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

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 26th, 2009 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Court Management, Finances, Forum on the Advancement of Court Technology, Technology, The Future.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.