More This and That in Court Tech - May 2012

We have more court technology news to share for the month of May, 2012.  Notes include a radio interview for a CMS upgrade in Ohio, a Washington state courts report, podcasts from the Center for Court Innovation, NIEM Technical Training course announcement, and the LexUM Decisia cloud service.

All Federal Courts Now Accepting Electronic Filing

Via Press Release - The DC-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has begun accepting electronic filings via the judiciary’s Case Management-Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system, joining every other federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy court in doing so.

CM/ECF provides courts enhanced and updated docket management. It allows courts to maintain case documents in electronic form. And it gives each court the option of permitting case documents – pleadings, motions, petitions – to be filed with the court over the Internet. Implementation of that option began a decade ago, and now is complete.

You can learn more about CM/ECF here.

The Benefits of Automating Your Employee Performance Reviews

By Sean Conrad*

Public sector organizations face ongoing pressures to be transparent, efficient and accountable. Employee performance reviews are a critical tool for ensuring staff know what is expected of them, and are accountable for their results and performance. Yet many public sector organizations struggle to do employee reviews.

This and That in Court Tech – May 2012

News about E-filing in five states, courtroom tweeting, the NAJIS annual conference, Peoria’s new CMS, and a history of the establishment of West Publishing.

Missouri Court CIO Job Opening

We at the NCSC are very sorry to learn that our good friend, Jim Roggero, the CIO for the Missouri Office of State Courts Administrator has decided to retire.  However, his and his staff's good work continues, and so the job opening has been posted (PDF) at: http://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=5600 

Also please note that there are several other technical staff job opportunities at the OSCA listed at: http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.jsp?id=3191

We will post more about Jim and his significant legacy at a later date.

Montana Issues Statewide E-Filing RFP

The Montana Supreme Court, Office of the Court Administrator has issued an RFP for E-filing.

An Electronic Signature Maxim

By: Vojtěch Kment, http://www.linkedin.com/in/vojtechkment

Summary:  An E-signature Deployment Maxim: 1. Replaces the handwritten signature; 2. Legally permissible; 3. Evidence of intent; 4. False identification avoided/minimized; 5. Easy to use, affordable and widely compatible.

(Maxim: A brief expression of a general truth, principle, or rule of conduct http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Maxim )

Internet Bar Organization Offers Webinar and Research

By Mr. Jeff Aresty, Internet Bar Organization

As we all know, government’s everywhere are confronted with limited budgets and court systems are suffering.  Therefore, many courts are using technology creatively to increase the throughput of their caseloads.

Federal Courts Update CM/ECF Case Management System Plans

US Federal Courts sends news of several automation related efforts including case management, discovery practice recommendations for electronically stored evidence, kiosk use in US Federal Probation offices, and videoconferencing.

The Need for Court E-Forms Identification (Meta-Data) Standards - Part 2

In Part 1 of this series we looked at the ability to create XML meta-data identifiers in commonly used word processing and PDF applications. In this part we will explore the benefits of electronic forms identification.