National Center for State Courts

 

Improving Justice through Leadership
and Service to the Courts

      

  

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Imaging In Courts

What about imaging in the courts? How is it used? What are the courts’ experiences with it? All three courts we visited to answer these questions are in California--the Riverside County Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts, the Orange County Jury Commissioner’s Office, and the Orange County Central Municipal Court.

This chapter covers imaging in these sites. As noted above, the three sites are covered together in an integrated manner to permit you to understand why and how different courts use imaging. It permits you to see, "side by side" for each court, the events that preceded imaging; how each court planned, procured and implemented imaging; the functions of the imaging systems; the computers, software, and communications used by and integrated with the imaging systems; and how each court operates and maintains its imaging system. You can see a composite of courts that exhibits strengths in many areas described in this report, including systems integration, use of open architecture, use of OCR, systems management, and technical support. Finally, you can see what each court regards as the advantages and disadvantages of imaging and the future plans.

VII.A. Summary

In California, the superior court has general jurisdiction over criminal and civil cases. The municipal court has jurisdiction over civil cases of less than $25,000; small claims; and traffic and criminal offenses such as driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, driving with a suspended license, misdemeanors, non-support, unlawful detainer, and felony preliminary hearings.

Relative to larger imaging sites in the state agencies and a corporation covered in Appendix A, the three California courts visited for this report use basic imaging. To their credit, they have identified and obtained the level of imaging that they need and are using it successfully. They share four essential attributes: imaging has fulfilled the need that motivated them to obtain it; imaging has met or exceeded their expectations; they have added unique features where necessary to enhance their operations; and they have strong management, user, and technical support. It is significant that two of the three courts avoid manual key entries in indexing scanned documents. While the three courts have several things in common, how they enter the documents into their case processing systems and what they do with the images differ.

The Riverside County Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts clerical staff keys information from civil pleadings into the case processing system, and the imaging section scans the pleadings and indexes them using an image key assigned by the computer. The pleadings are received over the counter or by facsimile transmission (fax) through the imaging system. This site has two exemplary features: (1) open architecture that allows the imaging system to work with various personal computers (PCs) and communications connections and (2) strong supervision of the imaging section that enhances system efficiency and data accuracy. The Riverside County courts purchased imaging to improve recordkeeping and document access efficiency and to provide better service to the public. These objectives have been realized, and, unexpectedly, imaging has helped the legal research assistants (law clerks) access documents more easily and rapidly. As a by-product, imaging will be the glue that holds recordkeeping together when records are dispersed to three locations because of seismic tests at the courthouse. The imaging system for civil cases in the superior court and three of the five Riverside County municipal courts cost about $392,000. By the time the other two municipal courts are implemented, the system will cost approximately $550,000.

When the Orange County Jury Commissioner adopted one day-one trial juror service, it was apparent that the old methods of data entry would be inadequate to handle the dramatically increased volume of completed juror questionnaires. These questionnaires accompany the juror summons and are completed and returned by prospective jurors. Imaging was the solution. The questionnaires are designed so that prospective jurors print their information in specific boxes, and the imaging system scans the completed questionnaires and uses optical character recognition (OCR) to convert the information in the boxes to data and enter it into the jury case processing system. This avoids key entry of juror information, and it has achieved the expected results of improved efficiency and increased accuracy. In addition to the OCR capability, this imaging project is notable for its strong technical support. The system cost about $70,000.

After relatively straightforward scanning of citations for traffic and non-traffic infractions and local ordinance violations augmented by a bar code reader for case numbers, the use of document images permeates the overall Orange County Central Municipal Court information system. The overall information system combines a group of systems that are integrated using windows on users’ PCs. The elements of this integration, in addition to the imaging system, are systems on large and intermediate-sized computers, desktop PC applications and software such as word processing and statistical reporting, and communications to other computers and information services. This, then, is the exemplary feature of the Orange County Municipal Court imaging system: it functions as a member of a multi-faceted and highly integrated information resource. Integration has enabled the municipal court to give the public "one-stop shopping" at a single location instead of passing a person around to several clerks for different types of service. For its part in the integrated process, imaging has achieved the objective of eliminating problems with manual document filing and retrieval and has permitted documents to be rapidly accessed and viewed in the integrated windows environment. The imaging system cost between $300,000 and $350,000.

In conducting the site visits, we received invaluable assistance from the following individuals:

Riverside County Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts
Garry Raley, Assistant Court Executive Officer
Stan Gobozy, Judicial Services Supervisor

Orange County Jury Commissioner
Kambiz Kamiab, Systems Programmer Analyst

Orange County Central Municipal Court
Robert Gray, Assistant Court Executive Officer
Lana Dinh, Systems Programmer Analyst
Patricia Duffy, Systems Programmer Analyst
Dee Velasco, Senior Office Supervisor

We appreciate their assistance and cooperation.

VII.B. Enterprise Descriptions

Management, imaging users, imaging technical personnel, and computer personnel contribute to imaging in the three courts.

In the Riverside County Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts, these activities are under the Executive Officer/Clerk. The imaging users and technical personnel and the computer personnel are under Mr. Raley, who is one of the two Assistant Executive Officer/Clerks. Mr. Gobozy supervises the seven-member imaging unit, and the imaging and computer system support are outsourced under a contract monitored by Mr. Raley. There are two levels of management, the Director of Court Operations and the Operations Manager, between Mr. Raley and Mr. Gobozy. The average imaging volumes are between 2,000 and 3,000 eight-page civil pleading documents scanned each day and between 10,000 and 20,000 imaged pages printed each week. The courts’ address and telephone number in Riverside County are

Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts of Riverside County
4050 Main Street
Riverside, CA 92501
909-275-5536.

The Orange County Superior Court Executive Officer is also the Jury Commissioner, and the 19-member jury unit, which scans between 700 and 1,000 summonses each day, is under the Manager of Jury Systems Services. This manager reports to one of the four Assistant Executive Officers. All imaging and computer technical support is provided by the Superior Court’s information systems unit, with contractor assistance if required. Mr. Kamiab is a member of the information systems unit. The address and telephone number are

Orange County Jury Commissioner’s Office
700 Civic Center Drive
Santa Ana, CA 92702
714-834-2380.

Imaging in the Orange County Central Municipal Court is under the Municipal Court Executive Officer and is managed by Mr. Gray, the Assistant Court Executive Officer. Several members of the 22-person Data Control unit scan the approximately 96,000 citations for traffic and non-traffic infractions and local ordinance violations that are filed annually. The 26 clerks in the Traffic/Minor Offense Division who deal with the public on these types of cases use the images as an integral part of the overall information system. Members of the Administration unit’s technical staff, with contractor assistance, support imaging and the municipal court computer equipment and software. Managers of the Data Control and Traffic/Minor Offense Divisions, as well as each member of the Administration unit, report to the Assistant Court Executive Officer. Some municipal court case processing is done on the Orange County mainframe, and the county information services staff and contractors support these systems. The court’s address and telephone number are

Orange County Central Municipal Court
700 Civic Center Drive West
Santa Ana, CA 92701
714-834-3571.

VII.C. Imaging Applications

The imaging application in each of the three visited sites is described as follows:

  • An overview of the events that led to the decision to use imaging and a summary of the functions of the imaging system and the equipment and software on which it runs;
  • Descriptions of the planning and implementation steps that accompanied imaging and the management controls used by the site;
  • Summaries of how the imaging system is operated and maintained;
  • Summaries of the advantages and disadvantages of imaging at the site; and
  • A description of the site’s plans for imaging in the future.

VII.C.1. Overviews

VII.C.1.a. Riverside County Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts

After discussing imaging with several vendors, the Riverside County Courts staff prepared imaging system specifications as a precursor to a request for proposals (RFP). They then prepared the RFP and issued it to a number of vendors. They received 14 responses, of which 4 were for proprietary systems and 10 were for systems with open architecture. The courts preferred open systems that would work with computer equipment and software (primarily PCs) already installed in Riverside County, thereby eliminating sizable additional purchases. Another important criterion was that the system be in use somewhere so that Riverside County court personnel could see it in operation. The few vendors that could meet the latter criterion were evaluated on their system’s scanning, indexing, retrieval, and printing features; its computer memory capacity; and the degree to which it could be expanded to process increasing caseloads and accommodate more users. This reduced the contenders to two, from which the Image-X Document Imaging System (IDIS) from Image-X was selected because of its indexing capabilities. The indexing capabilities would reduce indexing errors, and open architecture would allow the system to be used with the PCs (including IBM and various "generic" types) and network connections already installed. This process consumed most of 1991, and IDIS became operational in mid-1992.

Civil pleadings are received at the counter or by fax, entered into a case processing system that runs on a Data General mid-range computer, and assigned an image key by the case processing system. Later, the documents are scanned into IDIS, automatically indexed using the image key, subjected to quality assurance checks, and stored on optical disk. The images are then available for retrieval by clerk’s office staff, legal research personnel, judges, and other court personnel as they work on cases.

As shown in Figure 8 (the computer and network diagram), the Riverside County courts imaging system consists of the following:

  • Scanning with seven Data General PCs running under Windows, a scanner for each PC, a Data General print server with a Canon printer, and a Data General Aviion display terminal;
  • Optical storage using two Data General jukeboxes running under OpStar with a total capacity of 64 billion characters;
  • Document retrieval using a Data General Aviion file server running under Unix;
  • Document display for users with Data General Aviion display terminals (civil clerks), IBM PCs (secretaries), and a variety of other devices on the local area networks (LANs) described below;
  • Document display for other users (e.g., legal researchers and judges) who have gateway communications from their PCs into the LANs described below; and
  • IDIS software consisting of a data processing application database (called Progress), image compression and decompression, image viewing, and optical file management (called Management Information Network Data Service, or MINDS).

Together, these components provide the capability to scan documents, store and retrieve images, link them to data processing applications, display and print them, compress them for more efficient storage and communications, and decompress them for display.

Other equipment and software shown in the diagram are used in imaging and for other purposes. The functions of this equipment and software in imaging are as follows:

  • Case processing on the courts’ Data General MV30000 mainframe computer running under Data General’s AOS/VS2 operating system with eight billion characters of disk storage;
  • Communications to connect the imaging system to the mainframe using an Ethernet network over fiber optic lines using the TCP/IP protocol;
  • Token ring local area network (LAN) between the mainframe and its local users; and
  • Communications to remote court sites in Corona, the county farm, and desert locations using Ethernet over T-1 lines.

The Riverside County Courts use two civil case processing systems: an old system, called Court Management System (CMS), and a more recent system, called Genesis. The primary system used with imaging is Genesis, and except for the remainder of this paragraph, the procedures described herein apply to IDIS and Genesis. CMS is used only for judgments and orders pertaining to old cases that were not converted to Genesis. Unless a hearing results from the CMS judgment or order, the document is imaged into the IDIS Progress database. When a hearing results, the case is entered into the Genesis database and scanned into the system in the normal manner.

Figure 8: County of Riverside--Superior Court Computer and Network Diagram

VII.C.1.b. Orange County Jury Commissioner’s Office

The Orange County Jury Commissioner’s Office began looking at imaging in early 1993 as a solution to an expected dramatic increase in juror data entry and recordkeeping. Jurors had been serving at least one day each week over a period of four weeks, and they were paid for each day they reported for duty. The court estimated that it could save approximately $500,000 annually by calling jurors for either one day or one trial, thereby reducing the number of jurors who reported but were not impaneled on a jury. One day-one trial juror service would at least double the number of jurors summoned, and help was needed entering information supplied by jurors on returned summonses into the Unicorn Jury+ automated jury management system. This led to a requirements analysis and implementation plan, from which five candidate systems were identified. The Image Forms Processing System (IFPS) from Wheb Systems was selected and became operational in mid-1993.

IFPS scans the questionnaire part of the returned juror summons forms, uses OCR to convert the scanned images in specific boxes on the form into data, edits the data, alerts the user to data that may have problems, and enters data that pass the edit tests into Jury+.

IFPS is a turnkey software system that runs on a PC with 16 million characters of memory, 500 million characters of disk storage, a 21-inch, high-resolution color monitor, a Mytech image recognition device, a Fugitsu scanner, and Windows workgroup software. One workstation currently is being used for both data entry and editing, but a second workstation was purchased because data entry and editing can be performed more efficiently on separate workstations. The Jury Commissioner’s Office used a third-party systems integrator to configure and procure this hardware and software.

While IFPS functions as a stand-alone system most of the time, it is connected to an Everex workstation in the Novell LAN on which Jury+ runs. This permits IFPS to transfer juror data to the Jury+ database that resides on the LAN’s Compaq server.

VII.C.1.c. Orange County Central Municipal Court

Imaging was prompted in the Orange County Central Municipal Court by a combination of the high caseloads that are typical of municipal courts and the lure of grant funding for innovative projects (which an imaging project was when the idea originated in 1988). While this exposure to imaging sold the court, the funding did not materialize as expected. Nevertheless, the court moved ahead and selected traffic cases for imaging because of their high volume, short duration from filing to disposition, and simplicity. They concluded that these conditions offered the best chance for success and monetary savings. The court issued an RFP in December 1990. In addition to the court’s imaging workload and implementation strategy, the RFP described the reduced funding available for the project. After an evaluation of the five responses to the RFP, Adaptive Information Systems (AIS), which specializes in Hitachi imaging products, was selected in early 1991. The AIS imaging system, called AdaptFile, became operational in early 1992.

In the Central Municipal Court, imaging is only one part of a multi-faceted court information system that also embraces case processing; statistical reporting; desktop applications such as word processing and spreadsheets; legal research; and communications with state and local agencies. The information system is integrated through the capabilities of Windows on user PCs and includes a mid-range municipal court computer and a large-scale Orange County computer.

Citations, amendments, and correspondence are scanned in a two-step process. First, the documents are scanned in the normal manner. Then, the case number, which has been bar-coded on the citation (please see the bottom of the Sample Citation shown in Figure 9), is read as data with a "gun" that scans the bar code. The operator’s display shows the imaged citation on the left and the entered case number on the right. This process yields the index key for both the imaged document in the imaging system and the case in the case processing system. Images are stored on magnetic disk until the end of the day when they are committed to optical disk and become available to the integrated information system.

Figure 9: Sample Citation with Bar Code

Figure 10: Orange County Central Municipal Court Computer System

As shown in Figure 10, the integrated information system consists of the following parts:

  • Imaging, which runs on a PC-based token ring LAN with optical image, optical print, database, and network servers; Novell network software; workstations for scanning functions and to access information from the case processing system; a 20-inch high-resolution monitor; a bulk-feed scanner for citations; a flat-bed scanner for correspondence and odd-sized documents; a scanning "gun"; three laser printers; and the AdaptFile software. This network is connected to the overall information system by a communications bridge (a device to connect networks) to one of the system’s other networks (described below). AIS developed most AdaptFile software, and Hitachi software controls the imaging equipment. The system uses the Oracle database software.
  • Municipal Court case processing systems that include the Case Tracking and Calendaring System (TrACS) running on a court IBM AS/400 mid-range computer and the Municipal Court System (MCS) running on the county IBM 3090. MCS supports all five municipal courts in Orange County, and TrACS works with MCS to support Central Municipal Court case processing. These systems work with data as opposed to images.
  • Overall communications, controlled by the AS/400, between token ring LANs that support imaging (described above), user workstations, and external communications; between these LANs and the Ethernet network to which some other court personnel are connected; and between the AS/400 and county 3090 computer.
  • Approximately 175 PC workstations for the following system users:
    • Court staff to display, in separate windows, information from any part of the integrated system (e.g., document images, case processing system data, legal research information, word processing documents, and spreadsheets). These PCs are IBM-compatible, are connected through a token ring LAN, and run under Windows.
    • Judges to access case information and conduct legal research. These PCs are IBM-compatible, are on the same token ring LAN as some of the court staff described above, and run under OS/2.
    • Other court staff for desktop applications and to access the information system. These IBM PCs are connected by a legacy Ethernet network, and this network is connected to one of the token ring networks by a communications bridge (a device to connect networks).
  • Data entry terminals connected to the system through one of the token ring networks.
  • Other applications and software running on either the AS/400 or the 3090 such as IBM’s Officevision office automation system (running on both computers) and various customized applications (e.g., cashiering system running on AS/400).

VII.C.2. Planning, Implementation, and Management

The overriding reason the three courts adopted imaging was to improve their service to the public. In 1990 and 1991, when the Riverside County Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts and the Orange County Central Municipal Court were considering imaging, it was a risky, high-cost venture for a publicly funded agency--particularly one with high visibility such as a court. These courts were acutely aware that, when the first document was imaged, there would be no turning back. While improved public service is a noble objective, it is almost impossible to justify the cost. So the prevailing sentiment in those two courts regarding imaging was, "It better work." The courts could not have their records floating around in an electronic nether world. To their credit, the imaging advocates forged ahead and were supported by their management. Their perseverance paid off. Imaging worked.

Things were not as tenuous in the Orange County Jury Commissioner’s Office because the use of imaging, while crucial to operations, was more limited, and the technology had reached greater maturity by 1993 when the commissioner's office turned to it. Nevertheless, the potential users of imaging in the office resisted it; they did not trust imaging. To counter this, Mr. Kamiab analyzed imaging and used his findings to explain the technology and its advantages to the users. They were sold, and the resistance disappeared.

Although each court planned for imaging and prepared specifications for the prospective system, each had different approaches and experiences along the way.

  • The Riverside County Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts implemented only new or amended complaints, motions, judgments, and unlawful detainers for civil cases because they thought civil offered more cost advantages than criminal cases. They proceeded methodically through implementation and imaged only those documents filed after implementation--no existing records were converted to images. Predictably, implementation proceeded slowly and no improvements were noted for about six months. Then the positive effects of imaging began to appear. Now, some two years after the system became operational, imaging is a readily accepted way of life with about 80 percent of the civil cases in the system. A major legal issue confronted by the court during planning and implementation was the admissibility of imaged documents. The county’s judges and court executive officer resolved the issue.
  • The Orange County Jury Commissioner’s Office prepared a requirements analysis, procurement plan, and implementation plan and proceeded with the procurement. The system equipment was installed by Hershey Business Systems, the integrator, and the software installation and training were conducted by Wheb Systems, the software vendor. The entire project is described by Mr. Kamiab as "very smooth."
  • The Orange County Central Municipal Court addressed implementation in detail only after the imaging contract had been awarded to AIS. After apprising the vendor of the court’s needs, the court and the vendor jointly planned the imaging implementation, including how to integrate imaging into the existing computers, software, and networks. The court had developed benchmarks for imaging system performance, and the staff worked with AIS to ensure the system met those benchmarks. AIS provided training. The new imaging system was used concurrently with the old manual system for about two months. During this period, the manual system remained the primary system. There was no file conversion because the system was being used for traffic cases, which usually are short-lived.
    The ability to switch between screens generated by different parts of the Central Municipal Court’s information system (e.g., imaging, case processing, and word processing) was crucial then, as it is now. In the initial implementation, which was before Windows was available, swapping between PC screens and AS/400 screens was cumbersome. This made it difficult for clerks working with PCs at the counter to view document images and data from the TrACS and MCS case processing systems. The problem was never completely resolved by AIS until it was addressed with Windows and software called Rumba/400. Now PC users can switch, in the normal Windows manner, between screens from the AS/400 and any other parts of the information system that have been moved into windows on the PC.

The executive officer in each of the three courts strongly supports the imaging project, and this has been, and continues to be, crucial to the success of each project. Formal approval for imaging was obtained from the judges and executive officer for the Riverside County courts project, the executive officer for the Orange County jury project, and the assistant executive officer for the Orange County municipal court project. All counties illustrated progressive management, as will be seen below in a summary of their plans for the future, and strong technical support. The Riverside and Orange County courts continue to work closely with their vendors. Contact with the vendor has declined in the Orange County jury project since that system is more self-contained and more readily maintained in-house. The Riverside County site afforded a unique opportunity to appreciate the painstaking work necessary to make sure the images are accurate and of high quality and to maintain the operational efficiency of the system. It does not run by itself. Mr. Gobozy (the document imaging supervisor) spends much of his time working on quality assurance and system housekeeping. He submits to his managers a weekly statistical report of documents and pages imaged.

VII.C.3. Operations and Maintenance

In each court, a specific workgroup scans documents. The sizes of the scanning groups range from one or two people in the Orange County jury operation to seven people in the Riverside County courts. Court clerks, jury clerks, and other court personnel use the document images with information from case processing and jury management systems as they formerly used manually filed case records with information from the systems.

Each court maintains the imaging system using a combination of court and vendor staff. Given their small technical staff and mostly outsourced computer support, the Riverside County courts obtain maintenance primarily from Data General, the computer vendor who also supplied some of the imaging equipment; Image-X, the imaging vendor; or ISD, the outsourcer. They report no problems with this arrangement. The Orange County municipal court’s situation is similar but less complex for two reasons: first, it has more in-house staff than the Riverside County courts; second, it has fewer principal vendors. AIS, as the imaging vendor, works with court staff to maintain the imaging system. IBM performs a similar function with respect to the computer equipment and software. Things are simpler with the predominantly stand-alone Orange County jury imaging system. Mr. Kamiab handles most of the maintenance, and he calls on Wheb or the appropriate equipment vendor if he needs help.

VII.C.4. Advantages and Disadvantages

In general, imaging has given the three courts more efficient operations, enabled them to serve the public better, and helped them to continue functioning successfully in these days of tight budgets. To varying degrees, the courts have derived the following specific benefits from imaging:

  • Easier, more rapid, and more accurate document entry and access by the public, court clerks, attorneys, and judges. A few examples are:
    • The Riverside County courts have experienced unexpectedly heavy use by research attorneys, who use the imaging system to access and review documents on their PCs, thereby saving the time formerly required to walk to the clerk’s office and retrieve documents.
    • In Riverside County, the public can use equipment in the clerk’s office to view a list of documents that have been imaged, select on the screen the desired document(s), cause the document(s) to be printed, and pay for the document(s) at the cashier’s window.
    • In the Orange County jury unit, quality assurance has introduced a second check of the completed juror questionnaires, with a corresponding increase in accuracy of the data being entered into Jury+.
  • Better document tracking and fewer lost documents, such as in the Orange County municipal court where imaging eliminated misfiled and lost documents.
  • Cost savings and avoidance as follows:
    • In the Riverside County courts, at least four additional clerical staff positions and probably two more research attorneys would have been needed at a total annual cost of approximately $280,000.
    • Dramatically reduced time spent by Riverside County courts staff retrieving documents from manual files and dealing with people who need them.
    • Elimination of an entire eight-hour shift of temporary workers who formerly key-entered Orange County juror questionnaire responses at a cost of approximately $21,000 each quarter.
    • Expectations in the Orange County jury unit that the imaging system will pay for itself in about 12-14 months.
    • In the Orange County municipal court, impressive savings in staff time by eliminating misfiled and lost documents and in floor space by reducing paper document storage.
    • Capability in the Orange County municipal court to avoid hiring new personnel by reassigning staff, who became available because of imaging, to other duties.

By-products of imaging were initiatives to define the legality of imaged documents in the Riverside and Orange County courts; document filing by fax transmission through the imaging system in the Riverside County courts; and the aforementioned use of imaging to hold recordkeeping together while the Riverside County courts are dispersed during seismic tests at the courthouse.

In general, the disadvantages of imaging were typical of the problems encountered whenever new computer equipment and software are implemented--tinkering usually is necessary to get everything to work together properly. Like most organizations entering a new phase of computer use, the courts tended to underestimate the complexity of imaging--particularly when combined with existing computers and systems. In addition to the Orange County municipal court’s problem switching between AS/400 screens and other information system screens on user PCs (which was solved by Windows and Rumba/400), specific problems encountered by other courts were the following in Riverside County:

  • The retrieved images of documents stored on optical disk sometimes differed from the actual document;
  • Image transfer from magnetic disk to the optical disk jukebox occasionally was unreliable; and
  • Because of image system software enhancements over the years, the system would not accept documents that exceed 256 pages unless they were separated into multiple "documents."

VII.C.5. The Future

Given their progressive leadership, the three courts are not resting on their imaging laurels. They have plans for the future:

  • The Riverside County Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts envision a paperless court in which pleadings are input by fax; attorneys access the court systems from computers in their offices; the public obtains information from court systems through inquiry devices in court facilities or perhaps other public places; payments to the court are made through credit cards or some other type of electronic funds transfer; the ubiquitous "information highway" is used to communicate with other courts and agencies nationwide; and information from case processing systems, text from word processing systems, and document images from imaging systems are easily integrated. Imaging clearly would play a major role in such courts. An example of data and image integration would be to superimpose electronically information retrieved from the case processing system onto a blank imaged form to produce an official imaged document, which then could be printed. (Please see Delaware Division of Corporations report in Appendix A.)
  • The Orange County Superior Court has ambitious plans for a new, totally integrated case processing system that includes a full-scale imaging capability. As for the jury unit, it plans to enhance its imaging system to retain the imaged summonses on optical disk. These images currently are discarded after the personal information from the summonses have been scanned and transferred to Jury+.
  • The Orange County Central Municipal Court plans to add workflow, remote scanning, and incoming fax to its imaging system. Workflow will be the main feature of the next imaging system release from AIS. Remote scanning and incoming fax will permit a case to be scanned by the agency that first encounters it (usually law enforcement), and workflow could be expanded beyond the court to cause the case to be routed to law enforcement, the prosecutor, the courts, corrections, probation, and other agencies as it proceeds to disposition. In addition, the court plans to expand imaging to civil and small claims cases, consolidate the IBM AS/400-based TrACS and IBM 3090-based MCS case processing systems, and modify its system so that (1) annotations can be made to images and (2) images can be committed to optical disk on line without interrupting imaging network operations.

VII.D. Detailed System Descriptions

VII.D.1. Riverside County Consolidated Superior/Municipal Courts

The court clerk’s staff receives civil pleadings and other documents from the public and keys them into the Genesis case processing system. This causes Genesis to assign the next available image identification key number to identify a specific document. The clerk then manually annotates the case number on the document and creates a manual case file if the document represents a new case. At the end of the day, all documents are grouped according to whether they are judgments, new complaints, answers, proof of service or summonses, amended or cross complaints, motions, orders, or stipulations. Then they are placed in their respective bins for imaging. The next morning, the imaging operator assigned to each bin picks up the documents in that bin, accesses Genesis and uses the case number to obtain the image identification key number, scans the document into the IDIS imaging system under that number, and verifies the scanning by checking the image against the document. A split screen display appears on the operator’s PC with the IDIS image on the left and Genesis data on the right, and the operator can "click" (i.e., go back and forth) between these windows. When the document has been successfully scanned, that fact is entered in the Genesis window.

Faxed filings were authorized about one year ago, and the court has adopted procedures to process them. When there is an incoming fax, the imaging operator at the PC that can accept the fax switches from normal work to the fax mode. Because only one fax currently can be processed at a time, the fax is printed and given to a court clerk at the counter. The clerk uses Genesis to determine fees due and whether the filing is timely based on any hearing scheduled for the case. If the document is acceptable for filing, the clerk assesses the fees using the filing party’s credit card number and files the document by entering information from it into Genesis. Then the clerk associates the document (which already is in imaged form because it was faxed) with the Genesis image identification key number and, unless there is a problem that necessitates re-scanning, notes that the document has been successfully fax-filed.

The court plans to install in the civil clerk’s section four PCs capable of receiving fax transmissions. This will eliminate the imaging section from the above process and would obviate the need to print the faxed documents under normal circumstances.

At this point, in both the normal over-the-counter and faxed civil filings, information from the documents has been entered into Genesis, and the documents have been scanned and automatically indexed. They have not been stored on optical disk, which is done after the documents have passed quality assurance checks.

Quality assurance is conducted in the imaging section. It consists of searching summary lists of imaged documents for information that may indicate errors. Some errors can be detected by IDIS, and they are explicitly noted on the lists. Others are detected by alternative methods such as noting excessively high character counts for a given page. Errors usually can be corrected in the imaging section.

When a document has passed quality assurance, IDIS commits it to optical disk by transferring it from the PC to the jukebox that is then active. This gives rise to one final test in which data pertaining to documents transferred to the jukebox are examined for irregularities.

VII.D.2. Orange County Jury Commissioner’s Office

The juror selection process begins when, based on the number of prospective jurors needed by the superior and municipal courts, individuals’ names are selected randomly from Orange County voter registration and driver records. This service is provided by a computer processing contractor, who sends the names to the courts, where they are entered into the Jury+ jury management system. About ten weeks before each quarter begins, the courts decide the number of jurors needed during the quarter for each court date in the five superior and municipal court locations. Jury+ randomly selects the prescribed number of jurors for each date and court. This information is sent to a business forms contractor who prints and mails the summonses (see Figure 11).

As in the sample summons, prospective jurors print their responses in specific boxes of the questionnaire and return the summonses. These completed forms are batched and fed into the IFPS imaging system, which accomplishes the scanning, processing, editing, data transfer, and reporting functions selectable from the IFPS Function Bar shown in Figure 12.

First, IFPS scans each form of the batch and produces an image of the form. Overnight, the system looks at each scanned image and, based on the clarity of the information in the boxes on each form, calculates the accuracy confidence level (set at 80 percent for this application) for each completed part of the form. The next morning, as shown in the sample Juror Questionnaire Display (Figure 13), IFPS highlights those parts of each form that are below the 80 percent confidence level. The operator reviews and, if necessary, edits these forms. Occasionally, a form is so poorly written that it must be reentered. Forms for which all boxes are above the 80 percent confidence level are not displayed. Parts of displayed forms above the confidence level require no further action and are not highlighted. IFPS then uses optical character recognition (OCR) to convert the information in the boxes on each form to data records and transfer the records into Jury+, which handles the remaining juror management, recordkeeping, and financial functions. As the operator progresses through these tasks, he or she activates the IFPS functions using the function bar shown above.

IFPS has been programmed to scan information in the boxes at specific locations on the summons questionnaire. Except for the bar-coded juror identification number, which is preentered on the form, the information must be printed clearly in capital letters using blue or black ink. Instead of the more generic term OCR, the vendor prefers to refer to the imaging technique as intelligent character recognition (ICR). Given the use of handwriting, others prefer to call it optical handwritten character recognition (OHCR). Regardless of its designation, the scanned information is converted to data format so that it can be automatically input into Jury+, which processes data as opposed to images. Please note that this is the only imaging system covered in this report that has data, not images, as its primary output. Since the accuracy of OCR scanning and image-to-data conversion are largely functions of the clarity with which the letters and numbers appear on the page, Mr. Kamiab conducted a benchmark test to analyze the accuracy and overall performance of IFPS. His results were as follows:

  • IFPS scanned a batch of 122 forms in about 7 1/2 minutes, or about 4 seconds per form;
  • Out of 8,595 fields (age and home phone number are examples of fields) scanned, 6,944 were scanned correctly, for an 81 percent recognition rate;
  • The confidence level computed by IFPS for the remaining 1,651 fields fell below the 80 percent minimum confidence level established by the jury unit, which means that they would be displayed to the operator for possible edits;
  • The average correction time for errors found during the edit was 15 seconds for each form originally scanned; and
  • The average time to convert the scanned information into data records and transfer them to Jury+ was 14 records per second.

Figure 11: Juror Summons/Questionnaire

 

Figure 12: Orange County Jury Commissioner's Office--IFPS Function Bar

Figure 13: Orange County Jury Commissioner's Office--IFPS Juror Questionnaire Display

VII.D.3. Orange County Central Municipal Court

After citations, amendments, and correspondence are edited, scanned, automatically indexed, stored on magnetic disk, and committed to optical disk as described earlier in this report, their images are available to the integrated information system. Most facilities strive for integration of data from data processing systems, text from word processing systems, and document images from imaging systems across communications lines in a manner that can readily be used. In its purest sense, integration means viewing data, text, and documents together and being able to join selected parts of each to form a consolidated document.

The Orange County Central Municipal Court information system does not achieve this ultimate form of integration, but its level of integration is nevertheless impressive. As shown in the Municipal Court "House" diagram (see Figure 14), the municipal court has brought information from different computers, networks, and systems under the same "roof." Each user’s PC can have programs from the imaging system, the court IBM AS/400 computer, the county IBM 3090 computer, PCs around the courthouse, and outside information services running concurrently. In computer jargon, these programs are called "sessions," as in an imaging "session" or an AS/400 "session." As shown in the system schematic earlier in this report, this integration is possible primarily because of the interlocking communications networks and the fact that the sessions are running in different windows.

When a litigant comes to the municipal court counter, for example, he or she may need information or may have something to file in connection with an open case. In order to serve the person, the clerk--who is on a token ring LAN--may need to use the AS/400 TrACS or 3090 MCS case management systems, the AS/400 cashiering system, the AdaptFile imaging system running on the imaging LAN, and the statistical system running on the Ethernet LAN. The clerk can put sessions from all of these on his or her PC concurrently and then, using the PC’s mouse, "click" (i.e., go back and forth) between these sessions or display several of them at one time in smaller windows. This relieves the clerk of the cumbersome process of backtracking out of one session and working into another session, or perhaps even worse, sending the litigant to several counters for different types of service. It clearly enables the clerk to give the litigant faster, more accurate, and more complete service.

Figure 14: Orange County Central Municipal Court Technology Systems

VII.E. Conclusions

The three courts reached the same basic conclusion on their imaging: it satisfied their needs (1) to improve the service that they give the public, (2) to function more efficiently, and (3) to handle increasing caseloads with little or no budget increases. Their collective advice to other courts contemplating imaging is reflected in the summary at the end of Chapter Three.

In addition to those points, the experiences of the three courts suggest one final word of advice: Avoid unrealistic expectations and politics. Of all the recommendations compiled from the site visits, this one may be the most difficult to follow. If you successfully incorporate the rest of the advice--particularly the points about management and user involvement--and communicate effectively throughout the project, you may be

able to avoid unrealistic expectations and politics. But we all know that sometimes people hear what they want to hear. So do not despair. None of the sites we visited could claim perfection in their approach to imaging or in the implementation of their system; yet all were successful in their endeavor.

Finally, in closing, if the above considerations lead you to imaging, jump in. It is true that the technology will be better tomorrow. It is true that there will be more vendors to choose from tomorrow. And it is true that tomorrow you may find a system that meets 98 percent of your needs instead of today’s 96 percent. But if you need it today, start down the path today. The way computer technology moves, all of those things that are true about tomorrow will be true about tomorrow’s tomorrow.