Eight Rules of E-Filing: Rule #3

Rule Number 3: Design Backwards 

Information presentation should be designed around the work tasks that a judge or clerk performs.  Malcolm Gladwell in his article, “The Social Life of Paper” explains:

“It is only if paper's usefulness is in the information written directly on it that it must be stored. If its usefulness lies in the promotion of ongoing creative thinking, then, once that thinking is finished, the paper becomes superfluous. The solution to our paper problem, they write, is not to use less paper but to keep less paper. Why bother filing at all? Everything we know about the workplace suggests that few if any knowledge workers ever refer to documents again once they have filed them away, which should come as no surprise, since paper is a lousy way to archive information. It's too hard to search and it takes up too much space. Besides, we all have the best filing system ever invented, right there on our desks -- the personal computer.”

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8th Conference on Privacy and Public Access to Court Records

The Center for Legal and Court Technology and the National Center for State Courts, with the assistance of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, have announced the eighth edition of the Privacy and Public Access to Court Records Conference to be held in Williamsburg, Virginia on November 3-4, 2011.  Some topics from the agenda include an update on state policies, technology trends and issues panel, social media, issues relating to family law and privacy, international perspectives, and a special presentation on an experimental initiative with streaming video in a Massachusetts court.

CTC-2011 Educational Agenda Posted

The educational session agenda for the CTC-2011 conference have been posted.  There is more information coming but I can share a few highlights.  First, CITOC has created an entire track of sessions for court CIO's that addresses the entire life-cycle of court IT management.  Second, there are many sessions sharing innovations in the court automation and how courts have transitioned to new technology, and re-engineered processes and their organization to take advantage of the new electronic world.  Third, there are many sessions looking toward the future including next generation technology standards, new information sharing approaches and the application of new technologies in the courtroom. And one can't forget that CTC has the largest court technology vendor show in the world with all the latest systems and ideas.

CTC-2011 will be held from October 4-6, 2011 at the Long Beach, California Convention Center.

Full descriptions of the sessions will be posted in the near future.

Eight Rules of E-Filing: Rule #2

Rule Number 2: User authentication must be designed into the overall e-filing solution.

For too long court E-filing has been generally limited to civil case matters.  This is perfectly understandable from a legal viewpoint since the parties and/or court can simply agree to its use.  But today we should design E-filing systems to deal with all case types such as criminal and juvenile that has a decidedly greater need for user verification.

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