Archived Tweets for CFCT 2012: Canadian Forum on Court Technology

Archived tweets are available, in .csv format for CFCT 2012: Canadian Forum on Court Technology, held 24-25 October in Montreal.

Twitter hashtags for the conference are #cfct and #cfct2012

Click here for the conference Website.

Click here for the conference program.

McMillan on The Need for Court E-Forms Identification (Metadata) Standards

James E. McMillan of the National Center for State Courts has posted The Need for Court E-Forms Identification (Meta-Data) Standards, Court Technology Bulletin, 18 April 2012.

In this post, Mr. McMillan discusses the need for metadata standards for identifiers for electronic forms used in judicial information systems. He describes the problem as follows:

The problem is simply the identification of courts E-forms. In a physical environment it is easy to recognize the form from its title or presentation format. But in the electronic world, the problems are threefold. First, there is a need for CMS and E-filing systems to be able to easily recognize an E-form so that it can be routed (via work flow) to the proper department or person in the court. Second, and more important, the submitted forms ARE in many instances the contents of the case file and should therefore be viewed both technically and operationally as part of the CMS database. And third, because documents and forms are used by non-court organizations and need to provide support for some of their needs.

In the post, Mr. McMillan gives examples of two U.S. state court systems — Florida and West Virginia — that have implemented standard identifiers for digital court forms. Mr. McMillan writes that in a subsequent post, he will “discuss the benefits to the courts and court information users from consistent E-forms identification meta-data.”

For more information, please see the complete post.

Slides Available for CTC 2011: Court Technology Conference

Slides are available for many of the presentations given at CTC 2011: The 2011 Court Technology Conference (Twitter hashtag #ctc2011), held 4-6 October 2011 in Long Beach, California, USA.

The presentations included:

• Dean Peter W. Martin of Cornell University Law School on Abandoning Law Reports for Official Digital Case Law;
• James E. McMillan of the National Center for State Courts on Trends of New Courthouse Designs and Courthouse Technologies; and
• Judge Dory Reiling, mag. iur., Ph.D., Vice President of the Amsterdam District Court on Measuring Court Performance.

For more information, please see the complete conference program.

McMillan: Eight Rules of E-Filing

James E. McMillan of the National Center for State Courts has begun a new series of posts on court e-filing systems, entitled Eight Rules of E-Filing, at Court Technology Bulletin.

Mr. McMillan explains that in many U.S. court systems, “physical case files” continue to play a prominent role; and where document filing has been automated, it is often not integrated with other court information systems, such as those for “registry/docket (historical event record), participants, and scheduling /task control.”

In this series of posts, Mr. McMillan explains the benefits of integrating “[e]-filing, document, and case management functionality,” and offers best practices for e-filing systems.

McMillan on Trust and Court E-Filing Systems

James E. McMillan of the National Center for State Courts has published two new posts about judicial e-filing systems:

• Trust and E-Filing, Court Technology Bulletin, 7 May 2011;
• E-Filing / E-Reader Notes, Court Technology Bulletin, 14 May 2011.

Mr. McMillan’s post, E-Filing / E-Reader Notes, cites a recent article on e-briefs in Texas state appellate courts, by Don Cruse, Esq.

McMillan on URN:LEX

James E. McMillan of the National Center for State Courts has posted How to Verify a Court Document?, Court Technology Bulletin, 18 February 2011.

In this post, Mr. McMillan describes the URN:LEX legal identifier standard, developed by Professor Dr. Enrico Francesconi and Pierluigi Spinosa, both of ITTIG/CNR, and Caterina Lupo of CNIPA.

Mr. McMillan also presents a sample pretrial memorandum designated by a URN:LEX URN.

This post is the third installment of Mr. McMillan’s series entitled, The Future Is Not Paper:

• Click here for Part 1, on Microsoft’s Pivot technology;
• Click here for Part 2, on dynamically updated court document systems.

Coursen & McMillan on A Framework for Logical Data Models in Courts

Derek Coursen of Public Health Solutions and James E. McMillan of the National Center for State Courts, have published A Framework for Logical Data Models in Courts, Data Administration Newsletter, v. 14, no. 2 (December 1, 2010). Here is the abstract:

Success in implementing a court automation system depends on developing a high-quality logical data model. Certain patterns regarding representation of data on actors in the judicial process, cases, component matters (charges and civil claims), and events and tasks are generically applicable to any court situation. These patterns offer a framework for software development teams and non-technical stakeholders to communicate more effectively about the implications of key data modeling decisions in courts.

Here are excerpts from the introduction:

There has so far been little work on specific issues around logical data models for court automation systems… This article aims to fill that gap by proposing data model patterns that work well in judicial environments in general. The authors arrived at these patterns in the following way: In January 2005, after several years of discussing the idea of universal court data model patterns, Jim McMillan was leading the development of a new court automation system for Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) and invited Derek Coursen to develop a model that could serve both BiH and any other jurisdiction. Working with Bosnian court officials and data managers, the authors spent a week white-boarding a model. The sessions followed a set of rules that are heterodox by the standards of most software development projects: (1) refer when possible to published data model patterns; (2) focus on entities, relationships and attributes, discussing work processes only insofar as they directly affect those data model components; (3) focus on the BiH courts first but only as a springboard to broader generalizations; (4) focus on the current BiH reality first but only as a springboard to discussing potential needs for flexibility; (5) support eventual physical implementation by seeking a level of generalization that is a happy medium between inflexible specificity and unwieldy theory….

…This article presents the major patterns and decision points that informed the model. It is intended to offer a set of considerations that will help software development teams and non-technical stakeholders communicate more effectively about the implications of key data modeling decisions in courts. While the areas outlined herein do not constitute a complete data model, they address the most important concerns regarding the four most central regions of any court data model: actors in the judicial process; cases; component matters (charges and civil claims); and events and tasks….