Friday, January 23, 2009

Mississippi State Courts Developing E-Filing

The Mississippi State Court system have been working toward a comprehensive case management and electronic filing system since 2004. In 2007 they reached an agreement with the US Federal Courts to gain access to their CM/ECF technology to adapt to the state courts.
Recently, a January 15, 2009 article Judicial System to Launch E-filing in The Mississippi Press states that:
"The project would allow judges and attorneys to file court documents electronically through the Mississippi Electronic Court system. Litigants also would be able to view documents online and the state would control public accessibility to chancery, circuit or county court documents.
Participation by trial courts will be voluntary and a Madison County pilot program will be launched early this year."

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

NIEM Case Study - NYC Health and Human Services

The January, 2009 edition of the NIEM Newsletter contains a NIEM Case Study from the New York City Health and Human Services-CONNECT project. The project demonstrates the flexibility of the NIEM standard in that they have used it to create a system for an online School Meal application. The article describes the system:
"The parents submit household and income information through the Curam-based application, which is then stored in a relational database. A nightly batch job extracts the data from the database and creates a separate eXtensible Markup Language XML document, using the NIEM-compliant exchange schema, for each submitted application. The XML documents are encrypted and securely transmitted to the DOE Department of Education for processing."

New Tech - iPaper

While reading some financial reports this past weekend on the Internet, the author stumbled across the iPaper technology from Scribd in San Francisco.

The technical idea of the iPaper application is that it allows the normal document formats to be converted to Flash format and then embedded in a website.nbsp Since it uses Flash, the user avoids the need to download documents while maintaining all of the graphical presentation features.nbsp The obvious benefit is better control of documents that are posted on ones website. nbsp nbsp

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Texas Creates Child Support Case Management Standards

In 2008, the Texas Courts created a wealth of design documents and functional requirements for their Texas Data-Enabled Courts for Kids project. The project website notes that the purpose was to help ensure that foster childrens needs for safety, permanency and well-being are met in a timely and complete manner by data-enabling courts to ensure they have the information needed to make appropriate decisions. The full TexDeck project website can be found at: http://www.courts.state.tx.us/oca/texdeck/txdeck-home.asp

US Federal Courts Create eJuror System

The December, 2008 edition of the US Federal Courts, The Third Branch newsletter contained an article titled: On-Line eJuror Cuts Costs, Saves Time. The article begins - You can shop on the Web, pay bills on-line, even file income tax returns electronically. Why not submit your juror qualification questionnaire and summons information forms on-line?

Correspondingly, the E-Courts Conference 2009 contained a session by Travis County, Texas on their I-Jury system. You can download their presentation in PDF format here.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

E-Courts 2008 Presentations Available

Presentations from the E-Courts 2008 conference that was held in Las Vegas, Nevada from December 8-10, 2008 are now available online. Nearly 500 persons attended the conference that featured presentations from judges, court professionals, technologists, academics, and vendors. The conference website can be found at: http://www.e-courts.org

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

NIEM Traning Course Available Online

A December 12, 2008 e-mail announced that the National Information Exchange Model NIEM Practical Implementers Course is now available in an online, eLearning environment. This new format helps to address the growing demand for the course through innovative use of Web-based technology. The course provides a free, open-enrollment educational environment to support flexibility, course demand, and cost effectiveness to address the needs of the NIEM-user community.


NIEM and the NIEM educational programs are funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance BJA, the Department of Justice DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security DHS, and the Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment PM-ISE. The NIEM Practical Implementers eLearning Course was built with content from the successful traditional classroom version of the course by leveraging existing capabilities at the National Center for State Courts NCSC and with support from the IJIS Institute, SEARCH, and representatives from private industry.

The NIEM Practical Implementers eLearning Course instructs students on how to use NIEM by breaking it down into two distinct parts. The first part covers Extensible Markup Language XML concepts required to understand and work with NIEM. The second part addresses the higher-level implementation concepts and the steps necessary to build an information exchange using NIEM.

The online learning environment enables students to proceed at their own pace. Instructors will be available to answer any questions along the way, as well as to provide technical support in using the eLearning system.
The eLearning format includes the same case study materials and assignments featured in the traditional classroom version of the course, and instructors will accept and review the assignments to help students fully grasp the NIEM concepts taught during the course. Course topics are the same for both the traditional classroom and the eLearning course and include Anatomy of an XML Exchange, Basic XML and Advanced XML Schema for NIEM, Substitution Groups and Extension Schemas, IEPD Concepts and Exchange Content Modeling, Mapping and Subset Schema, and Packaging, Distribution, and Implementation.


To access and register for the NIEM Practical Implementers eLearning Course, visit http://www.niem.gov/elearning.php. Questions about the course can be directed to training@ijis.org.

IE Browser Security Vulnerability

There is important news that has recently surfaced regarding attacks on the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser versions 5.01, 6, and 7. An article I received reports a huge increase in computer attacks exploiting this vulnerability. Unfortunately, there is not a corrective patch available yet from Microsoft. So you might consider using an alternative browser for general surfing for the near future and yes for you Mac folks you are safe. Please also make sure that your Windows Update either set for automatic update or enable the update notice. Generally at this time I would suggest only using IE for sites that have your full confidence such as your bank and well-known store websites. In other words, be careful out there.

Here is the link to the ComputerWorld magazine article: http://tinyurl.com/6nercd

Saturday, December 6, 2008

CTC 2009 Call for Ideas

The Court Technology Conference 2009 has posted the "Call for Ideas and Participation" document (PDF) for download.  The conference is looking for presentations in all manner of court related technology, policy, and management subject areas.  The CTC 2009 conference will be held in Denver, Colorado from September 22-24, 2009.

Monday, December 1, 2008

NIEM News - November, 2008

The National Information Exchange Model(NIEM) project has posted the Production Release 2.0 document on their website.  In addition, the NIEM Naming and Design Rules (NDR) 1.3 document has been posted. The document is open for a 30-day public review period.

US Courts Celebrates 20 Years for PACER System

PACER Coming Into Its Own at 20, an article in the November, 2008 edition of The Third Branch newsletter, celebrates the pioneering electronic public access system. The article notes that PACER began life as a dial-up bulletin board system that later migrated to Internet technology. Uptake grew "from a dozen participating courts, PACER has grown to include all bankruptcy, district, and appellate courts. From 9,000 registered user accounts in 1994, PACER grew to 900,000 registered accounts by 2008. This fiscal year alone, PACER added 134,000 new users." It is a true success story.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

E-Discovery Casebook Published

On November 10, 2008, West announced the publication of "Electronic Discovery and Digital Evidence: Cases and Materials".  The book was co-authored by the Hon. Shira Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York, US Federal Court and Professor Dan Capra of Fordham University Law School.  The press release notes:

"This casebook is the first in its field on electronic discovery and digital evidence. Judge Scheindlin, the author of the landmark Zubulake opinions, is a leading author on electronic discovery issues in the federal judiciary. Professor Capra is the Reporter to the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, a co-author of a five-volume treatise on evidence, and the principal author of Rule 502. Members of The Sedona Conference® Working Group on Electronic Document Retention and Production, which published The Sedona Principles and is cited by courts and litigators on a daily basis, contributed commentary and practical guidance."

For information on ordering the book, go to:
http://www.westacademic.com/Professors/ProductDetails.aspx?productid=147221&tab=1

PC Magazine Solutions Articles

Since we share our subscription to PC Magazine here at the NCSC, I recently received an issue that contains the article "Eight Handy Tools in Excel You Probably Don't Know About".  Following that I looked at their Solutions website and found some additional excellent articles that are listed below:

Microsoft Outlook: 9 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do
Customizing Comments and Revisions Tracking in Microsoft Word
Troubleshooting Word Macros
Deal with the Outlook E-Mail Deluge in 4 Steps

And for you Mac users:
Office 2008 for the Mac: 8 Things You Didn't Know

Thursday, November 6, 2008

NCSC Partners with NIEM for Online Course

The November 3, 2008 edition of the NIEM Newsletter contains an article titled: E-Learning Update: NIEM Practical Implementer’s Course Being Rolled Out as Online Course by Eileen Rixmann, Training Manager, IJIS Institute. The article states:

"The NIEM Practical Implementer’s (PI) course is scheduled to be introduced in an online version later this year.  The National Center for State Courts (NCSC), the IJIS Institute, and SEARCH have been working for the past year to make this project a reality.  The NCSC has extensive experience in online training and currently offers an array of justice- and court-related classes and certification programs.  The IJIS Institute was instrumental in developing the NIEM classroom material." "The online version of the NIEM PI course is a self-paced course powered by WebCT, an online virtual learning environment.  Because it is not presented in real time, it allows the flexibility required by many developers, implementers, and business analysts."

 Contact training@ijis.org with any questions that you may have about the class.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Federal Courts Opens Decision Support System

The October 2008 edition of the US Federal Courts - The Third Branch - newsletter contains an article titled: DSS Opens Data Warehouse.  It notes that " the DSS project consolidates the information from the Probation/Pretrial Services Automated Case Tracking System (PACTS), used by all 94 districts, into the National PACTS Reporting Database." The article notes "Matt Rowland, who heads up DSS development at the AO. It was a challenge to consolidate and report that data in a way that was useful to decision makers. With DSS, we bring in every single record from PACTS. That means we have millions of additional data elements and with new reporting technologies, we can slice and dice the data very easily." Further the article states:  "(l)ogging into Version I of DSS, users can view dashboards on clinical services, post-conviction supervision, pre-sentence reports, pretrial services, and workload. Dashboard is a term used for the Web-based display of data. Like a cars dashboard, it shows how the machine is performing. For example, a probation officer may want to see the average Risk Prediction Index (RPI) score for offenders over a period of time, or the average cost of treatment per offender."

Monday, October 20, 2008

E-Courts Agenda Updated

The NCSC is pleased to announce new program sessions at the E-Courts 2008 conference.  The judge's session will share the experience, benefits, and barriers that have been faced by the Hon. Richard Nielsen, general jurisdiction Circuit Court Judge from Tampa, Florida and the Hon. Mark Singer, limited jurisdiction Court Court Judge from Bradenton, Florida.  The LegalXML Electronic Filing committee will be making a presentation on the new ECF 3.0 standard and how it will benefit the courts.  And two disguished architects, Mr. Larry Smith of Durrant Architects and Mr. Robert Boyle of Tate Snyder Kimsey Architects  will share their experience on the impact of technology in designing and renovating court facilities to take advantage of automation.  To view the new agenda as well as additional information about the conference go to: http://www.e-courts.org/

Thursday, October 2, 2008

South Dakota Courts Use Video Conferencing

The October 2, 2008 edition of the Sioux Falls South Dakota newspaper, The Argus Leader contains an interesting story titled "Video a key player in S.D. courtrooms" on the use of videoconferencing technology by the courts.  The story notes: " The technology is saving money and time and has helped some suspects bond out of jail faster. But some worry that turning defendants into faces on a TV screen is hurting the justice system."

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

NASCIO releases "Innovative Funding for State IT" publication

In a press release issued on September 17, 2008 NASCIO released it newest publication “Innovative Funding for State IT: Models, Trends & Perspectives.” A product of NASCIO's Innovative Funding for State IT Working Group, the report’s findings are based on a national survey of state CIOs that examines states' use of innovative or alternative funding models for information technology projects."

"Also intended to update NASCIO’s 2003 publication, “Innovative Funding for Innovative State IT: New Trends and Approaches for State IT Funding,” this report provides state CIOs with information and tools for the facilitation of innovative funding initiatives in their own states that enable delivery of savings, and improved IT services to citizens.

The report is available at www.nascio.org/publications".

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Draft NIEM Conformance Document Posted

In a press release issued on September 18, 2008, the US Department Justice states that the NIEM Conformance document has been posted to the NIEM web site on the "Downloads" page in the "Technical Documents" section. This document is open for a public review and comment period which ends October 15, 2008. All comments should be sent to the NISS Help Desk

The NIEM Conformance document "provides a normative definition for the meaning of NIEM conformance, what it applies to, and what it does not apply to. It also outlines the benefits of conformance, and suggests sources of information, tools, and help for learning about NIEM conformance and its application."

Friday, September 19, 2008

SubTech 2008 Conference Sessions Available Online

The SubTech 2008 Conference sessions are now available online. The conference was hosted by The Center for Legal and Court Technology and the William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia from July 24-26, 2008.

The SubTech conference series is dedicated to substantive applications of information technology in law, as they are used or studied in legal education.

The historical application categories covered in the conferences include:
  • Computer-aided instruction, broadly conceived
  • Artificial intelligence & knowledge management
  • Practice technologies like document automation
  • Legal research, databases