Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Florida E-Filing Portal Celebrates 10th Anniversary

 


We learned from our friends earlier this week that the Florida courts are celebrating the 10th Anniversary of their E-filing Portal program.  We will start with some history thanks to the summary they wrote in this year’s annual report or, if you wish, they have posted a three-minute history summary video online here.





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“Working collaboratively with the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, Florida’s Clerks of the Circuit and County Courts responded to a 2010 Legislative mandate to implement e-filing in Florida with the creation of a public body to manage the design, development, implementation, operation, upgrade, support and maintenance of a portal for the receipt of electronically filed court records. The Florida Courts E-Filing Authority was established in June 2010 as a public agency created pursuant to chapter 163, Florida Statutes, comprised of the Clerks of the Circuit Court and the Clerk of the Supreme Court, as designee of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on behalf of all the state appellate courts.

Since those first meetings, usage of the E-Filing Portal has only grown and grown successfully. Today, almost 300,000 registered filers use the system, sending over 25 million documents to Florida’s Court System annually.”

In 2020 the Authority reported that “(p)ortal enhancements during this fiscal year included updating the auto-generated Civil Cover Sheet to reflect the new jurisdictional limits, providing a method for students to check driver school completion certificates and integrated with Florida Department of Revenue for filing child support documentation.”

What is also great about the portal authority is that first, they have developed a system that work with all of the clerk and court “backends” in the counties in Florida since they don’t have a standardized statewide system.  This is something that can be studied by courts around the world as even if there is a standard regional or national system, there will always be justice system agencies who are not part of that standard system.

Their website is a rich source of materials for courts working on their own e-filing systems. 

Recommended and congratulations to Florida!


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