Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Israel's New Court Automation System
Microsoft has posted a white paper and slide show on Israel's new court automation program. They write: "the Israeli Court House Management is replacing the manual administration of hardcopy documents used by Israel's courts with a paperless system. Electronic versions of all documents submitted to and issued by the courts will be created using optical character recognition (OCR). Known as the Next Generation Court System (NGCS), the solution will allow lawyers and the public to research case documents 24 hours a day."
Friday, June 17, 2005
AIJA Conference Announcement
Our friend Anne Wallace at the Australian Institute for Judicial Administration passed along this announcement for their next conference:
AIJA Annual Conference, 7-9 October 2005, Wellington, New Zealand
This year, the AIJA will return to New Zealand for its 23rd Annual AIJA Conference. The theme for the conference will be 'Technology, Communication, Innovation,' with a focus on issues arising from the use of the technology in courts and tribunals - in particular, the delivery of electronic services, communication with the media and the public, privacy and access to data, transformation of business processes, and computer-simulated evidence in the courtroom.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
CATO Reminder
Mike Adams, Treasurer for the Conference of Appellate Technology Officials sent us a reminder to register for their annual conference as soon as possible! The conference will take place in Key West, Florida, August 5th - 8th, 2005 in conjunction with the National Conference of Appellate Court Clerks. Registration is $350 and the registration form and agenda are both available on their website.
The conference will be held at the Wyndham Casa Marina Resort. For hotel reservations using their group rate go to www.wyndhamevents.com/casa/nca31.htm . (Please reserve your room as soon as possible as space is limited!)
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
GJXDM Users' Conference Wrap-Up
There were several excellent sessions wrapping up the GJXDM Users' Conference last week in Atlanta, Georgia. The keynote for Friday was a presentation on the parallel efforts of the GJXDM and its use in the creation of the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). The joint efforts of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are unparalleled.
Watch the CTB for links to the conference papers and presentations when they are posted.
Tagging Legal XHTML Information White Paper
John McClure at Hypergrove Engineering informed us that a White Paper "Tagging Legal XHTML Information" has been published. (This paper is no longer available.) This paper explores the relationship between information schemas ("vocabularies") and a user process described as "information tagging." This process is often necessary in the legal and services industries where information locked in an XHTML format is to be semantically tagged. The 'semantic menus' are generated from an OWL schema of the information models that have been drafted by LegalXHTML.org for legal instruments, contacts, roles, events, properties, objects, and topics, and so for this reason, expert functional users must validate the structure and contents of the information schema. This paper is published by a new organization focused on the integration of XHTML 2.0, the Resource Description Language, and the Dublin Core technologies. Its functional scope is the set of documents that are signed (making them by definition, instruments) and which may have numbered clauses, paragraphs or tables. Supporting schemas, resources, stylesheets, and other information are being published.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Jim Keane
It is with great sadness that we pass along the announcement that Jim Keane passed away on June 10, 2005. Jim was a tireless advocate for the improvement of the legal system through technology. Most recently he was the director of the ABA lawyers section of the E-Courts 2004 conference. Jim was involved in so many activities involving the American Bar Association, Maryland Bar Association, E-Filing, and LegalXML, that it is difficult to list them all. He will be greatly missed by his friends here at the NCSC and elsewhere
Thursday, June 9, 2005
GJXDM - Thursday Morning
I attended three session this morning at the GJXDM Users' Conference being held in Atlanta, Georgia this week.
The first session was about "How Privacy Supports Integrated Justice Systems" presented by Cindy Southworth. Cindy is an advocate and focuses upon the need for protecting domestic violence victims. She pointed out that data on DV victims could potentially emerge on a 911 RMS, or other systems that would allow an abuser to discover their location. So her advice was that privacy and data protection needs to be built into the design and process rules for the database and message technology.
The second session was on the "OASIS Exchange Document Methodology Naming and Design Rules" by John Ruegg from Los Angeles. He is chair of the Integrated Justice Technical Committee for the Names and Design Rules to provide guidance for customization of GJXDM schema structures.
And the third session was on the Maricopa County (Phoenix) ICJIS project. They have done considerable work using GJXDM and have graduated from an EAI (Enterprise Application Intgration) approach to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Conference materials are going to be posted. I just don't know where yet. More to come.
Wednesday, June 8, 2005
National Judicial College Survey on E-filing
While we are waiting for news from the GJXDM Users' Conference, we received notice today about the publication of a new survey on electronic filing conducted by the National Judicial College and Lexis-Nexis File and Serve. More than 1,500 judges responded to the survey. Some of the key findings from the survey are:
- Courts Recognize a Continuing Problem with Caseloads and Managing Paper
- Momentum is Clearly Growing for E-filing
- Support from Clerks and Legal Community Expected
- E-filing May Provide a New Source of Non-tax Funding
- Potential Barriers Identified
Monday, June 6, 2005
CTB at GJXDM Users' Conference
NCSC staff will be posting notes from the GJXDM Users' Conference later this week on the Court Technology Bulletin. Check back here to learn what is being talked about in Atlanta.
Thursday, June 2, 2005
Microsoft Announces Next Version of Office Adopts XML
According to Internet News: Microsoft to Adopt XML Formats in Office 12. The next version of the most widely used word processing program on the planet will use XML as a default storage format. Similar to OpenOffice.org, the new approach will "zip" together all of the necessary XML files into one. What this potentially means for Courts is: First, because the electronic file is XML it could potentially be used for achiving. Second, it will likely be possible for case management vendors and others to be able to do more with output documents and reports. Third, database schemas developed with GJXDM may be able to be used directly in Word or Excel (and other Office applications) to more easily tag and identify data for later automatic storage in your case or document management system. And fourth, as the article mentions, it will increase security since it will become close to impossible to embed computer viruses within a document.
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