Long Range Plan for Information Technology in the Federal Judiciary FY 2009

Court Operations

Objectives
Court Operations Success Stories

Day-to-day responsibility for judicial administration rests largely with each individual court. Each court is given responsibility by statute or administrative practice to appoint its own support staff and manage its own affairs. Under the judiciary’s budget decentralization program, substantial budget, procurement, and administrative responsibility has been delegated to each court. The primary administrative officer of each court is the clerk of court, who is responsible for many functions: maintaining records and dockets of the court; collecting fees, fines, and other revenues and properly accounting for them; operating the court’s computerized systems; administering the court’s jury system; providing interpreters and court reporters; and providing information to the public, the bar, and other interested parties. These functions and their related processes have been fundamentally changed by technology. The judiciary is completing an ambitious replacement of virtually all its critical court support systems, including financial reporting systems, personnel and payroll systems, and case management systems. Staff formerly engaged in routine tasks, including responding to telephone inquiries for basic information and docketing, are now supporting other vital court functions or absorbing increased workloads. As a result of these systems, the judiciary will realize quantitative and qualitative benefits for years to come. As the federal government faces ongoing funding limitations and many in the workforce are nearing retirement eligibility, the judiciary will need to be even more creative in its application and support of technology, especially with respect to streamlining the remaining administrative processes that are performed manually.

Objectives

• Facilitate sharing of case information among chambers and court units.
• Continue to utilize cost-effective training methods to ensure the full use of existing court information technology capabilities by court employees as well as by attorneys.
• Expand training opportunities that enable court employees to update current technical knowledge and skills as the commercially available information technology tools that they rely upon are updated.
• Consider means for facilitating telework and improving remote access for court employees, which also enhances continuity of operations in the event of a disaster.
• Provide the means for improved transaction processing and more accurate data entry and reporting in human resource and financial systems.
• Ensure that the judiciary’s case management systems keep pace with future requirements and technology.
• Reduce space requirements for paper records through the use of electronic files and records.

Court Operations Success Stories

Jury Management
The Jury Management System (JMS) has been installed in 90 courts. Migration to a shared server platform is complete, which will result in an estimated cost savings of $7.5 million in a 10-year period. A national web solution for completing juror qualification questionnaires online and other jury-related functions is under development. JMS has proven to be an effective tool for juror management and utilization. In addition, JMS has reduced the amount of staffing needed by the district courts to handle the petit jury function, saving approximately $13.3 million per year.

Case Filing and Management
The processes of filing and administering cases in federal courts have been transformed with the implementation of the case management/electronic case files (CM/ECF) software. The CM/ECF applications and the infrastructure that supports them provide the ability for users external to the judiciary to open cases and file pleadings electronically, and for courts to maintain and administer them in an electronic format. This effort has created a new paradigm for case administration. For example, attorneys are now making 50 percent or more of the docket entries in many courts, and automatically opening 99 percent of the cases in many bankruptcy courts; case information and related documents are electronically available to case participants virtually the same moment a filing has been completed; and near-instantaneous e-mail notification of any activity in any case in which one is involved maximizes the time available to respond.

Maximizing Court Expertise
The entire court community has taken advantage of the openness of nationally developed software applications and developed substantial ancillary applications both to support and supplement the functionality in the national systems. One example is an “E-Orders” application, developed by a bankruptcy court, which enables much of the routing and processing of proposed orders to be accomplished electronically, including affixing the judge’s signature to the approved order at the conclusion of the process. E-orders has been integrated into CM/ECF by the court to eliminate dual data entry while maintaining data consistency between the two applications. This application is now running in approximately 30 courts.