Seattle Bike Messengers a Dying Breed

The February 25, 2008 edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper in Seattle, Washington describes in an article titled: "The plea of a dying breed: Don't kill the bike messengers" the impact of E-mail and E-filing is having on their business.

Internet Overhaul Begins

For our more technical friends out there, earlier this month (as described in this article from the BBC) the master Internet record addresses started the long process of being upgraded from the standard Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) to Version 6 (IPv6). The upgrade is intended to provide a huge number of new individual addresses for computers and other devices to be registered on the Internet but, it is also meant to provide other technological upgrades. The Wikipedia article on IPv6 provides an excellent summary of these benefits.
What does this mean to you in the near future? Not very much except for technical managers purchasing new networking equipment. But over time the upgrade provides an improved foundation for the growth of the Net.

NCSC Partners With Lockheed Martin for FBI Project

Press Release:

On February 12th, 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) awarded Lockheed Martin a ten-year, $1 billion contract today to develop and maintain the Bureau’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, a multi-modal, state-of–the-art biometrics system for use by state, local and federal authorities. The Lockheed Martin-led team includes Accenture, BAE Systems Information Technology Inc., Global Science & Technology (GST), Innovative Management & Technology Services (IMTS), Platinum Solutions and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC). 

"The NGI system will expand fingerprint capacity, doubling the size of the current database, and will now also include palm prints, iris and facial recognition capabilities.  Additionally, the system requires a significant degree of technical flexibility in order to accommodate other biometric modalities that may mature and become important to law enforcement efforts in the future."

InnovAction Award Competition Announced

From our friend Andy Atkins at the University of Florida Levin College of Law:

The College of Law Practice Management is excited to announce the "official" launch of our 2008 InnovAction Awards.  We are looking for lawyers, law firms, and other deliverers of legal services who are engaged in some extraordinary innovative efforts.  The goal of the Awards is to demonstrate to the legal community what can be created when passionate professionals with big ideas are determined to solve the business challenges faced in today’s competitive markets.

Award entries will be judged on the basis of four primary criteria:

1.  Absence of precedent (never been done or done quite this way before) 2.  Evidence of action (the innovative idea was transformed into action and not merely reflective of best intentions) 3.  Effectiveness of innovation (there is some measurable outcome that indicates the innovation is accomplishing what it was intended to do) 4.  Action must have taken place within no more than three years prior to this entry.

Any lawyer, law firm, or entity providing legal services to clients anywhere in the world is eligible.  Further information about the awards, past winners, eligibility rules, and entry forms are
available at www.innovactionaward.com.  

The 2008 InnovAction Awards are sponsored by the following organizations and companies which have a passion for innovation.

Platinum Sponsors: Australian Lawyers Weekly and Greenfield/Belser Ltd.
Gold Sponsors: ABA Law Practice Management Section; The Canadian Bar Association; International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) and Levick Strategic Communications.
Silver Sponsors: Altman Weil, Inc.; Association of Legal Administrators and Project Leadership Associates.

Uniform Electronic Discovery Rules website

The University of Pennsylvania Law School, Biddle Law Library is hosting a website containing information on the Uniform Rules Relating to the Discovery of Electronically Stored Information and much more. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws has partnered with the library to post this and much more information.  Click here to go to their website.

CATO Updates Website

The Conference of Appellate Technology Officials (CATO) announced that they had recently updated their website at: http://www.appellatetechs.org/  The website also contains information on their Annual Conference scheduled for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in August.

NIEM Leader Recognized

The February 1, 2008 NIEM Newsletter contained an article regarding Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff's speech recognizing CIO, Ms. Donna Roy's efforts.  The article stated:


"In a speech to the DHS Law Enforcement Shared Mission Community Conference, Secretary Michael Chertoff took the time to recognize the important work of the Office of the CIO in DHS in promoting information sharing.  He noted that “enterprise data management is an essential ingredient of an effective information sharing program, and the work of OCIO, and in particular Donna Roy, deserves recognition."

Sterns County Minnesota Tests E-Court Ideas

The St. Cloud Times in Minnesota notes in an article titled "Courts look to improve availability and reduce paper" the efforts in Sterns County State's Attorney and District Court to move toward electronic support systems.  One example listed is that "Stearns County already has wired a courtroom that one day could allow attorneys to leave many of their paper files behind and rely instead on digital case files in juvenile court hearings. It's a small step toward what could be the court system of the future — largely paperless and accessible by attorneys, judges, court staff and the public via computer."

National Offender Defendant System

The December , 2007 edition of US Federal Courts newsletter, The Third Branch contains an article on the National Offender Defendant System (NODS). "It combines access to Judiciary personnel on PeopleFinder, which helps locate probation and pretrial services officers, as well as all the defendant/offender information on the Probation/Pretrial Services Automated Case Tracking System (PACTS), all the case information on the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system, and violations in the Central Violations Bureau’s system." The article goes on to state: "NODS was originally designed exclusively for use by Judiciary staff, but according to" (Chief of the Probation and Pretrial Services Technology Division, Nick) "DiSabatino, another version—with limited features—is in the works for an external audience. The outside version would, for example, link to a limited version of PeopleFinder, and not link to PACER."

NIEM - Did You Know?

Did you know that the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) website contains links to resources and tools that can help you work with the standard?  One resource is the NIEM Mapping Tool developed by Georgia Tech Research Institute.  It will let you "create and exchange, associate a domain model with that exchange, map the domain model to NIEM, and generate artifacts - such as mapping reports, wantlists, and schemas - based on that mapping." To go to the Mapping Tool website, click here