Federal Courts Wiki and Post Audio Recordings

The June, 2007 edition of "The Third Branch" newsletters from the US Federal Courts contains two technology related articles. The first article concerns the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Wiki Practioners Guide project. The court "posted its Practitioners Handbook to the web and opened it up for revisions by members of the bar, no holds barred". The second project noted in the newsletter described the pilot project to post digital audio recordings of court proceedings online in three bankruptcy and two district trial courts.

Court Programs Recognized

In May, 2007 the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation recently recognized two court programs as part of their innovation in government awards program. The first program was the Electronic Court Records project in King County Superior Court, Washington. The Ash Institutes website stated that the "(e)lectronic Court Records gives court case file users electronic access. Scanning and e-filing have eliminated paper files, resulting in faster processing, desktop access to documents and better security." The second program recognized was the Juvenile Justice Continuum of Services and Graduated Sanctions program in the 6th Judicial District of New Mexico. The website stated that "(t)he Juvenile Justice Continuum of Services and Graduated Sanctions is composed of an integrated service network of juvenile programs, which have recorded a 70% decline in delinquent offenses since its inception.

Release Candidate 2 for NIEM 2.0 Published

A message from the NIEM Communication and Outreach Committee:  


"Based on feedback received from release candidate 1 of NIEM 2.0, a second release candidate has been posted to www.niem.gov for stakeholder review. All interested parties are requested to respond with comments no later than COB July 16th. Assuming that no major problems are encountered, the NIEM Leadership Team is planning on releasing the production version of NIEM 2.0 on or about July 30th. Tools for schema generation and migration assistance should have completed beta testing by July 30th and will be accessible at www.niem.gov at the same time as the release of the 2.0 model. Please submit your comments on RC2 directly to the National Information Sharing Standards help desk at nisshelp@ijis.org."

Minnesota Judicial Branch Integration Services

Bob Hanson, CIO from the Minnesota Judicial Branch reports the following on their Judicial Branch Integration services website and other efforts on data sharing.

"The site is organized around data integration services for justice partners and interested parties. The site includes a catalog of "notifications" and "submittals" to both get and put data to the state wide case management system. The system is event enabled and at a case event, data triggers fire and activate assemblage of XML messages containing data pertinent to the case event, this messages are " published" for partners to consume The site includes test messages, responses, schemas, ...etc. The schemas were developed over time and are not complete matches for GJXDM/NIEM.  They are tailored to provide the necessary performance required to operate a real time exchange with court partners computer systems as well as filling gaps dealing with the civil portions of the courts business responsibility."

"Below in the introduction paragraphs from the website (http://www.mncourts.gov/is) that describe the Branch strategy in getting justice data to the right party in the right place at the right time."

Court Integration Services is an enterprise-wide strategy of the Minnesota Judicial Branch to make court case data available for electronic consumption by applications of other justice entities.  To facilitate data consumption, Integration Services electronically publishes court case event data as case events occur.  Other justice entities may subscribe to consume select publications of case event and party data—through messaging technology.  Because court case data is published using XML, messages are easily consumed by message-enabled applications designed or modified for computer-to-computer transactions—without human intervention.   No “custom views” are needed to satisfy specific agency needs.  Instead, Integration Services provides the data and the XML schema, so consuming entities can take, use, and transform data formats to match the needs of their applications.

The publication of court case data in XML and use of messaging is a first and critical step toward allowing other justice information systems to consume court case data and build needed integrations.  Integration Services’ messaging technology provides for the timely publishing of court case data, required by justice entities to perform necessary functions. The reduction of human involvement in the passing of data from entity to entity will improve accuracy and minimize time delays in the delivery of accurate information to the right place at the right time.

The Integration Services strategy is bi-directional and includes capacity to receive electronic data from other justice entities to initiate court transactions, such as filing cases and scheduling hearings.  Historically, such transactions have been initiated through the manual presentation of information to the court.  Integration Services provides the means to transition from manual presentation to electronic presentation of the same information—to initiate the same transactions.

Integration Services strategy is focused on computer application to computer application exchange and sharing of data in near real time; it does not provide direct “viewing” capabilities.  However, viewing capabilities are offered through other court applications and access points. The strategy also recognizes this form of data exchange will co-exist with traditional exchange methods.  Some entities may not be able to adapt business applications to consume messages.  Likewise, low volumes of data consumption may not make such an investment cost effective.

Integration Services serves the Priorities & Strategies for Minnesota’s Judicial Branch:  Focus on the Future (FY2007-FY2009), which includes the objectives of: i) establishing an efficient, reliable, comprehensive case management system that meets the needs of court users, judges and court staff, justice partners, and the state judicial system as a unified whole; and ii) developing a highly efficient, accurate process for the initiation of criminal and juvenile cases.  Through Integration Services, justice entities have the opportunity to electronically consume published case data, and both the courts and other justice entities can benefit from the electronic initiation of case transactions.

Florida Law Enforcement Exchange (FLEX) Program Highlighted

In their June 4, 2007 edition, Government Computer News published an article on the Florida Law Enforcement Exchange (FLEX) program that is using NIEM standards and technology to link justice agencies.

CTC-10 Educational Sessions Posted

The 10th Court Technology Conference education program has been posted on the conference website at www.ctc10.org.  The program highlights public access technology program, data sharing, disaster planning and recovery, as well as many other topics of interest to the court and justice community.  The always popular Hi-Tech Courtroom sessions are listed as well as a new track focused upon law firm and attorney related technology.  See you in Tampa, Florida, October 2-4, 2007.

California and National Information Exchange Standards

Christopher Smith from the California Administrative Office of the Courts sends us this update on their GJXDM related activities:

Today, California courts have a myriad of interfaces in place using different standards and protocols. This is a result of local integration solutions being developed over time as technologies and practices changed. California, however, now has an opportunity to standardize how courts exchange information with their partners. This is particularly important as a critical part of the success of the California Case Management System (CCMS) will be the ability for courts to continue interfacing with their state and local justice partners. The California AOC’s Data Integration Program has developed a strategy to achieve this goal. This strategy addresses three key factors—standards, development, and deployment.

The branch has developed 17 Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) based criminal and traffic data exchange standards covering 71 different scenarios and 4 similar standards for family and juvenile interfaces. The branch is also participating in the California Department of Justice’s effort to develop additional standards, including for juvenile delinquency. GJXDM-based interfaces are also being defined to allow courts and the state department of child support services to exchange information.

But while these standards are now available, many of the interfaces in use today pre-date them, and therefore, are not conformant. Many courts today use interfaces designed on legacy systems, long before XML even existed. Other courts have XML interfaces based on previous national or state standards or one-off solutions. This would include, for example, the courts who are using California’s Second Generation E-Filing Specifications for civil e-filing. Now, with the development and rollout of CCMS, California has the opportunity to institute a uniform framework for information sharing that reuses standards and tools across all case types so that any document that can be filed with the court can be filed electronically—whether by government agency, attorney, or a self-represented litigant.

Through the Data Integration Program, California will migrate all of its branch information exchange standards to the national information exchange standards—either the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) or the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). This includes transitioning our Second Generation E-Filing Specifications for civil e-filing to the national models as well as revisiting our existing GJXDM-based criminal/traffic and family/juvenile data exchange specifications to ensure they meet the needs of the courts in a CCMS environment. By conforming to the national standards, California can have a single, uniform branch data dictionary that will assist in the development and deployment of additional exchanges in the future.

With these uniform standards in place, California will be able to standardize the architecture for information sharing. This architecture will drive all interfaces through our Integration Services Backbone (ISB), a suite of tools and service for integrating applications, where we can reconfigure and manage exchanges without having to do core development work to CCMS. This is particularly important as many jurisdictions have local extensions to the core standard exchange and it would be cost prohibitive to manage this within the core application. The ISB will also play a key role in civil electronic filing and sharing information with the public.

The final element of the strategy is to assist courts in the deployment of the CCMS and ISB, including ensuring required interfaces with justice partners are available to them. Even though CCMS will not be completely deployed for a few years, the Data Integration Program will begin evaluating courts integration requirements this year. This is so courts can become familiar with the new standards and architecture and their partners have time to plan for these changes. This will also give us time to develop and configure any additional data exchange standards needed by our courts.

Even though the family and juvenile modules are still being developed for CCMS, courts have already begun to benefit from the use of standards and the Integration Services Backbone. In Sacramento, the court is able to do its monthly interface with the Employment Development Department. In San Luis Obispo, court clerks will be able to review and accept or reject criminal complaints when that court goes live on the criminal and traffic module of CCMS. A number of other courts have used our standards to design public interfaces for sharing calendars and registers of action. And, soon, the courts will be able to interface with the credit card authorization agency from CCMS through the ISB.

In Orange Superior Court, the use of standards has already been used to improve information sharing. They are implementing, or have implemented, a number of GJXDM interfaces with local justice partners, including: initial criminal filings with the District Attorney, child support filings with the Department of Child Support Services, and citation data with local law enforcement to name a few. Other courts will soon deploy similar standards based interfaces as they deploy to the CCMS.

CTC-10 Education Program Posted

The initial CTC-10 education program has been listed on the CTC10 conference website. Click on the "Program" button on the menu bar to navigate to the program. In addition, information on the keynote speakers, Jack Ford and John G. Miller and their program has been posted.

NIEM "Harmony" Released

A recent newsletter from the NIEM project stated:


"The new release of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), version 2.0, also known as the “Harmony” release, was driven by practitioner requirements through a well-defined collaborative process and brings many great features. Some of the highlights of NIEM 2.0 are:

• Improved semantic quality (harmonization) of the NIEM Core model (Universal and Common) as well as some specific components from the individual domains.
• Remodeling to remove duplication, complexity, and ambiguity.
• Simplification of Universal and Common components to make it easier to understand and use the model, while maintaining their identity of Universal and Common in metadata.
• Domain version independence.
• Integrated ~30 NCCT issues resolved by NBAC/NTAC.
• Addition of five new code lists and types, and updates to existing code lists.
• Migration tools, both for those using NIEM 1.0 as well as those using GJXDM 3.0.3."

For additional information see the full announcement at: http://www.niem.gov/newsletter1.php#1

Court GJXDM/NIEM Projects in Progress, May, 2007

We have recently heard from several courts that are working on data sharing programs.

Thom Edwards from the New Hampshire Administrative Office of the Courts reports that they currently have a project called J-ONE underway that will use the GJXDM as the standard for information exchange.  He also reports that the J-ONE project will provide transformation services to connect to their new court case management system.  They are also considering exchanges with other state agencies. In particular they are looking into exchanges in the area of Child Support orders and the federal IV-D program.