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Pilot Project Will Post Digital Audio Recordings Online

June 27, 2007 — Continuing its efforts to enhance the transparency of courtroom proceedings, the federal judiciary is about to launch a pilot project to make digital audio recordings publicly available online.

Five pilot project participants - three bankruptcy courts and two district courts - will integrate their recording and Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) systems to make audio files available later this summer on the Internet, the same way written files have long been available.

"We're just treating the audio file as we would a written file," said U.S. Bankruptcy Judge J. Rich Leonard in the Eastern District of North Carolina . "We think providing access to an audio file will prove to be enormously helpful."

His court and a CM/ECF team within the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) is developing the necessary software, and will share it with the bankruptcy courts in the districts of Alabama Northern and Maine, and the district courts in Nebraska and Pennsylvania Eastern.

For more information on the pilot project, see this article in the June issue of The Third Branch newsletter.