About the Technology Division

Through its work with national and international courts, justice partners, and other NCSC divisions, the Technology Division identifies, synthesizes, models, and tests court technology and associated business process, data, design, and implementation alternatives that have potential applicability to the wider court community. The Technology Division has responsibility for analyses, recommendations, and support to the major national court technology advisory and policy bodies, including the Joint Technology Committee (JTC), the Chief Information Technology Officers’ Consortium (CITOC), COSCA, FACT, and NACM. The Technology Division is the primary NCSC resource for synthesizing, vetting, developing, implementing, and disseminating technology solutions to address the business needs of courts, including information sharing with justice partners and the use of court technology for improvement of court processing and judicial, administrative, and clerk of court decision making. The Technology Division presents major national technology education and conference opportunities for courts and provides Help Desk assistance for GJXDM related questions from courts.

The Technology Division encourages collaborative planning, implementation, and evaluation of technology solutions among all levels of courts, court business experts, court technology experts and vendors. The overall goal of the division is to proliferate the use of common, re-usable technology components and standards among courts and other justice entities as appropriate to address court business needs and court decision making, resource allocation and acquisition, and public accountability. Reusable components minimize the cost, effort, and length of time required by courts to initiate technology in support of the business needs of courts to:

• enhance case processing efficiency and effectiveness;
• achieve reliable, comparable, high quality data that allows judges, clerks, and administrators to identify and resolve roadblocks to effectiveness, efficiency and fair, accessible justice by all participants in court activities; and,
• give judges, clerks, and administrators feedback on alternatives proven successful in other courts to fulfill court obligations and affect actions to enhance effectiveness, efficiency and public trust and confidence.

Dr. Clarke has worked in federal and state government positions for the last twenty years as a researcher, applied statistician and technology manager. He also has academic and international justice consulting experience. For the last nine years, Tom worked in the court community as a researcher, state court CIO and now as the Research and Technology Vice President at the National Center for State Courts. In recent years, he has represented the courts on several national technical standards committees and Washington State IT governance and architecture committees. Tom has a strong interest in the use of open national standards, enterprise architecture and service-oriented architectures and their contribution to the solution of significant justice business problems.

Contact information: tclarke@ncsc.org

Mr. Embley has 23 years of experience focused on managing private sector and government IT projects. He now serves as Chief Information Officer for the NCSC. Prior to joining the Center, he was a resource to many national and international agencies on standards and information sharing. He has been an advisor to National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) groups and served as chair to several technical committees, including the NIEM Business Architecture Committee; the Global Justice XML Task Force; the GJXDM Training and Technical Assistance Committee; and the Management and Policy Committee for the Global Infrastructure & Standards Working Group.

Contact information: pembley@ncsc.org

Ms. Graski has international experience in resolving data and XML markup errors in case law documents as well as quality and training expertise for data-conversion projects. She has managed resources and schedules to design, develop, deliver, and evaluate computer-based employee-training programs to support new editorial functions, workflows, and desktop tools.

Contact information: (757) 259-1831 or dgraski@ncsc.org

Mr. Harris joined the National Center for State Courts in January, 2006 after more than twenty-five years working in court technology in the public and private sectors. He specializes in development and implementation of court case management systems where he has served as a developer, analyst, technical architect, project manager, and chief technology officer. In addition to the technical aspects of court case management systems, Mr. Harris is knowledgeable about court business process functions and the application of technology in support of those functions. Jim has served as a technology advisor to various justice agencies, most prominently for the Clerk of Courts in Orange County, Florida. Recent projects have included advisory and planning roles in electronic court filing, judicial dashboards, business intelligence, and web services for integrated justice information exchange. Mr. Harris has been an active participant and contributor to national standards initiatives for case management systems and electronic court filing.

Contact information: (757) 259-1804 or jharris@ncsc.org

Mr. Jim McMillan joined the National Center for State Courts in October, 1990 and currently serves as a Principle Court Technology Consultant. Mr. McMillan is senior faculty for the Institute for Court Management, and has provided technical assistance for trial and appellate courts and administrative offices in all 50 states in the USA. Notable consulting projects include the United States Supreme Court, Arkansas, and Massachusetts Supreme Court, and statewide court automation projects with Rhode Island, Maine, New Jersey, and South Carolina. Internationally, Mr. McMillan has provided expertise to courts in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bahamas, Croatia, Egypt, Trinidad & Tobago, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal. As Director of the Court Technology Laboratory for eleven years he was the co-recipient of the Howell Heflin Outstanding Project Award from the State Justice Institute and was co-founder of Courtroom 21 with the College of William and Mary School of Law. He is co-author of A Guidebook for Electronic Court Filing and a contributing author to Caseflow Management: The Heart of Court Management in the New Millennium.

Contact information: (757) 259-1839 or jmcmillan@ncsc.org