NCSC Hybrid Hearings Improvement Grant Initiative Announced

 

 This one-year project will provide state and local courts an opportunity to learn from and improve upon pandemic-era best practices and to create permanent changes to their hearing practices. Grants will be awarded to 10 to 20 jurisdictions to support the cost of technology equipment and installation of the equipment in at least one courtroom in the jurisdiction, integration with existing systems (when appropriate) and technical assistance to support preliminary operation of the equipment. Additionally, NCSC staff will evaluate the utility of the technology and impact on hearing participants.

This and That in Court Tech - January 2022

 

Image by Brad Stallcup https://stocksnap.io

This month we have news about Chromebook price drops, Trinidad and Tobago’s new court electronic practice directions, Illinois state courts new electronic device policy, a new ODR system provided by the Los Angeles County courts, the England and Wales judiciary taking a new data-driven strategy approach, an article on “How to Create Access-to-Justice Tech for Courts That People Will Actually Use” and the latest from our Tiny Chat team.

This and That in Court Tech – May 2021

 

We have been saving a lot (and I mean “a lot) of interesting items to share in recent weeks.  We have news about court data analytics in California, an academic paper questioning the use of arrest data in policy development, a new justice index ranking report for USA courts, a report on Fines and Fees policies, the application of microeconomics for policy development, the NIEM JSON Specification, Version 5.0 release candidate 2, Ohio Court News on sealed records, England and Wales reports on the results of their divorce online system, applying the PDF A-4 standard for permanent digital records, and an excellent Tiny Chat.

Improving FTA/FTP Processes with Better Policy and Tech

 

 

FTA or Failure to Appear and FTP, or Failure to Pay is the source of a great percentage of warrants issued by courts along with giving great stress to those involved. 

I have been thinking about the civil unrest earlier this year and the place that failure to appear warrants seems to be involved.  In this post, I will share some recent thinking about these warrants and some tech that can help?

JTC Resource Bulletin: Case Studies in ODR for Courts

Since the JTC first released a publication on the topic of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) in 2016, there has been a seismic shift in US courts’ practical experience as well as interest in ODR. This paper highlights ODR implementations that illustrate a sample of technologies, philosophies, and approaches to the used.

Singapore Chief Justice Maps Court's Tech Future

The New Singapore Courts Tower

We follow the Judiciary of Singapore closely here at the Court Technology Bulletin.  Being a small country, they can take bold steps in their technology portfolio.  On January 6, 2020 Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon made his annual Opening of the Legal Year address which highlighted many tech programs.

LegalXML E-Filing Standard and A2J/ODR

http://bit.ly/2NW0wPJ

Like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial with the tag line “you got chocolate in my peanut butter” there is a great potential synergy between A2J/ODR and court E-filing. Specifically, did you know that the Oasis-Open LegalXML Electronic Court Filing 5.0 standard could be used as an interface into the court’s data by Access to Justice (A2J) and ODR systems?  More below.

2019 ODR International Forum: ‘Online Dispute Resolution is here to stay’

Singapore presentation at ODR 2019

The woman’s last name was called a few times in Collin County Court in North Texas before she finally appeared, 15 minutes late, with a baby in her arms and tears in her eyes. As Ben White, the court’s senior IT manager, watched her rush into the courtroom, he assumed the woman couldn’t find a babysitter and her job didn’t offer paid time off. He wondered if the money she was losing by being in court that day might cause her to go into debt.

“I realized right then that ODR (online dispute resolution) was meant for her,” said White, a panelist at the recent 2019 ODR International Forum.

This and That in Court Technology – Halloween 2019

In this “busy holiday” edition of the CTB we share news about ODR in Yolo County, California, ideas for finding money for justice programs, yet another ransomware attack, a new institute on Speech to Text technology, Alexa voice response for juror information in Orlando, Florida, a report on court digitization in the Dallas, Texas Municipal Court, a new Oasis-Open standard for digital signatures, a “blueprint” report from England and Wales on digital justice, and the Sweden judiciary exploring interactive decisions.

Some CTC 2019 Highlights

If you weren’t one of the 1,400 or so people who attended CTC 2019 on Sept. 10-12 in New Orleans, you missed a lot of great information, but here’s a summary of a handful of some well-attended sessions. 

We will have additional articles on the conference in the upcoming weeks.

ODR 2019 Conference Agenda Released

The Online Dispute Resolution Forum  (https://www.ncsc.org/odr2019 ) agenda has been released and is shown below.  The conference will be held from October 28-30 with a special pre-conference event on October 28 in the home of the NCSC, Williamsburg Virginia.

The agenda includes reports and lessons from the real-world application of ODR in the courts both in the USA and internationally.  The agenda looks great!

Click here for registration.

Improving-Child-Support-Enforcement Outcomes with ODR in Michigan

https://www.miottawa.org/aboutottawa.htm

Our NCSC KIS group recently posted one of our "Trends" articles by Kevin Bowling and Jannell Challa of the Michigan 20th Circuit Court along with NCSC colleague, Di Graski on how ODR facilitated communications to improve child support outcomes for the participants and the court (PDF).  Please read more about this significant achievement below:

Farewell to Richard Zorza and More Court Tech News

We have sad news regarding the passing of access to justice pioneer, Richard Zorza as well as news from the Ninth Judicial Circuit in Orange County/Orlando Florida, more online services announce by the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal, some notes on courtroom technology and the Microsoft Surface Hub 2S.

This and That in Court Tech – February 2019

https://goo.gl/NZgsos

This month we write about legislative support for court notification systems, BC’s new ODR system, a thought piece on AI helping to overcome judicial bias, a new Florida Bar natural language AI system, an ABA report on technology for non-lawyers, and an interesting report on understanding justice needs.

ODR Forum 2019-Call for Presentations

Are you an Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) professional or academic? Are you part of an organization that utilizes ODR? Do you design, develop, or implement ODR solutions? Do you study and measure ODR? The International ODR Forum 2019 to be held in Williamsburg, Virginia on October 29-30, 2019 needs you!

18 Ways Courts Should Use Technology to Better Serve their Customers

Back in October 2018, we see that our good friend and former NCSC colleague, John Greacen released the above-titled report issued by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver.  We briefly summarize below…

eCourts 2018 Conference Session Videos Now Available

Roosevelt Sawyer, Chief Information Officer,
Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator

The video recordings for the great eCourts 2018 conference are now available for streaming here.

We are very pleased to be able to share the following list of excellent sessions below.

NCSC Announces the ODR Industry Summit

The ODR Industry Summit is an opportunity for technology leaders to engage in free-flowing discussion with court leaders from across the United States from March 4-5, 2019 in Denver, Colorado

The objective of this day and a half event is to provide the industry with insights on the current and emerging ODR needs of the courts over the next several years. Working side by side, court and industry technology leaders will identify business problems, brainstorm opportunities, and chart a course for future ODR use in the courts. 

Registration for this event is complimentary.

Airfare assistance may be available for international firms interested in entering the US market.

The full conference announcement (PDF) with location and hotel details is available here.

Georgia Issues RFI for an ADR Module

The Georgia Commission on Dispute Resolution has released an RFI an alternative dispute resolution module.

The ADR Module RFI is a state and local partnership between JC/AOC and the Commission created to achieve optimal pricing for replacement technology software which does not exist or has reached its end of life.

This and That in Court Tech – September 2018

eCourts Conference

News on the eCourts 2018 conference, a new ODR pilot for small claims cases in Utah, security problems with the GovPayNow.com website, the IBM Watson AI based closed captioning system, and the UK Metropolitan Police developed mobile fingerprint system.