Louisiana Courts Issue RFP

The Louisiana Courts have issued the following notice:

The purpose of this RFP is to solicit proposals for procurement of a Microsoft Sequel Server integrated adult court case management system entitled “The Louisiana Court Connection” to be administered by the Louisiana Supreme Court Judicial Administrator’s Office CMIS Division. The intent of the Louisiana Court Connection is to provide Louisiana city courts with an effective means of managing civil, traffic, criminal, probation (special sentencing), appeals, and court services data and provide financial tracking of court furnished fines and fees, case scheduling, document indexing and preservation, standard form and report generation, and ad-hoc query functional capabilities. Software development for the Louisiana Court Connection will be acquired through competitive contract negotiations on a fixed fee basis.

The complete RFP is posted on the Court’s website (www.lasc.org). Paper copies of the RFP can be obtained by contacting:

Carmelitte Venturella
Louisiana Supreme Court
Office of the Judicial Administrator
CMIS Division
400 Royal Street, Suite 1190
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130-8101
(504) 310-2571
FAX (504) 310-2570
Email: mailto:cventurella@lajao.org

The value of project management...

TechRepublic recently published an article titled Project management 101--the case for project management by Tom Mochal. There are many books and articles on the subject of making a case for project management, but this is a brief article that gets right to the point. Every project (especially IT projects) will have risks to manage and unexpected problems to deal with. You can deal with these issues in a haphazard or reactive mode or you can deal with them in a proactive and controlled manner. I’m betting the latter is what most of us would want.

Innovations in Justice: Information Sharing Strategies and Best Practices Conference

SEARCH Group has announced the Innovations in Justice: Information Sharing Strategies and Best Practices Conferences at the Hyatt Regency-Minneapolis, in Minnesota, March 27-29, 2007 and later; June 4-6, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency-Jacksonville Riverfront, Jacksonville, FL. Domingo S. Herraiz, Director, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice is keynote speaker on Day 1 of the conference in Minneapolis.

Free Public Wi-Fi Scam Article

During my travels in recent weeks I have seen the "Free Public Wi-Fi" scam show up at four different airports when looking for a wireless Internet connection. I have seen it in Chicago, Washington Dulles, and both Tampa and Richmond where there are actually free connections available. If you are interested, here is an excellent ComputerWorld article about the problem.

Global Justice Reference Architecture Draft Available

The GISWG Executive Architecture Committee (EAC) announced that the Global Justice Reference Architecture (JRA) Specification Working Draft Version 1.4 is now available on U.S. OJP's Technology and Global Web Site. Each JRA Draft Specification is open for a two week review timeframe, and all comments will be considered for the next pending release. There is a quick link to the left of the U.S. DOJ's Global web site, under "Key Topics," and an established link at http://it.ojp.gov/globaljra.

Justice Reference Architecture Presentation Available

Recently our own Scott Fairholm made a presentation on the Justice Reference Architecture that was captured on video and is available online courtesy of the IJIS Institute. The publications page that contains this and other presentations can be accessed directly by clicking here.

Global Justice Reference Architecture Draft Available

The GISWG Executive Architecture Committee (EAC) announced that the Global Justice Reference Architecture (JRA) Specification Working Draft Version 1.4 is now available on U.S. OJP's Technology and Global Web Site. Each JRA Draft Specification is open for a two week review timeframe, and all comments will be considered for the next pending release. There is a quick link to the left of the U.S. DOJ's Global web site, under "Key Topics," and an established link at http://it.ojp.gov/globaljra.

US Bankruptcy Courts Protect Privacy

A December, 2006 article in the US Federal Courts newsletter "The Third Branch" described the Bankruptcy Courts response to the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA). The article states that "Although the federal courts already have in place a policy on privacy and public access to electronic case files (http://www.privacy.uscourts.gov/b4amend.htm), Section 315 of the Act specifically required that the Director of the Administrative Office (AO) establish procedures for safeguarding the confidentiality of the required tax information."

The article further states that "(u)nder the guidance issued by the AO, no tax information filed with the bankruptcy court or otherwise provided by the debtor will be available to the public on the Internet, on the Judiciary’s electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from records, or through the courts’ Case Management/Electronic Case Files system. For non-court users of any of these systems or networks, a docket report will indicate only that tax information has been filed."

MassCourts Lite Announced

On February 6, 2007 a Massachusetts Court System press release stated that "Chief Justice for Administration and Management Robert A. Mulligan today announced that the Trial Court has completed its rollout of MassCOURTS Lite to 63 divisions of the District and Boston Municipal Court Departments. MassCOURTS is the Trial Court’s web-based, electronic case management system."

Ohio Supreme Court Goes Digital

In a press release the Ohio Supreme Court announced their digital document program began operation in December, 2006. They wrote: "Digital images of case documents filed with the Supreme Court of Ohio are now available on the Court's Web site, through the Clerk of Court's online case docket search."

"The feature allows quick and easy access to anyone interested in case filings before the Supreme Court of Ohio. For more than 200 years there was one way to read a merit brief or other document in a case file at the Supreme Court – Physically visit the Clerk's Office and look in the file."

The website can be viewed at: http://www.supremecourtofohio.gov/Clerk_of_Court/

E-Courts 2006 Notes - Day One

Roger Winters has completed the first day of his extensive notes on the E-Courts 2006 Conference held this past December in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Are you prepared for Daylight Savings Time changes?

Recent communications from our friend Tom Hoffmann (Systems Manager at the Orange County, Florida Clerk of Courts) reminded us of the possible impact of Daylight Savings Time changes on IT systems. In August of 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act extends Daylight Savings Time by four weeks beginning in 2007, with the intended benefit being reduced energy consumption. DST will now begin on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November.

This change could affect computers and applications that incorporate date and time processing functions or time stamps. Most applications and databases rely on the operating system clock for date and time functions. There is likely a patch for most operating systems that you’ve hopefully already applied. There is apparently also a problem with Java applications running under an older runtime environment (JRE). Most of our Court IT friends have probably already assessed the impact on their systems. For those who haven’t, now would be a good time. Many vendors have made available updates and/or recommended approaches to dealing with the change. Several links are provided below for articles on the subject and to pages from a few of the larger systems providers, but you should contact your system and application vendors for additional information.

Articles:

• Computerworld
• edgeblog
• USA Today
• Wikipedia

Courts Report on Technology Projects

Thanks to our friends in our Customer Service Desk here at the NCSC we received notes about two court automation projects. First, the Delaware Judiciary reported that they have successfully completed the first phase of the implementation of their new case management system.

And second, the Sioux City Journal reports on an interview of the Iowa's Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, regarding their efforts to go paperless. The Iowa Judicial Branch also posted proposed Rules for Electronic Filing in January, 2007.

National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Executive Briefing

We received the following announcement regarding an upcoming meeting:

The NIEM Program Management Office is hosting a NIEM Executive Session on January 23, 2007, to brief CIO's, Chief Architects, Program Managers and their representatives from the Federal Government as well as other interested parties.

Topics to be covered will include the definition of NIEM, where NIEM is today, its business value, a high level overview of its architecture and enterprise architecture context, and how to become involved or get started.

NIEM, the National Information Exchange Model, is a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of Justice. NIEM is focused on (i) developing reusable data components, (ii) proving support for packaging these components into business context to make reusable exchange specifications, (iii) doing so across domains and communities of interest, and (iv) providing standards, governance, methods, tools, training and technical assistance to drive adoption, use, and value creation.

The vision for NIEM is to be the standard, by choice, for cross-government information exchange.

TIME & DATE: January 23, 2007, 9AM - Noon 

PLACE: American Association for Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20005. AAAS is located on 12th Street, NW, with entrances at H Street and New York Ave. The nearest metro stop is Metro Center. To download a detailed map of the area, please follow this link: http://www.aaas.org/dcwest.pdf

REGISTRATION: Please send response to tpate@iir.com if you plan to attend. There is no cost to attend but space is limited.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.NIEM.gov/