In case you haven't seen them already, the Joint Technology Committee (JTC) published two resource bulletins last month on the topic of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). These papers provide excellent insight into how courts are leveraging technology to expand services and provide more timely and cost effective ways for citizens to resolve disputes.
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
JTC Resource Bulletins on ODR
In case you haven't seen them already, the Joint Technology Committee (JTC) published two resource bulletins last month on the topic of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). These papers provide excellent insight into how courts are leveraging technology to expand services and provide more timely and cost effective ways for citizens to resolve disputes.
Friday, January 12, 2018
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Florida Courts Offer New Litigant Help App
In an article posted at WFSU Public Media on December 15, 2017, we learned about the new Florida Courts Mobile App that was unveiled by Chief Justice Jorge Labarga for the Florida Civil Justice Commission. It was noted in the article that “Former Florida Bar president and Commission on Access to Civil Justice member Greg Coleman says improved mobile access will help people who can’t afford attorneys.”
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Structuring Court Communications with an App
Courts are different than many other businesses or services. A rather obvious statement I know. But a very important difference is that we have very formal court rules and legal statutes that create the steps, as well as boundaries, in how information is presented. The rules also determine how the courts evaluate the completeness and truthfulness of the information presented. Because of these structures and rules, I have been very cautious about the court's use of social media that as we know, have very few if any rules.
But communication is hard for many people. This is especially true for communication that is structured to persuade or argue a point of view or law. Therefore, an app that helps people, especially the self-represented litigants to accomplish this, is of great interest to me.
Thursday, December 7, 2017
Friday, December 1, 2017
Webinar: How to Incorporate Plain Language into Court Forms, Websites, and Other Materials
The National Association for Court Management, in partnership with the Self-represented Litigation Network (SRLN), presented its third webinar of 2017 on November 29, 2017.
Fortunately for those of us who missed the live event, they have saved the slides and recording at https://www.srln.org/node/1313
Monday, November 20, 2017
Oregon eCourt: A Technology and Business Success Story
Brookings, Oregon from: http://visittheoregoncoast.com/ |
While researching last week’s article on E-filing implementation statistics I ran across the 2016 Annual Report of the Oregon Judicial Branch titled: Focus on Technology. It was a great surprise to find sixteen pages were devoted to a detailed report of their eCourt project with the following section headings:
- Project background and approach
- Developing user buy-in
- The project’s guiding principles
- How they conducted planning, law, and policy workshops
- Vendor selection and contracting
- Work with the legislature
- External stakeholder buy-in
- User project participation and training
- Integrations and implementation
- Implementation of lessons learned from the courts
- What “worked well” to make the Oregon eCourt project a success
- Current benefits from the Oregon eCourt System
- Public access and statewide mandatory eFiling
- Going forward – Continuing development
I believe that this report should be mandatory reading for all court technologists. Congratulations and well done Oregon Judicial Branch.
It is available for download in PDF here.
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Millions and Millions Served
An original McDonald's Restaurant |
When I was young, the US fast food restaurant, McDonald’s would display that they had sold over 1 million and later 2 million hamburgers (see picture at the left). Court E-filing has been like that. Slow adoption at first. But now after 20 years, there are now millions of E-filings recorded.
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Microsoft/Legal Aid Tech/Voice-Response Portals
There is so much to this story I couldn’t really write a title that reflected all of the exciting news. We learned that Microsoft is currently investing in applying their new AI enabled voice-response technology to the problem of legal aid for the disadvantaged. They have engaged with our friends and experts in the subject at the Legal Services Corporation and Probono.net. Much more below...
Friday, November 3, 2017
Friday, October 27, 2017
Guidelines for Portable Communication Devices
On September 12, 2017, in the news release, the US Federal Courts announced guidance on the use of these devices in courthouses. The document, in particular, discusses the use of devices by the media. More below.
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Clerk Bot
Craig Van Brussel, Chief Technology Officer in the First Judicial District of Florida shared news about their testing of “Robotic Process Automation” that was developed by Computing Systems Innovations (CSI) in Orlando. More below:
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Court Cyber Security Risk Discussed
After the great CTC keynote address on cyber-security I had some thoughts on what are the court’s actual areas of vulnerability. That and information about a nice PDF converter utility below:
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Friday, September 29, 2017
LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Specification 5.0 Draft Announced
In the first major update since 2013, the Oasis-Open LegalXML Electronic Court Filing (ECF) Technical Committee has announced version 5 for sixty-day public review. Since the standard is the most widely used electronic filing standard, this is a significant advancement.
More below…
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
A New NCSC Report on Automated Redaction
https://www.shareicon.net/ |
In a follow-up to the July paper on “Best Practices for Court Privacy Policy Formulation”, the NCSC with the support of The State Justice Institute, the new paper, "Automated Redaction Proof of Concept Report" addresses the need for policies and technology for redaction of protected information.
More below…
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
The 2017 McMillan Scholarship Award Winner
Jose Lezcano and Jim McMillan |
Jose Lezcano, the Judicial Branch IT Director in Puerto Rico was honored with the McMillan Scholarship at the CTC 2017 Conference for his technology leadership. More below:
Friday, September 15, 2017
Friday, September 8, 2017
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
CTC-2017 News - Get Ready
Court Technology Conferences are an incredible deal. Many other tech conferences cost $1,500 or more. When we make this post, there are less than two days to register for the conference at the regular rate. CTC is the event of the year, some highlights below.
Friday, August 25, 2017
Monday, August 14, 2017
Judge Michael Marcus – The Passing of a Court Tech Pioneer
Hon. Michael Marcus |
Last month we were saddened to hear of the passing of Judge Michael Marcus formerly of the Multnomah County (Portland, Oregon) Circuit Court. I had the great pleasure of knowing Michael since the late 1990’s because of his work in developing the concept of “Smart Sentencing”. A video of a presentation Judge Marcus made on his work from 2010 is available here.
Judge Marcus also wrote one of the most popular articles in the history of the Court Tech Bulletin about his "Search for a Quiet Keyboard” in 2007.
But back to the main subject below.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
This and That in Court Technology – August, 2017
https://goo.gl/PLWoi1 |
A big CTC-2017 promotion (especially if you are hungry), an upcoming JTC webinar, big E-filing news, Wyoming court automation fees introduced, space and cost savings by the US Federal Courts, and a little tip in this month’s court tech news amalgamation.
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Blockchain for Criminal Charge Tracking?
https://goo.gl/qv8unC |
A recent question to the NCSC Community bulletin board regarding Blockchain technology led to the following thoughts regarding its potential use in one of the most difficult problems we have faced in the justice community since the 1970’s, criminal charge tracking. We discuss below.
Thursday, July 27, 2017
NCSC Releases New Report on Court Privacy Policy
A State Justice Institute supported report, “Best Practices for Court Privacy Policy Formulation” authored by three of our NCSC colleagues, Tom Clarke, Jannet Lewis and Di Graski has just been released. The report begins:
"As state and local courts progressively convert their business processes from paper to electronic formats, policies around remote electronic access to court case information by the public become ever more important. COSCA last addressed this issue comprehensively in 2002 with a report authored by Martha Steketee and Alan Carlson that proposed a model policy for public access. At that time, few courts had implemented electronic filing, so the model policy addressed both manual and electronic access. In the fifteen years since then, courts have learned a lot about living in an electronic world and providing remote access to their case data and documents. Consequently, there is a need to update what we know about this topic and revise the model policy."
August 31, 2017 revision -- click here to access the updated paper.
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Cobb County Georgia Issues Court Tech RFI
Cobb County (“County”) invites qualified technology companies (“Responders”) to submit written information about their ability to provide the modules needed to support countywide court and justice partner operations and case management with the goal of providing better access to justice and improving internal efficiencies.
Friday, July 14, 2017
This and That in Court Technology – July, 2017
Library of Congress Exhibition Image |
This month's news about court technology and related topics includes CTC 2017 Experts, a proposed American Bar Association resolution, 10 tips for IT administrators to deal with password lockout, Margaret Hagan's artwork and observations from the NACM/IACA conference, the Center for Court Innovation's treatment courts online training offerings, the IJIS Institute announces a new Executive Director, and the Library of Congress exhibition, "Drawing Justice: The Art of Courtroom Illustration".
Thursday, July 13, 2017
North Carolina AOC Issues RFI for CMS Evaluation
North Carolina Supreme Court building |
Additional information about the NCAOC can be viewed at its website www.nccourts.org.
The information gathered from this RFI will be used to identify vendors that can provide the systems needed to meet the needs of the Technology Services Division’s technical and infrastructure requirements.
Interested parties must submit a response package no later than 2:00 pm (EDT), July 31, 2017.
The full RFI (PDF format) is available at: https://www.ips.state.nc.us/IPS/AGENCY/PDF/11967000.pdf
Friday, July 7, 2017
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Event Time
In the CCMS series we wrote about events and tasks. In that article, we mentioned event weights that reflects the amount of work that was expended on that event. But there is another way that we can augment the event record. We explain.
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