Never Waste a Good Crisis to Update your Court

The Freakonomics website has a page that discusses the quote in the title of this post.  It is obviously appropriate for the courts in this time of the Covid-19 pandemic, but I have used it in another context, when a new case, document, or e-filing systems are being introduced into a court.  I explain below…

CCMS Part 21: Comments on Project Management, Acquisition, and Development

Old Davidson County Tennessee Courthouse sculpture by Brent Moore

https://bit.ly/2yZxmKW

Over the years I have picked up some ideas that I think can help many court technology projects.  In this penultimate post to the Court Case Management System (CCMS) series, we wish to share some of those ideas and lessons learned.  We will specifically discuss acquisition strategies, buy versus build, and sustainability. 

Even More This and That in Court Technology – June, 2016

After I wrote the post last week a lot of new items of potential interest to court technologists appeared.  In this edition we share news from Microsoft, Facebook, the ODR 2016 Conference, the Tyler Excellence Awards, uses for E-Discovery Software, and a cleaned up software utility repository.

Status of State Court E-Filing – January, 2016

Last week I was asked about the status of E-filing in the state courts. Below is the compilation of information and project website links for the states and territories that I could find in January, 2016.

Friday, December 11th Online Seminar Announced

CITOC has partnered with NACM for an online internet seminar: Are You Making the Most of Your Court IT Projects?  Everyone is welcome to connect.  More below...

Court Case Management Systems Part 17: Dashboards

Dashboards are a “particular means of communication” – Stephen Few

In this part of our ongoing CCMS series we will discuss dashboard functionality.  To do this we will split the discussion into two parts.  In the first part we will discuss court administration/ management dashboards.  And in the second part we will talk about dashboards that may be able to facilitate judicial caseload management.

(Information and Dashboard Design – Second Edition - http://www.perceptualedge.com/library.php )

Philippines Judge Notes Court Automation Benefits

From the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative we learn about Judge Maria Filomena Singh of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court’s automation efforts.

The Software as a Service (SaaS) is a Trend in Court Tech

Some of you might have noticed that the CTB runs on the Google Blogger service.  Now courts are adopting SaaS too.

End of 2013 Court Tech News

The CTB received several interesting articles at the end of the year.

Arizona Traffic Ticket and Complaint e-Citation Program

The Arizona Courts have developed a program to support the use of e-Citation systems in the state. The program manager explains their system, approach, and benefits.

American Probation and Parole Association Issues Procurement Guide

APPA has issued a procurement guide for automated case management systems that provides structure and advise that the courts can use as well.

CITOC Offers Member Webinars

The Court Information Technology Officer Consortium(CITOC) Education Sub-Committee will be offering a series of webinars for its members.  The announcement is shown below.

Ten Tips for Buying Technology

The following article on technology purchasing was originally published in The Court Manager, a publication of the National Association for Court Management, many years ago by Curt DeClue and James McMillan.

Dirty Consultant Tricks

InfoWorld recently published an excellent article titled - 7 dirty consultant tricks (and how to avoid them).  Unfortunately I have seen every one of these done to courts (from afar) during my more than 20 years here at the NCSC.

Conversely, a comment on the article linked to this posting on "8 Client Types That Are Nothing But a Pain in the A**" that contains some interesting observations from the consultant's viewpoint.

My experience is that if the project is poorly defined and/or they want the consultant to be the project leader are ingredients in the "recipe for disaster".  As an FYI, we try to introduce good project management techniques in our Institute for Court Management class , Managing Technology Projects and Technology Resources that is available "in-person" and online.

Please read and learn.  It will help you and your organization to avoid pain in the future.

Court Automation Projects Critiqued

Courts automation projects can greatly benefit from receiving well-reasoned and researched critiques.   Two projects recently received such input.

California CCMS

The California Court Case Management System audit report was published by the California State Auditor in February, 2011.  The Los Angeles Times newspaper noted in an article about the report :

“The state Judicial Council and court systems have spent $407 million so far on developing the system and have installed a limited version in seven counties, including Los Angeles and Sacramento. They plan to launch the full system in three counties — Ventura, San Diego and San Luis Obispo — as a next step.”

The California AOC responded to the report noting that they will adopt all of the audit report recommendations.  Justice Terence L. Bruiniers, chairman of the Judicial Council’s CCMS Executive Committee noted:

“We have increased Judicial Council oversight of the project; expanded the participation of justices, judges, court administrators, attorneys, and justice partners; and created a project management office.”

Additional information regarding the system and reports are posted at the California AOC CCMS website: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courtadmin/ccms/

Federal Court PACER

Prof. Stephen Schultze and graduate student, Tim Lee, of the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy recently made a presentation at the New York University School of Law on the US Federal Court’s online systems and specifically PACER.  The presentation was video recorded and is available for online viewing (requires Microsoft Silverlight)

The presentation made several interesting points regarding current systems:

1. Current PACER limitations
2. Document authentication
3. Lack of document and data structure (XML)
4. The proposal to allow the private (and non-profit) world access to have bulk access to the information
5. A number of problems regarding sensitive and private information made available in PACER and options for corrective action.

There were also several points made regarding automation fees and budgets require a more extensive discussion for a later CTB article.

Recrafting Government as an Open Platform

The ITJobBlog in the United Kingdom has posted an article on a recently issued report from the Centre for Technology Policy Research.  The post titled - Recrafting government as an open platform notes that:

"Cultural changes are necessary to create an Internet-aware government, the document says. A vision must be created by leadership, outlining guiding principles that must then be enforced."

The article also goes on to state:

"Audits should focus on outcomes, while enabling departments to achieve those goals using their own means. Opening up access to social media tools may help them to meet their objectives, by helping governmental organisations to listen to feedback from traditionally under-represented groups, such as front line workers. Other tools that could help to achieve positive outcomes include real-time communication tools such as live chat."

You can read the entire article at:
http://www.itjoblog.co.uk/2010/05/government-open-platform.html

The entire Centre for Technology Policy Research report: Open Government, Some Next Steps for the UK can be downloaded in PDF from:
http://ctpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/CTPR-Report-Open-Government.pdf

Technology Projects Gone Wrong

Technology projects face all manner of difficulties.  Recently, Baseline magazine published an excellent article on Projects Gone Wrong.  We in the courts can learn from these troubled and failed projects both in government and by the private sector.

"Who Killed the Virtual Case File?"

An article posted on IEEE Spectrum Online discusses the long and difficult process, and project management challenges that the US Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has had in creating their "Virtual Case File" and other systems.  The full article is at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/sep05/1455

The value of project management...

TechRepublic recently published an article titled Project management 101--the case for project management by Tom Mochal. There are many books and articles on the subject of making a case for project management, but this is a brief article that gets right to the point. Every project (especially IT projects) will have risks to manage and unexpected problems to deal with. You can deal with these issues in a haphazard or reactive mode or you can deal with them in a proactive and controlled manner. I’m betting the latter is what most of us would want.

Courts Report on Technology Projects

Thanks to our friends in our Customer Service Desk here at the NCSC we received notes about two court automation projects. First, the Delaware Judiciary reported that they have successfully completed the first phase of the implementation of their new case management system.

And second, the Sioux City Journal reports on an interview of the Iowa's Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, regarding their efforts to go paperless. The Iowa Judicial Branch also posted proposed Rules for Electronic Filing in January, 2007.