrap-Up

There were several excellent sessions wrapping up the GJXDM Users' Conference last week in Atlanta, Georgia. The keynote for Friday was a presentation on the parallel efforts of the GJXDM and its use in the creation of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). The joint efforts of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are unparalleled.

Watch the CTB for links to the conference papers and presentations when they are posted.

Tagging Legal XHTML Information White Paper

John McClure at Hypergrove Engineering informed us that a White Paper "Tagging Legal XHTML Information" has been published. (This paper is no longer available.) This paper explores the relationship between information schemas ("vocabularies") and a user process described as "information tagging." This process is often necessary in the legal and services industries where information locked in an XHTML format is to be semantically tagged. The 'semantic menus' are generated from an OWL schema of the information models that have been drafted by LegalXHTML.org for legal instruments, contacts, roles, events, properties, objects, and topics, and so for this reason, expert functional users must validate the structure and contents of the information schema. This paper is published by a new organization focused on the integration of XHTML 2.0, the Resource Description Language, and the Dublin Core technologies. Its functional scope is the set of documents that are signed (making them by definition, instruments) and which may have numbered clauses, paragraphs or tables. Supporting schemas, resources, stylesheets, and other information are being published.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Jim Keane

It is with great sadness that we pass along the announcement that Jim Keane passed away on June 10, 2005. Jim was a tireless advocate for the improvement of the legal system through technology. Most recently he was the director of the ABA lawyers section of the E-Courts 2004 conference. Jim was involved in so many activities involving the American Bar Association, Maryland Bar Association, E-Filing, and LegalXML, that it is difficult to list them all. He will be greatly missed by his friends here at the NCSC and elsewhere

Thursday, June 9, 2005

GJXDM - Thursday Morning

I attended three session this morning at the GJXDM Users' Conference being held in Atlanta, Georgia this week.

The first session was about "How Privacy Supports Integrated Justice Systems" presented by Cindy Southworth. Cindy is an advocate and focuses upon the need for protecting domestic violence victims. She pointed out that data on DV victims could potentially emerge on a 911 RMS, or other systems that would allow an abuser to discover their location. So her advice was that privacy and data protection needs to be built into the design and process rules for the database and message technology.

The second session was on the "OASIS Exchange Document Methodology Naming and Design Rules" by John Ruegg from Los Angeles. He is chair of the Integrated Justice Technical Committee for the Names and Design Rules to provide guidance for customization of GJXDM schema structures.

And the third session was on the Maricopa County (Phoenix) ICJIS project. They have done considerable work using GJXDM and have graduated from an EAI (Enterprise Application Intgration) approach to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Conference materials are going to be posted. I just don't know where yet. More to come.

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

National Judicial College Survey on E-filing

While we are waiting for news from the GJXDM Users' Conference, we received notice today about the publication of a new survey on electronic filing conducted by the National Judicial College and Lexis-Nexis File and Serve. More than 1,500 judges responded to the survey. Some of the key findings from the survey are:
  • Courts Recognize a Continuing Problem with Caseloads and Managing Paper
  • Momentum is Clearly Growing for E-filing
  • Support from Clerks and Legal Community Expected
  • E-filing May Provide a New Source of Non-tax Funding
  • Potential Barriers Identified

Monday, June 6, 2005

CTB at GJXDM Users' Conference

NCSC staff will be posting notes from the GJXDM Users' Conference later this week on the Court Technology Bulletin. Check back here to learn what is being talked about in Atlanta.

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Microsoft Announces Next Version of Office Adopts XML

According to Internet News: Microsoft to Adopt XML Formats in Office 12. The next version of the most widely used word processing program on the planet will use XML as a default storage format. Similar to OpenOffice.org, the new approach will "zip" together all of the necessary XML files into one. What this potentially means for Courts is: First, because the electronic file is XML it could potentially be used for achiving. Second, it will likely be possible for case management vendors and others to be able to do more with output documents and reports. Third, database schemas developed with GJXDM may be able to be used directly in Word or Excel (and other Office applications) to more easily tag and identify data for later automatic storage in your case or document management system. And fourth, as the article mentions, it will increase security since it will become close to impossible to embed computer viruses within a document.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

PBS TV Program - Red Hook Justice

The advanced Red Hook (New York City) Community Court will be featured on a new PBS television film titled "Red Hook Justice". The Community Court has received technical support from the Center for Court Innovation since inception. The program's website describes the court:

"Unlike traditional courts, community courts focus on bringing citizens and the criminal justice system together in order to solve community problems. By integrating the work of traditionally separate agencies - criminal justice operations, social service providers, public defenders, police and community members - community courts are a product of collaboration."

The program airs at various times on PBS and so please be advised to check the film's website or your local television schedule for viewing in your area.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

RFID Technology Tested in Los Angeles Jail

According to "L.A. County Jail to Track Inmates" from RFID News (via Slashdot), the Los Angeles County Jail will be testing RFID technology to track detainees in their facility. (For those of you who don't think they have run into this technology yet, if you have bought or rented a videotape or DVD in the past couple of years you might have noticed a small black "security device" attached to the case. RFID technology is what sets off the scanners located at the exits doors to the store.)

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Outlook Calendar Tip

The default block of time for Microsoft Outlook Calendar is 30 minutes. A recent tip from the June 7, 2005 edition of PC Magazine (page 107) shows how to easily change that setting. First, start Outlook Calendar. Next, right-click on the time scale shown on the left side of the calendar display. This allows you to set the default time blocks to as little as five minutes. The setting also changes the default amount of time for appointments. But according to PC Magazine it only works in Day or Work Week view. Not surprising since Microsoft packs a lot of information in the 7-day and monthly view. This might be of some help to you busy judges out there.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Wireless Devices in Federal Courts

"The Third Branch" newsletter issued by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has an interesting article on how their courts are dealing with the increasing problems created by wireless devices. In the article "Wireless Devices in Federal Courts " it's stated that "180 million Americans are wireless subscribers" and that "no one-size-fits-all decision is possible at this time."

Monday, May 9, 2005

Press Announcement - The 1st GJXDM Users' Conference

Bureau of Justice Assistance Announces - The First Annual GLOBAL JXDM Users' Conference

WASHINGTON, DC - The Office of Justice Program's (OJP) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) announces the first U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Annual Global Justice Extensible Markup Language (XML) Data Model (GJXDM) Users' Conference. The event will feature critical technical and policy-level sessions and important discussions of exemplary implementations using XML technology designed to reduce crime and fight terrorism. It will be held on June 8-10, 2005, in Atlanta, Georgia, and is sponsored in partnership with SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, and the GJXDM Training and Technical Assistance Committee (GTTAC).

Thursday, May 5, 2005

Careful What You Electronically Redact

Recently, a report issued by the Italian defense department tried to use Adobe Acrobat to "redact" the text that was deemed classified by simply changing the color to be the same as the document background. In "Acrobat user gaffe exposes classified Defense information," posted by Government Computer news, an Italian Blogger discovered the problem shortly after the article was posted. Lesson for courts; make sure that sensitive information is completely eliminated from the document before creating the PDF. This may also require saving the document as text first.

Friday, April 15, 2005

GJXDM Users' Conference Registration is Open

1st Annual Global Justice XML Data Model (Global JXDM) Users' Conference registration is now open at the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs website. The conference is scheduled to be held June 8-10 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Utility Computing On Its Way?

There is an interesting article posted by C|Net called Goodbye Computer, Hello World! that reports on Google as a possible challenge to Microsoft in the near future. Google now offers services such as GMail, Google Maps, and soon their new calendaring software that possibly portend the era of what has been called "utility computing."

Monday, March 14, 2005

Cool Simple Software

I received an e-mail today from a company that makes a little piece of utility software called Snapture that looked really useful. Snapture runs on your PC or Laptop. With a push of a button the software captures what you have highlighted and automatically sends it into your Palm or Pocket PC (of course, one must have their Palm or Pocket PC plugged into it's cradle). This would be great for capturing driving directions, notes, or things to read later.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

The Future of IT

ComputerWorld magazine has posted an interesting series of articles this week on The Future of IT: The Views Ahead. For you ancient IT professionals, there is a sidebar interview with Gordon Bell who is known as the father of the Digital VAX minicomputer, now with Microsoft.

Tuesday, March 8, 2005

US Department of Justice Sticks with WordPerfect

The other announcement today via Federal Computer Week was that US-DOJ decided to stay with WordPerfect as their word processor of choice.

But what most of us missed was that Corel (WordPerfect's parent company) had announced in late January an aggressive pricing strategy to hang on to the lawyers by offering WordPerfect Suite's at a discounted price of $115.

US Department of Justice to Begin Data Sharing Program

Federal Computer Week (FCW) reports that the US Department of Justice in beginning a FBI-led effort to share electronic information between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. The program is part of the department's Law Enforcement Information Sharing Program (LEISP).

For more information, read DOJ readies regional exchange.

Information about LEISP is available as a PDF report.

Tuesday, February 8, 2005

CTC9: September 13-15

Don't forget to start planning to attend the Ninth Court Technology Conference in Seattle, Washington in September. The CTC9 website is up and running at: www.ctc9.org

Wednesday, February 2, 2005

A Little Bit About Wi-Fi Wireless Networking

1. What is Wi-Fi?

According to my favorite techno-dictionary, Webopedia, it stands for Wireless-Fidelity. Wi-Fi is equipment and software that use several radio and computer standards allowing, say a laptop computer, to wirelessly connect to a computer network. There is a Wireless Access Point that is a radio transceiver (send and receive) station. This station is normally connected to the wired computer network. The user then has their Wi-Fi capability either built into their laptop or can add a PC Card or USB device on their side of the Wi-Fi network to make the connection. So, bottom line is that once a place like a hotel or courthouse has what is called a "Hotspot", computer users can connect to the Internet without plugging in.

2. How would it benefit courthouses specifically?

Wi-Fi provides computer network services to attorneys and even the public who may be called for jury service and want to access their e-mail or even connect back to their home computers or office computer servers. For example, when I travel to Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, I am able to connect to the Internet using my laptop equipped with a Wi-Fi PC Card, then using my VPN (virtual private network) account I am able to access computer servers back in the office where I have stored documents. An attorney could do the same thing in the courthouse. We do recommend that the Wi-Fi services in the courthouse be installed as a separate computer network from internal court network so as to avoid security and performance problems.

The Bernalillo County Courthouse in Albuquerque, New Mexico has also used Wi-Fi for attorneys in the courthouse for voice telephone service.

3. What are the security issues that courthouses can possibly face by using Wi-Fi?

There are unfortunately several security issues. Recently a new piece of software was released that allows persons with their own Wi-Fi laptop to watch the messages being sent in their vicinity on the Wi-Fi network. Simply using encryption technology can overcome this. However, many Wi-Fi networks do not have even the built-in, low-level security enabled. So, for now, the normal Wi-Fi user has to be careful not to send information like credit card numbers through the wireless connection.

4. What can a courthouse do to protect itself from hackers and other security breeches when using Wi-Fi?

I would suggest first that the Wi-Fi network be a physically separate network from the internal government network. Second, that courts perhaps contract with a public wireless service provider so that they do not have to undertake the support cost. This is a similar approach to what airports have done to provide Wi-Fi services to the public. And third, I would investigate the implementation of strong wireless security on the court's network. The Wi-Fi Alliance has information on the security standards that have and are being developed.

Friday, January 7, 2005

Wireless Network Technology Use in the Petersen Case

An article on Law.com highlights the use and potential problems in installing wireless networking (Wi-Fi) in the courthouse. In this instance reporters covering the Scott Petersen murder trial in San Mateo County, California were able to send continual text updates from within the courtroom. Read Peterson Case Puts Courtroom Wi-Fi Use on Trial.