Archive for the “Finances” Category

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) released the 2010 edition of their popular Future Trends in State Courts publication and the content this year is bold. It focuses on public education about courts as an institution and the current transformation taking place as a result of the financial crisis.

Coincidentally, the National Association for Court Management’s Court Express e-publication for Spring 2010 headlined The New Reality for Court Managers, which mirrors many of the process reengineering themes in the Trends report. These include:

1. The financial crisis will be deeper and more prolonged than most expect.
2. While past budget savings focused on cuts and revenue, future savings will likely focus more on process reengineering and/or substantial technology development.
3. Reengineering must focus on core values and purposes of courts.
4. Relations between the courts and other branches of government will continue to be altered by the financial realities.
5. (Direct quote): The idea that the court will be in a much better place when things “get back to where they used to be” is a misconception that needs to be addressed by court leadership. Accepting the notion that we are not likely to return to the circumstances of the past is very important if we are to solve our current problems.

I am still reading the Trends report, so I cannot offer an in-depth analysis as yet, but it is clear that NCSC has been in front of the financial crisis and much of this work includes reengineering efforts in a number of court jurisdictions as part of their technical assistance to states weathering the financial storms.

As a Phoenix rose from the ashes in Greek mythology, courts, too, will rise from the current financial crisis as a new and vibrant 3rd branch of government. To do so, it will take leadership, focus, hewing to core values and the courage to make the right changes.

Easy? No! Necessary? Absolutely!

Photo credit = Cracker Jack Phoenix League

With enhanced revenue collection the name of the game nowadays as a means to lessen the impact of budget cuts, I offer this discussion about an interesting concept called the Court Compliance Office that I implemented as a court administrator in the then-South Bay Municipal Court in Torrance, CA.

CLICK HERE to download a copy of the Court Compliance Office Report for more details, but here is a quick rundown …

Unclog post disposition criminal court calendars by delegating routine tasks to the clerks’ office instead of in the courtroom. These could include allowing defendants to convert community service into a fine (and vice versa), giving extensions for fine payment, and re-referring defendants to specialized programs such as drinking driver treatment programs. The trick is to have a clear understanding among the judges as to what specific tasks the clerks are allowed to perform, and aligning these tasks with the particular operating desires of individual judges.

A court colleague was recently assigned management duties for a new court compliance office and asked for my advice. Here is my reply:

1. Be sure to take credit cards, across the counter, online and by automated interactive phone service (IVR). The bottom line is to make it easy for your customers to comply.
2. Use skip trace services to refresh addresses and work accounts before you turn them over to a collection agency. There are third party providers who do a good job of this, and I would also recommend using www.Revq.com for your accounts receivable software. It’s cost effective and has a ton of third party providers, such as skip trace, notice generation, etc.
3. IMMEDIATELY at the time of sentencing, route the defendants through your compliance office for a financial evaluation and to debrief them on what just occurred at sentencing and what is expected to comply. This will require that court clerks docket sentencing real time so your staff can see the terms and conditions, but the trade off is worth it.
4. Partner with local hospitals and city/county services to “packet” accounts receivable. If someone owes you, they may also owe the hospitals, city, etc. Ventura County (CA) Superior Court used to do this very effectively.
5. Work with your judges to build trust in the effectiveness of the Court Compliance Office so that eventually the judge will sentence and give you one year to gain full compliance for fines and other conditions. If a defendant violates in the interim, the judge gets them back, otherwise you keep and work with them for up to one year without judicial intervention. If you can’t get compliance in one year, then give them back to the court for ultimate disposition (i.e., jail).

Admittedly, the Court Compliance Office model works best in limited jurisdiction courts handling infractions and misdemeanors; however, we are increasingly seeing post disposition matters eat judicial calendar time and effective strategies are needed to move these matters out of the court. This is especially true if rulings and outcomes are routine and predictable.

My staff and I are proud to have won the California Administrative Office of the Courts’ prestigious Ralph Kleps Award for judicial innovation for this program back in 1994. I left that year to end a 21-year career as a public sector court manager and embark on a private sector career as a court management consultant. It was great to make the transition on a high note !!

Photo credit = Microsoft clip art

A friend and colleague recently sought my advice for an upcoming staff retreat where the topic would be how to weather the current economic storm. My advice is contained in this posting, but I want to be crystal clear that what courts are going through financially is serious and a lot of people are getting hurt, including judges, staff, justice partners, court users and even society itself. There is no diminishing or downplaying that stark truth. Notwithstanding this storm that rages at our door, my advice is to take the high road.

Let me start by relating that last week I attended a meeting of local business leaders who serve as an advisory and support group for the president of our local university. The first comments at that meeting came from the university president and then the chair of the group and they both said the same thing … we have to get out of survival mode and into success mode.

At first, this sounds like a half-time pep talk by the coach of the losing football team, but it’s true. In many respects, this budgetary downturn is no different than any other strategic planning exercise in which the tasks are to:

• Identify what it is you’re trying to accomplish
• Identify your core values and mission
• Put all your assets and resources on the table
• Figure out how to accomplish your goals and objectives with the resources you have

If your resources aren’t sufficient (and ask yourself honestly, when have they EVER been sufficient?), begin to identify ways to cut costs AND raise revenue. You have to do both and neither will suffice on its own.

At the end of the same day as my meeting at the university, I had a strategic planning retreat with the elected board of directors of our local fire protection district of which I am a member. Despite the cutbacks that came last year and will likely come again this year from our morally and fiscally bankrupt state, we are trying to figure out how to improve medical response services (and therefore save human lives) by putting an Emergency Medical Technician on every engine that is called to an incident. The chief priced out a $275,000 strategy to purchase supplies and train and provide bonuses for 6 of our 18 firefighters as EMTs (they’re already paramedics) to serve this role. Before we do, we will conduct a community outreach to explain the problem and ask for subscription services or some other fee support.

The point is that I’m not sure the strategy will work, but we’re going all out for it and taking a proactive stance instead of hitting the bunkers.

So, what exercise could be used get your court team motivated in this direction? How about starting with the old what are we doing well, and not-so-well ice breaker. On the “not-so-well” list, start eliminating programs that drain the court’s energy (to the extent that’s possible). On the “well” list, start figuring out how to do those things even better. Once the team begins looking at positives, the juices start flowing and they feel like they’re accomplishing something instead of bailing out a sinking ship.

I don’t envy any court professional the task of weathering budget cuts, I can only wish them the best of luck. I can also pass along for what it may be worth that funding sources and the public at large are tired of seeing the same old reactions of reducing hours and services.

If you have any successful strategies in dealing with this economic crunch, we’d all love to hear from you.

Photo credit = Licensed for limited use by Cartoonstock.com

Paul Wormeli at the IJIS Institute is the principle author of an annual Wormeli Report on the state of technology and funding initiatives in the criminal justice arena (you have to be an IJIS member to receive it). This year, Paul has asked that I contribute court-specific content in my capacity as chair of the Forum on the Advancement of Court Technology. Please help in this effort by commenting on this post.

I would categorize court IT trends in three categories: budget-related, infrastructure-related and green.

Budget-related

It is no coincidence that this category is listed first as efforts to cut costs and raise revenue are by far the biggest driver this past year and it looks as if the next year will be no different. In September, the Court IT Officers Consortium made this a focus at their annual meeting, with interesting results. There are a few particular areas worthy of note:

Increased use of electronic audio and video recording to capture the verbatim record – the promise of instant cost savings has pushed this technology to the forefront in many jurisdictions. The main advantage is reduced personnel costs, however, most authorities on this subject recommend staff monitoring of recording equipment in order to render recordings more useful through annotation and to avoid problems with equipment malfunction. I would advise reading the Florida courts’ December 2002, February 2005 and October 2007 reports on this topic to get a full picture of the administrative changes that are needed to support a successful migration of this sort in order to avoid unintended consequences and problems.

Paper-on-demand – as a more pragmatic application of imaging and paperless electronic processing of cases and files. This concept recognizes that it is nearly impossible to eliminate all paper, so produce it when needed and operate electronically to the furthest extent possible.

Video and teleconferencing – to cut down on meeting, training and travel costs.

Revenue enhancement – both by acquiring accounts receivable software and outsourcing collections and collection-related tasks such as noticing and skip-tracing.

Website service delivery – recognizing that reducing staffing and courthouse closures mean less customer service unless these services are available in alternative delivery methods. Static websites are becoming more dynamic and interactive with e-filing, fine payment and service delivery taking a higher priority than in the past.

E-filing – although this has been around for a long time, there is increased attention to begin if a court has not in the past, and to expand if courts have already put e-filing to limited use.

Infrastructure-related

Courts are no different than other IT enterprises in their increased attention to virtualization and cloud computing, although these are more trends than reality. Wireless applications and service delivery are also attracting attention, but similarly as a trend as opposed to widespread implementation. Probably the most interest and action is in use of open source software instead of costly name brand products (e.g., Open Office vs MS Office). All of these infrastructure issues are influenced, if not driven entirely, by budgetary concerns.

Green

The greening of business and government is also affecting the courts. The National Association for Court Management published a mini-guide in 2009 on Achieving and Sustaining the Green Court, covering courthouse design, facilities maintenance, energy use, recycling, reduction of solid waste, water efficiency, and the usual related topics; the publication also covers access to IT by staff and the public to make court operations more efficient and green (some of which are covered in Budget, above, such as Paper-on-demand, websites and teleconferencing).

So here the central question … are the operational differences of courts such that the IT trends are significantly different compared to general criminal justice agencies? I would say the electronic recording phenomenon for the verbatim record is one significant difference, and perhaps the depth and breadth of prospective applications for e-filing is another.

I encourage you to add to this discussion to ensure that Paul gets a fully rounded perspective on this fascinating topic. It’s easy, just comment, below!

Photo credit = Microsoft clip art

Dear Santa … this has been one helluva year, big guy, and all the good little judges, court managers and staff have worked their tushies off trying to deliver quality justice with scarce resources, no raises and an increasingly cranky public that is only surpassed in its crankiness by the funding authorities. So here is my wish list for our courts and the heroes that work in them.

1. A stable, predictable funding source – OK, things are tough, I get it. We all know it’s time to tighten our belts, postpone big ticket purchases and defer widespread raises. However, we cannot exist without some indication of what we can expect in terms of funding in the next few years. We can’t plan, develop programs, react to caseload shifts and respond to public needs if we have no clue whether this is a temporary blip or a full time hell. You’re not closing the police department or fire department, and you should consider courts in the same category of urgency. As the New York Times opined about the budgetary impacts on NY courts, state courts are not just another government agency. They are at the center of the nation’s legal system and enforcement of the rule of law, handling more than 95 percent of all civil and criminal litigation. This vital institution — constitutionally, an independent, co-equal branch of government — has been spiraling into crisis as cash-starved states struggle with huge deficits.
2. Read the rest of this entry »

The great Court Information Technology Officers Consortium (CITOC) held their annual meeting immediately following the 2009 Court Technology Conference in Denver and one of the powerful items on their agenda was to go around the room and ask how technology has helped to weather the recent financial storms. The responses were revealing.

Here are a few …

• Ask staff how to regain one hour per day – some suggested taming Internet surfing, social media and email as great places to start. This is an odd juxtaposition of technology helping and hindering productivity.
• Move archived files (especially microfiche files) online – staff complained that helping folks to use the fiche readers alone was a major effort.
• Install video equipment in court to use both as an alternative means to capture the verbatim record and for videoconference training and meetings.
• Use Voice over IP to reduce long distance telephone charges.
• Redefine the role of court staff into two career tracks: management and “professional decision resource” in a judicial support capacity.
• One jurisdiction created 16 business reengineering teams with an IT staff person on each.
• Create “skinny” files that rely as much as possible on electronic processing – in this application, just the essential documents were housed in a physical file jacket, mostly for judicial processing.
• Raise revenue using a variety of compliance techniques.
• Centralize paper submission functions and use them as the gateway to migrate to electronic files.
• Use open source software instead of costly name brand products (e.g., Open Office vs MS Office).
• Use and encourage filing agencies to migrate to e-citations as much as possible.
• Delegate routine judicial functions such as distraint (overdue tax) warrants to clerical staff and automate the process as much as possible.
• Beef up data transfers in as many applications as possible.
• Enhance the courts website identifying high touch points with customers as prime applications.
• Add “auto-populate” features to case management systems to cut down on the need for excess key stroke data entry.
• Migrate to Paper-on-Demand.

These are wonderful places to start. Anyone wish to add to the list??

Photo credit = Microsoft clip art

Although many of my acquaintances seem pleased that the California Administrative Office of the Courts is getting its comeuppance by the recent press attention to what is reported to be a $2 billion (with a B) price tag on developing a dubious new statewide automated case management system dubbed CCMS (California Case Management System), I have hesitated to write on this topic for two reasons. First, I have many friends in the AOC and California courts, second, the AOC is not as evil as many portray them to be. But this monumental screw-up does deserve commentary.

I have yet to find any statewide Administrative Office of the Courts in this country that is not held in either strong suspicion or outright contempt. Most of this is attributable to generic line vs staff tensions in which those who work in the trial court trenches resent second guessing by administrative personnel in remote locations, many of whom never worked in a court.

My own experience in CA mirrors this sentiment, which was exacerbated in the 1970s in the Chief Justice Rose Bird era when then-Administrative Director Ralph Gampbell used to bewilder the trial courts with his sycophantic devotion to the loopy Chief. However, the current AOC, while not entirely lacking in the dysfunction department, is a product of a long and tough journey that:

• Merged the general and limited jurisdiction trial courts into single, countywide entities;
• Transformed uneven local funding into state funding of operations;
• Migrated court staff from local to state judicial branch employees; and,
• Morphed a patchwork quilt of local rules, forms and procedures into a more cohesive, uniform scheme.

In this process, they shored up the family courts with a series of innovative programs that included court-annexed mediation of child custody issues and the creation of a family court facilitator position. Countless numbers of task forces and commissions also addressed court administrative problems such as elimination of bias, managing of the court record, jury management/compensation, etc. Finally, while still a work in progress and Herculean in its enormity, their work to take ownership of locally owned court facilities is commendable.

But even this impressive track record is scant excuse for committing such a staggering amount of scarce resources to building a case management system that would simultaneously meet the superior court operational needs of mammoth Los Angeles and microscopic Alpine counties. Oddly, the AOC was on the right path earlier this decade when they embarked on an effort to pre-qualify a set number of commercial off-the-shelf case management system vendors from which trial courts could choose for automated solutions while requiring the winning firms to adhere to prescribed data reporting and interoperability protocols. Near the end of this effort, the AOC abruptly pulled the plug on the strategy and announced its intentions to build its own statewide system. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, the naysayers are coming out of the woodwork to pile on to the media and legislative circus looking into the whys and wherefores of this fiasco, even spawning a watchdog blog of masked avenger(s) playing one-upmanship by exposing internal examples of further AOC dysfunction.

So who wins this game? The trial courts? No – they continue to need new data systems and now have to endure even further delays in acquiring them. The CA courts as a whole? No – scarce public funding will become even scarcer as legislators’ trust levels evaporate. The public? Only to the extent that CCMS will probably have to abort development before the estimated $2 billion price tag is reached – otherwise the public will suffer lack of adequate information management among the trial courts and the resulting inefficiencies.

So to my friends in the CA trial courts and AOC, take heart. Many of us feel your pain.

Photo credit = California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and the Papas

Times are tough and people are getting cranky with the current economic meltdown. In the courts community, several groups are trying to step up to the plate and help, but the vice keeps getting tighter and tempers are flaring. Here are a few examples of what we’re doing well, and what we’re not doing so well …

THE GOOD

Let’s start with the National Center for State Courts’ Budget Resource Center where various court budget programs and impacts are available under one roof. This is a terrific way for courts to learn from one another and get a reality check. According to a recent survey conducted by the Center:

• 28 state courts have imposed hiring freezes
• 13 state courts have frozen salaries
• Seven states have encouraged judges and staff to accept salary reductions – or have imposed salary reductions
• Six states have mandated furloughs of court staff
• Six states have reduced court hours

The National Association for Court Management has also stepped up to the plate, with several budget-related publication articles and educational programs at recent conferences.

THE BAD

Let’s start with California, where everything seems to be bigger and more dramatic than the rest of the country. Although the Governator and legislature only yesterday closed a $26 billion budget deficit, the pain of the resulting cuts are felt at every level of government including the courts. With some exceptions, the California Judicial Council has been handed the amount of cuts and asked to deal with it in their own discretion. The biggest solution has been a mandatory closing of courts statewide at least one day per month. Recently, the judges in the Sacramento Superior Court took exception with this decision and challenged the Administrative Office of the Courts to come up with less onerous choices.

In Iowa, the state handed the judiciary a flat figure cut and the internal choice was to lay-off 13 court reporters. While this may seem to some as a reasonable reaction, it was done without consideration of the myriad of policy and fiscal impacts that such a move imposes on the local courts, and several judges are formally opposing the decision. It is interesting to note that the California Governor suggested a similar move, which was rejected by the courts. The situation is even more tenuous in Iowa where court reporters also serve as administrative assistants to the judges in rural jurisdictions.

UPDATE: The Iowa Courts communications office provided additional information on how they are deadling with the budget cuts.

WHAT TO DO

We’ve written about this before and although today’s situation may be more pronounced, the solutions are largely unchanged … courts have to cut expenses AND raise revenue. Limited jurisdiction courts are in a better position to raise revenues with traffic and misdemeanor fine collection options, but court systems as a whole can leverage statewide collection strategies that have the potential to raise a staggering amount of new revenue. And for gosh sakes, if credit cards are not part of this mix, make them a part of it.

As for cuts, this is the area where the most contention is bubbling … look to the Trial Court Performance Standards and concentrate on what courts SHOULD be doing, to wit, providing access to justice, being expeditious and timely, being equal and fair with integrity, and exhibiting independence with accountability. Together, these activities translate into public trust and confidence.

So does closing courts to save money promote access to justice? Arguably, no. And those who content that websites provide reasonable access, I would counter-argue that most court websites are woefully inadequate and even those that have good websites cannot mitigate the digital divide, which disenfranchises the poor and illiterate. Would furloughing judges and staff on rolling days accomplish the same savings? Not quite, but probably close enough to count.

Does firing court reporters yield savings? Arguably, no. Even if one assumes that tape recorders are cheaper to operate, firing court reporters will often require severance pay and purchase/installation of electronic recording equipment cost plenty in the front end. As to the alleged long term savings, court reporters working in high volume transcript courts are much more cost effective in terms of judicial productivity, lawyer productivity and transcript production costs. This is especially true when a Realtime record is provided. Finally, most experts recommend a dedicated electronic recording monitor, which is a budgeted position adding to payroll costs.

I fully appreciate that those sitting on the sidelines have the luxury of armchair quarterbacking these touchy issues, but we have to start this dialogue somewhere. The art and practice of court management are not to merely achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness … they are supposed to produce justice. Let’s keep our eye on the ball and get through this with our integrity intact.

Photo credit = Discovery Education

When I was a kid and asked my mother if I could do something or go somewhere and she answered we’ll see, I knew what that meant … NO. Unfortunately, things haven’t changed much in adulthood where people routinely say one thing and mean something else entirely. Let’s look at some examples.

TECH SPEAK

TechRepublic.com had a great blog posting about CIO-speak and cited several examples, including:

I-PHONES - iPhones are more expensive than the smartphone we give our workforce, but they are worth considering for the future. Translation – When pig fly.

FINANCIAL DOWNTURN - Despite the gloomy budget, innovation is still a key function in our IT department. Translation – IT has been cut 28%, we cut 60 positions and canceled 10 projects — innovation?! How ’bout just keeping the lights on?!

OPEN SOURCE - We’re very interested in how open-source technologies can help us reduce our overall IT costs. Translation – You must be kidding. We’ll switch to Macs before we go open source.

GOVERNMENT FUNDING

The federal government has borrowed more in the past 6 months than has been borrowed in the past 30 years combined. State government, especially in California, is a house on fire with partisan bickering and solution paralysis as standard operating procedure. This is my take on gov-speak:

HEALTHCARE – Government run healthcare is the only option to control runaway costs. Translation – You will die of old age in the doctor’s waiting room as everyone awaits permission to take your blood pressure.

REINVENTING GOVERNMENT – Tough economic times such as these are great opportunities to examine service delivery and mission to make the tough choices to streamline government. Translation – This is finally my turn to punish my enemies and create new, worthless programs.

CUTTING WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE – We have to cut wasteful spending before we even consider putting an added burden on the taxpayer. Translation – It’s time to screw the disabled, elderly and vulnerable in order to create public outcry to justify my proposed tax increases.

God, I hate being this cynical … just watching this train wreck of irresponsible government and timid IT leadership at a time when we need affirmative action and courage most of all, is debilitating.

So here it is … let’s demand that IT be aligned with the core purposes of our courts and government agencies. Let’s tell our elected officials not to mortgage our future by concocting a massive government run healthcare system. Insist on cutting wasteful programs such as the California Integrated Waste Management Board that serves as a well paid breeding ground for termed-out legislators looking for the next office. Speak out, show up to hearings, serve on boards of directors, run for public office, and generally act as the adult in the room.

We’ll see.

Photo credit – Microsoft clip art

To a large degree, if there was no conflict there would be no courts. Even so, it seems that nowadays, conflict is becoming the norm in our politics, work, and personal lives. So what do people look for in their governmental institutions? Mostly it’s effectiveness and the ability to work in cooperation with other government entities to solve problems. Then it should not be surprising that a poll commissioned by the National Center for State Courts found that an overwhelming majority of citizens want all branches of government to set aside partisan bickering, meet regularly and work in cooperation.

The meat of the poll addressed issues related to what government services should be cut and what fees should be raised in order to meet the current financial downturn. I was pleased to see that cutting jury trials and raising filing fees were seen by far as unacceptable alternatives. Given the current budget pressures, it would be a good thing to take these off the table (unless, of course, filing fees have not kept pace with inflation).

Unlike the executive and legislative branches, courts seem to fair quite well in public approval, so the opinions from this poll are generally supportive of continued court operations with trust that resources are used wisely. These ratings were highest among those who had a good overall understanding of how governments work (civics 101).

The Trial Court Performance Standards in measure 4.1 under Independence and Accountability holds that a trial court should maintain its institutional integrity and observe the principle of comity in its governmental relations. Comity doesn’t mean a stand-up routine … the upshot is that while a court should stand up for its institutional rights and interests, it cannot do so at the expense of loss of civility.

The court management profession is grateful that the National Center for State Courts has once again stepped up to the plate to help define the issues related to our current budgetary crisis. However, armed with this knowledge, we do not have permission to run roughshod over funding authorities who are trying to sort out public priorities in these difficult financial times.

Photo credit = Microsoft clip art