Priority 5: Realizing Technology’s Full Value and Managing Its Risks

Priority Description 

Implementing innovative technology applications in a responsible and secure manner adds significant value in meeting the judiciary’s mission and helps the judiciary meet the changing needs of judges, judiciary employees, and the public. Technology enhances the productivity of the individual courts and facilitates more efficient work processes across the entire judiciary. For the public, technology improves access to courts, including information about cases, court facilities, and judicial processes. Due to the rapidly evolving and dynamically changing nature of technology, the judiciary must continue to focus on building, maintaining, modernizing, and better securing our IT systems in a timely manner. Reliance on judiciary systems and access to judiciary data by judicial organizations, litigants, and the public will only continue to increase in future years. The security of IT systems must be enhanced, and a requisite level of confidentiality and privacy must be assured, while adversaries mature and evolve their intrusion techniques at a rapid pace. This confidentiality is essential to preserving judicial integrity and independence, protecting the fairness of proceedings, upholding public trust, and safeguarding national security.

Responsibility for delivering major national IT systems, which are critical to the support of judiciary business operations, is shared by several Administrative Office departments and Judicial Conference committees. In addition, local courts have substantial responsibilities for the management and operation of local and national systems, including in appropriate circumstances the ability to customize national applications to meet local needs. The judiciary’s approach to developing, managing, and operating national IT systems and applications provides substantial flexibility but also poses challenges for coordination, prioritization, and leadership. A key challenge is to balance the economies of scale that may be achieved through operating as an enterprise with the creative solutions that may result from allowing and fostering a distributed model of IT development and administration.

CJA practitioners need access to emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) applications, to improve legal research and writing, as well as access to litigation support software to help attorneys keep pace with the proliferation of case-related discovery. Training and support on the ethical, effective, and secure use of those technologies also remain critical.

The successful implementation of these strategic priorities, especially in the area of IT modernization and enhanced cybersecurity, requires substantial resources. Securing those resources and then efficiently managing IT-related investment is itself a top priority, as reflected in Priority 3 of this plan.

Strategy 5.1 

Realize the full potential of technology to identify and meet the needs of judiciary users and the public for information, service, and access to the courts.

Background and Commentary

The judiciary uses advanced and evolving IT infrastructure and services. Case management systems are being modernized, while other systems are being updated and refined. Services for the public and other stakeholders are being enhanced, and systems have been strengthened to provide reliable service during growing usage and dependence. Collaboration and idea sharing among local courts, and between courts and the Administrative Office, foster continued innovation in the application of technology. In addition, technology allows for exponentially more data to be collected, stored, and managed, leading to increased effectiveness in supporting evidence-based decision making. 

The effective use of advanced and intelligent applications and systems will provide critical support for judges and other court users. This plan includes a goal of supporting the continued modernization of the judiciary’s technology infrastructure, while encouraging a judiciary-wide perspective for the development of enterprise systems and applications. These efforts all further the judiciary’s commitment to the security of judiciary-related records and information. The plan also aligns with the Judiciary IT Modernization and Cybersecurity Strategy, developed in 2022, as a multi-year strategy for modernizing and better securing the judiciary’s systems, networks, and data.

The effective use of technology is critical to furthering strategic components of this plan, particularly those essential to judiciary efforts to contain costs, and to effectively allocate and manage resources (Strategy 3.1). Technology also supports improvements in the delivery of justice (Strategy 1.2); the accessibility of the judiciary for litigants and the public (Strategies 1.3, 1.4, and 2.5); judiciary accountability mechanisms (Strategies 2.1, 2.2, and 4.3); efforts to strengthen judicial security (Strategy 3.2); and the delivery of training (Strategies 1.5, 2.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3). In addition, the judiciary must be capable of defending against the growing threat of cyberattacks from domestic and foreign actors, including individual and state-backed threats, and ensuring the resiliency and integrity of judiciary IT systems.

An effective technology program is also dependent upon the successful implementation of other strategies in this plan. Our IT modernization and cybersecurity initiatives depend heavily upon securing adequate resources (Strategy 1.1). In a rapidly changing field requiring the support of highly trained people, it is critical that the judiciary succeed in recruiting, developing, and retaining highly competent employees (Strategy 4.1).

Implementation Goals

5.1.a:   Ensure that court and national systems are covered by the continuous diagnostics and mitigation program, which delivers cybersecurity tools, integration services, and dashboards to help improve the judiciary’s security posture.

5.1.b:   Continue to build, maintain, and enhance robust and flexible technology systems and applications that anticipate and respond to the judiciary’s requirements for efficient communications, record-keeping, electronic case filing, public access, case management, and administrative support. Modernize the judiciary IT infrastructure and systems to ensure continuous system up time for the judiciary’s enterprise systems and public-facing systems.

5.1.c:   Ensure that judiciary IT staff have the necessary skillsets in relevant, cutting-edge technologies through ongoing education programs.

5.1.d:   Establish an AI governance framework to guide responsible adoption of AI and to manage risks and challenges presented by these new and evolving technologies. New AI applications are emerging at a very fast pace, offering substantial opportunities to enhance judiciary operations. AI also presents new challenges and risks that require careful attention. Courts around the United States, and indeed the world, are exploring uses of AI to enhance judicial performance and fairness, and may provide valuable information and experience.

5.1.e:   Establish a formal Judiciary Innovation Program that encourages active participation in the innovation of IT systems and applications across the judiciary by all members of the judiciary community. The program will focus on facilitating a process to identify innovative ideas and concepts, and through a collaborative process involving both the Administrative Office and court representatives, mature those innovations into contributions to the national IT applications portfolio.