IJIS Exchange

A Column Dedicated to the Exchange of Ideas on Information Sharing in Justice

by  Sue Humphreys

Next Gen Court Case Management

Earlier this year, the National Center for State Courts and the Joint Technology Committee introduced a framework to help courts and software suppliers think more strategically about technology. Dubbed “the application component model,” it’s the second of three phases in building the next generation of court case management system standards. According to the Introduction to the Next Generation Court Technology Standards Application Component Model, the intent is to align business capabilities with modular pieces of technology that fulfill specific business functions while providing services to other components as needed.

It also argues that a prototype application component model is needed to “develop a consensus among court managers and industry about the identity and relationship of application components . . . that would comprise the foundation of a state-of-the-art court technology environment. . . . When components become available from various vendors in the market, and assuming the components can communicate with each other through standardized interfaces, a court will be able to select the ‘best in class’ components to mix-and-match them to achieve the desired functionality with the desired features, to form an interoperable set of court technology functionality” (p. 2).

COMPONENT PURPOSE FEATURES
Case Manager Serves as the “traffic cop” to handle interactions among components and maintains the state/status of cases
  • Performs orchestration of interaction of registered components
  • Initiates and updates the state, status, and history of each case
  • Performs case triage
  • Maintains relationships among cases
  • Performs notice/order generation
    • Case Participant Manager Provides support for managing participants
  • Captures, manages, and rolls up identities of participants
  • Manages the roles and relationships of participants in cases, e.g., party, representation and type, GAL, witnesses, victims, co-defendants, interpreter, case managers, and so on
  • Manages participant attributes and related information, e.g. addresses, cell/text contact, email, and their associated time-stamps, sources, and validation considerations
  • Provides identity validation support
    • Accounting/Financial Manages monetary matters applicable to the case
  • Cost, fees, and fines
  • Cost bills
  • Deposits
  • Fiduciary funds management (landlord/tenant, garnishments, mortgages, trusts, guardianships)
  • Clerk services
  • Service vendors (interpreter, defense counsel, GAL)
  • Collections
  • Accounts
    • Scheduling/Calendaring Provides support for scheduling and maintaining calendars
  • Provides scheduling features, automation and triggers for noticing, and deadline management
  • Captures and provides support for scheduling preferences and restrictions
  • Captures and maintains calendars
  • Provides calendar edit functions and related triggers, e.g., reschedule notices
    • Document/Content Management Manages the artifacts and evidence applicable in a case
  • Redaction
  • Forms
  • Court templates
  • Document creation and management for courts
  • Metadata—tagging generation
  • Distribution
  • Capture
  • Management—archiving, purging
    • Electronic Filing Service Providers Provides an online service to help filers file their documents and acts as the intermediary between the filer and the electronic filing manager
  • Provides electronic filing services
  • Accepts and may process payment instructions
  • May provide electronic service options, including document forwarding to process servers
  • May provide document-access services
  • May provide ancillary case, party, and other search options
    • Electronic Filing Manager Provides a single interface for managing the electronic filings to a state or local jurisdiction
  • Implements the electronic filing governance of a court
  • Acts as an intermediary between or a hub for electronic filing service providers and the court
    • Public Access Provides qualified, DIY-based access to information about cases, participants, dockets, artifacts, calendar, and financials
  • Provides searching on cases, parties, documents, case status, and events
  • May provide notifications and subscription services
  • May provide support for ordering of certified documents
    • Judicial Tools/e-Bench Provides decision-making support to the judiciary, on and off the bench
  • Provides docket-specific information that supports decision making by judicial officers
  • Often provides several CMS functions in a format that is optimized for courtroom use, which could include dispositions, order entries, producing and sending orders, setting/scheduling
  • May convey information about referral options, such as census, availability, and cost
  • May provide geo-spatial information, e.g., parties’ places of work, residences, custody and visitation addresses
    • Jury Management Provides jury management services
  • Supports maintaining jury pools
  • Provides jury selection and notification support
  • May contain calendars, scheduling features, and notification services
  • May support check-in and check-out features
    • Evidence/Exhibit Management Provides evidence- and exhibit-tracking and management services.
  • Tracks evidence and exhibits and their locations
  • May provide access digitally
  • May support ancillary evidence and exhibit services
    • Online Dispute Resolution Provides services to assist in the resolution of cases outside of a physical or virtual courtroom
  • Provides features that cover all or parts of dispute resolution online; may be available only to certain case or dispute types
  • May provide dispute definition and triage services
  • Usually features one or more dispute resolution mechanisms, e.g., direct propose and answer between parties, facilitated
    • Remote A/V Provides audio and video services
  • Video arraignment and hearing support
  • Video conferencing
  • Remote interpreting
    • Digital Recording Provides electronic management features for recording, accessing, and referencing court proceedings
  • Records proceedings
  • Provides indexing and marking features
  • Provides playback and search features
    • Electronic Transcripts Provides transcription services on demand from contract transcriptionists
  • Tracks status of requests for transcriptions
  • Assigns transcription tasks to transcriptionists and due dates
  • Tracks status of requests for payment by transcriptionists
    • Notifications Provides on-demand service of printing, mailing, and tracking of undelivered paper notifications (e.g., jury summonses, mass notifications)
  • Accepts list of recipients of notices, associated addresses, and type/text of notification
  • Tracks returned and non-returned notifications
  • Requests USPS address changes and notifies court of updated addresses
    • Electronic Payment Processing Communicates with merchant-banking system
  • Returns authorization code or denial of transaction
  • Provides payment information for electronic reconciliation
    • Compliance Monitoring Provides tools for monitoring compliance with court orders, time standards, court rules, financial obligations, reporting requirements (e.g., guardianship reports), etc.
  • Receives accounts of court-ordered financial obligations (e.g., fines, costs, restitution)
  • Generates notifications (letters, text messages, etc.)
  • Tracks activity, correspondence, and contacts
  • Uses workflow to relate events, conditions, and actions relating to compliance
  • Provides tools to support follow-up
  • Supports interfaces to IVR, dialer, court-accounting system, tax intercept, DMV, skip tracing, etc.
    • Search Engine Searches for and identifies items in a database that correspond to keywords or characters specified by the user
  • Provides different strategies for search depending on person, case, or other information being searched for
  • Provides options for “intelligent” searches such as semantic searches
    • Reporting/Analytics Provides options for reporting and methods of data analysis
  • Reporting provides canned reports, ad hoc reports, dashboards, and alerts for exceptional data
  • Analytics provides deeper insight into data through patterns
    • Business Rules Engine Repository of executable business rules
  • Executes business rules and returns result
  • Supports workflow/automated movement of work items from one process or user to another based on established business rules
  • Provides configurable choices for triggering and routing work items
    • Identity Management Provides authorization/authentication
  • Automates the initiation, capturing, recording, and management of user identities and their related access permissions
    • Knowledge Management Gathers, organizes, shares, and analyzes its knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and people skills
  • Maintains lessons learned as guidance for reuse
  • Provides data mining to look for patterns where one event is connected to another event, where one event leads to another later event, or to look for new patterns
    • Integration Engine Provides API for third-party systems
  • Provides mapping of data fields
  • Supports NIEM-conformant exchanges
  • Uses NIEM entities
    • Enterprise Security Applies a comprehensive and rigorous method for describing a current and/or future structure and behavior for an organization’s security processes
  • Provides configurable role security templates
    • ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Sue Humphreys is vice-chair of the IJIS Courts Advisory Committee.