Nevada Supreme Court Expands E-filing

A press release issued on February 19, 2009 announced that the Nevada Supreme Court would begin accepting electronic filing of documents for criminal cases effective on February 23rd.   The press release stated:

The new process is expected to save time and money for the Supreme Court, as well as for attorneys and their clients. No longer will attorneys with criminal appeal cases have to ship or deliver supporting documents to the Supreme Court.
In preparation for the move to e-filing, Supreme Court staff conducted training sessions this year and late last year for a total of nearly 200 attorneys and support staff at both ends of the state. Training was conducted for three days in Las Vegas, two days in Reno, and one day in Carson City. Training will also be offered at the Family Law Conference in Ely in March and a training DVD that includes information from the earlier presentations is in development.

10 Cents a Gigabyte

Another landmark day in computer technology occurred recently.  I received an ad selling a 1 terabyte disk drive for $89.99 or 10 cents per gigabyte.  Now for comparison what does this mean?  A survey of the Arizona courts found that the paper files both current and past in more than 170 courts could fit on less than 3 terabytes or $270 less tax and shipping worth of drives.  Of course in a real server situation we would want to do a RAID, etc. But the achievement is significant nonetheless.  Other numbers listed in the ad show that the drive would hold:

• 424 two-hour DVD-quality movies or-
  
• 1500 hours of VHS-quality video or
• 880 days of around-the-clock MP3 audio or
• 373,000 vivid digital photos or
• 2132 action-packed games!

Mississippi State Courts Developing E-Filing

The Mississippi State Court system have been working toward a comprehensive case management and electronic filing system since 2004. In 2007 they reached an agreement with the US Federal Courts to gain access to their CM/ECF technology to adapt to the state courts.
Recently, a January 15, 2009 article Judicial System to Launch E-filing in The Mississippi Press states that:

"The project would allow judges and attorneys to file court documents electronically through the Mississippi Electronic Court system. Litigants also would be able to view documents online and the state would control public accessibility to chancery, circuit or county court documents.
Participation by trial courts will be voluntary and a Madison County pilot program will be launched early this year."

NIEM Case Study - NYC Health and Human Services

The January, 2009 edition of the NIEM Newsletter contains a NIEM Case Study from the New York City Health and Human Services-CONNECT project. The project demonstrates the flexibility of the NIEM standard in that they have used it to create a system for an online School Meal application. The article describes the system:

"The parents submit household and income information through the Curam-based application, which is then stored in a relational database. A nightly batch job extracts the data from the database and creates a separate eXtensible Markup Language XML document, using the NIEM-compliant exchange schema, for each submitted application. The XML documents are encrypted and securely transmitted to the DOE Department of Education for processing."

New Tech - iPaper

While reading some financial reports this past weekend on the Internet, the author stumbled across the iPaper technology from Scribd in San Francisco.

The technical idea of the iPaper application is that it allows the normal document formats to be converted to Flash format and then embedded in a website.nbsp Since it uses Flash, the user avoids the need to download documents while maintaining all of the graphical presentation features.nbsp The obvious benefit is better control of documents that are posted on ones website. nbsp nbsp

Texas Creates Child Support Case Management Standards

In 2008, the Texas Courts created a wealth of design documents and functional requirements for their Texas Data-Enabled Courts for Kids project. The project website notes that the purpose was to help ensure that foster childrens needs for safety, permanency and well-being are met in a timely and complete manner by data-enabling courts to ensure they have the information needed to make appropriate decisions. The full TexDeck project website can be found at: http://www.courts.state.tx.us/oca/texdeck/txdeck-home.asp

US Federal Courts Create eJuror System

The December, 2008 edition of the US Federal Courts, The Third Branch newsletter contained an article titled: On-Line eJuror Cuts Costs, Saves Time. The article begins - You can shop on the Web, pay bills on-line, even file income tax returns electronically. Why not submit your juror qualification questionnaire and summons information forms on-line?

Correspondingly, the E-Courts Conference 2009 contained a session by Travis County, Texas on their I-Jury system. You can download their presentation in PDF format here.

E-Courts 2008 Presentations Available

Presentations from the E-Courts 2008 conference that was held in Las Vegas, Nevada from December 8-10, 2008 are now available online. Nearly 500 persons attended the conference that featured presentations from judges, court professionals, technologists, academics, and vendors. The conference website can be found at: http://www.e-courts.org

NIEM Traning Course Available Online

A December 12, 2008 e-mail announced that the National Information Exchange Model NIEM Practical Implementers Course is now available in an online, eLearning environment. This new format helps to address the growing demand for the course through innovative use of Web-based technology. The course provides a free, open-enrollment educational environment to support flexibility, course demand, and cost effectiveness to address the needs of the NIEM-user community.


NIEM and the NIEM educational programs are funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance BJA, the Department of Justice DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security DHS, and the Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment PM-ISE. The NIEM Practical Implementers eLearning Course was built with content from the successful traditional classroom version of the course by leveraging existing capabilities at the National Center for State Courts NCSC and with support from the IJIS Institute, SEARCH, and representatives from private industry.

The NIEM Practical Implementers eLearning Course instructs students on how to use NIEM by breaking it down into two distinct parts. The first part covers Extensible Markup Language XML concepts required to understand and work with NIEM. The second part addresses the higher-level implementation concepts and the steps necessary to build an information exchange using NIEM.

The online learning environment enables students to proceed at their own pace. Instructors will be available to answer any questions along the way, as well as to provide technical support in using the eLearning system.
The eLearning format includes the same case study materials and assignments featured in the traditional classroom version of the course, and instructors will accept and review the assignments to help students fully grasp the NIEM concepts taught during the course. Course topics are the same for both the traditional classroom and the eLearning course and include Anatomy of an XML Exchange, Basic XML and Advanced XML Schema for NIEM, Substitution Groups and Extension Schemas, IEPD Concepts and Exchange Content Modeling, Mapping and Subset Schema, and Packaging, Distribution, and Implementation.


To access and register for the NIEM Practical Implementers eLearning Course, visit http://www.niem.gov/elearning.php. Questions about the course can be directed to training@ijis.org.

IE Browser Security Vulnerability

There is important news that has recently surfaced regarding attacks on the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser versions 5.01, 6, and 7. An article I received reports a huge increase in computer attacks exploiting this vulnerability. Unfortunately, there is not a corrective patch available yet from Microsoft. So you might consider using an alternative browser for general surfing for the near future and yes for you Mac folks you are safe. Please also make sure that your Windows Update either set for automatic update or enable the update notice. Generally at this time I would suggest only using IE for sites that have your full confidence such as your bank and well-known store websites. In other words, be careful out there.

Here is the link to the ComputerWorld magazine article: http://tinyurl.com/6nercd