Please note that these materials are provided for historical purposes only. The information presented is out of date and may be neither accurate nor useful. External hyperlinks may no longer be valid. For current court technology information, please see the new Court Technology Bulletin.
Volume 10 Number 1, January/February
1998
Reflections on Technology in the Courts
What impact has technology had on the courts? What does the future hold? We asked several representatives from the private and public sectors to answer five questions related to court technology. Here are excepts and high lights. The complete responses can be found on the NCSC's Web site at http://www.ncsc.dni.us/ncsc/bulletin/outlook/outlook.htm.
In addition, we are very interested in what you think. The NCSC has created a Web Discussion Board that you can use to exchange your ideas with others. All you need is a Web browser and something to say! So, during April and May 1998 you can share your thoughts on the NCSC Discussion Board by clicking on the NCSC Icon located at http://www.ncsc.dni.us/ncsc/bulletin/outlook/outlook.htm (This link is no longer valid. The text of the link remains for historical reference.).
| 1. Which technologies have the most promise for connecting courts to the public? | |
Dennis
Miller |
"There are two technology categories which hold the most promise," Dennis Miller responds. "First are remote electronic access tools, including using touch-tone telephone, dial-up, and Web browser access methods. Electronic filing--both PC and kiosk--not only moves a part of the data input burden outside of the court but also increases customer satisfaction. The second technology category that addresses a critical public access need is data warehousing. Properly implemented, a data warehouse provides transparent, common-interface access to the desired data, independent of source, original format, or ownership of the data." |
C.
Sue Willoughby |
Sue Willoughby thinks that the most promising technologies to connect courts to the public are Internet and intranet technologies and the new network stations or thin clients. "We [the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts] are currently working with nine state agencies in developing a criminal justice network called JNET for Pennsylvania. We will be using the Internet and intranets and will develop good security techniques and policies. If the courts and the other criminal justice agencies had to wait for the funds for new equipment and networks, we would not be able to share information soon. We use the Internet to provide the most current forms to the public and attorneys. Since the District Justice System has dumb terminals instead of PCs, we will be testing some of the new network stations. This could provide the functionality we need without the costly drain on resources." |
Darryl Evans |
Darryl Evans predicts that by the year 2001, the Internet will be the method for the public to communicate with organizations such as courts. He notes that "interactive voice response (IVR) systems are easily accessible to the public, but lack the rich content available from other mediums." He also points out that kiosks have been very helpful in disseminating rich information to the public, but that their success has been limited by hardware costs and the limited geographical scope that each unit can service. |
Curtis
L. DeClue, Director |
Curtis DeClue believes that "the justice community has only begun to 'scratch the surface' of the Internet's potential as a tool not only for communication, but for conducting the business of the courts. Currently some of the most exciting initiatives in court technology involve the use of the Internet for electronic filing of small claims, jury pool management, and payment of parking violations." |
| 2. How has the Internet influenced the way courts conduct business? | |
John
D. Ferry |
"Overall, I don’t believe that the Internet has influenced the manner in which courts have done business," says John Ferry. "The Internet does have the potential for enhancing the delivery of information to and from courts through the use of electronic filing and e-mail and for making courts and their regular users somewhat more efficient. But these enhancements are just what they are--more efficient ways to do essentially the same thing, faster." |
James
R. Hargreaves |
Jim Hargreaves similarly believes that the Internet has yet to have any substantial impact on the way most courts do business. "Of the thousands of state, county, and municipal courts in the United States, there are about two hundred with Web pages collected on the link maintained by the National Center for State Courts. For the majority of the courts that have Web pages, it appears that they are used primarily for supplying operating information, such as court location, contact telephone numbers, court rules, etc. A few courts have interactive Web sites, such as the City of Seattle Municipal Court, where a person can pay a parking ticket over the Internet with a credit card." |
Moira
O'Leary Rowley |
Moira Rowley has a somewhat different perspective. "In addition to providing courts with the means to widely disseminate timely and accurate information, the Internet provides a platform for interaction between the courts and their many customers, public and private." But she too points out that "this platform is only beginning to be explored in areas such as electronic filing through Web-enabled applications, automated notice generation tied to case management systems, and intranets that pull together previously separated systems, agencies, and people." |
David
L. Mower, Judge |
In David Mower's view, "To the extent that the Internet has fostered the use of e-mail, there has been a significant influence on the way courts conduct their own internal business. E-mail reduces the need to play 'telephone tag' and fosters communication by allowing an idea to be conceived, articulated, and communicated in a matter of seconds." |
Arthur
Sims |
Arthur Sims thinks that the most positive influence of the Internet has been the introduction of a universal standard computer interface. "Before the widespread acceptance of the Internet browser, every computer system had a different user interface. The interfaces were as unique as the person or company that wrote the software. The Internet has now defined the user interface that will be used into the future. The courts' current challenge is to provide court data (cases, calendar, document images, etc.) within the browser interface. The browser and the communication infrastructure are the biggest contributions the Internet has made to the distribution of electronic court information." |
| 3. How can technology improve public trust and confidence in the courts? | |
| The times are certainly changing if we can consider technology as a facilitator of public trust," Evans observes. "The efficient access to information can instill greater confidence and at the same time breed public mistrust if significant measures are not enacted to secure sensitive information." | |
| According to Miller, "any institution that can provide more timely and complete services and products will achieve greater acceptance by the public. We should all be mindful, however, that computers do not decide cases. Public trust and confidence in courts involves a broader agenda." | |
| Sims reminds us that the jury process is an area that has high public contact: "More of the public is exposed to the jury system each year than to any other area of the court. The efficiency and level of technology used in jury operation will have a lasting impression on the public. Its operation will either instill trust and confidence or eliminate it." | |
| Ferry feels that technology can improve public trust and confidence by providing better access to information about the work of the courts and about cases pending before courts, as well as by allowing litigants and other clients electronic access to information about their own cases. "The effective, efficient, and responsible use of technology for enforcement and other critical court functions (such as delivery of records and information, enforcement of sanctions, conduct of trials and hearings, etc.)" also will contribute to enhanced public trust and confidence. | |
| 4. What types of information systems should courts focus on? | |
| "This is kind of like asking, 'What kind of new car should judges focus on?'" Hargreaves responds. "I think in both cases the answer is, 'It depends on what you want to do with it.' Once the court has a good management system in place, then it can drive other systems, such as automated voice response, information kiosks, Internet connections, etc." | |
| "Open, open, open," repeats Rowley. "Widely accepted standards of data, language, and protocols make it not just possible, but eminently feasible to link a myriad of complementary systems and deploy integrated solutions within the court environment. The extent to which these solutions are available to the courts and the expense of integrating those technologies depend primarily upon the courts’ selection of open, standard technologies." | |
J. Douglas Walker |
Doug
Walker agrees with Rowley: "Courts should work to
develop increasingly open and flexible information
systems that not only can capture, organize, and retrieve
a variety of information types, but also can exchange
data effectively with other agencies and entities.
Computerized court information increasingly will consist
of photographs, document images, an assortment of other
graphics, fingerprints, audio, and full-motion video, in
addition to the usual character-oriented data
fields. Information systems must have the ability
to integrate a mixture of information types in an
electronic case file." |
| Willoughby also agrees. "Courts should focus on open systems that are flexible and can be easily adapted to accommodate the frequent changes required by rules and statute. We should share information on systems that are easy to develop and support. The courts generally suffer from a lack of funding for automation, so if we can benefit from others' success or failure, we should do so." | |
| 5. What is the most
exciting technology development that you expect to see in
1998? |
|
| In the hardware arena, Sims expects to see the implementation of thin clients. "The new court applications being implemented will require GUI interface that cannot be supported by dumb terminals. The Riverside County Consolidated Courts are currently testing thin-client devices, and I expect the technology to mature early in 1998." | |
| Rather than identifying a single technology development, Walker sees 1998 as an exciting year for the maturation of many complementary technology advancements and shakeouts in technology-related industries. | |
| Mower is hoping for significant developments in two areas: digital signatures and office intranets. "Happily, strong impetus for the use of reliable digital signatures is being brought to bear by the government and others. Once the digital signature barrier falls, we should see an explosion of electronic commerce. We should be able to file all types of documents: tax returns, license applications, court documents, etc. We will be able to pay fines and fees and to search and retrieve public documents." | |
Ernie
Sego |
Ernie Sego is looking forward to the changes to Web browsers that are enabled with XML (Extensible Markup Language). "This new markup language promises to make searching for information easier by allowing search engines to retrieve results that pertain specifically to information that most interests you. XML also makes administration of data easier by creating ways to organize the data at a Web site." |
| DeClue expects two technology developments to receive a great deal of attention in 1998. "The first is rather complex--the data repository or data warehouse concept; the second is more prosaic--voice-enabled applications." He points out, however, that "the most exciting technology developments of 1998 might not be implemented by courts until well into the future." | |
Glossary
Data warehouse: A place where a court can store all of its data. What makes it different from a database is that the information it contains is used for analytical purposes.
Dumb terminal: A combination of a display monitor or printing terminal device that has no processing capabilities.
Graphical user interface (GUI): A program interface that takes advantage of the computer's graphics capabilities to make the program easier to use.
Open system: An architecture whose specifications are public. The opposite is a closed or proprietary system.
Thin client: A client designed to be especially small so that the bulk of the data processing occurs on the server.
Three-tier client/server architecture: A special type of client/server architecture consisting of three well-defined and separate processes, each of which runs on a different platform: (1) the user interface runs on the user's computer (client); (2) the functional module actually processes data; and (3) the database management system (DBMS) stores the data required by the middle tier.
Two-tier client/server architecture: A client/server architecture in which the user interface runs on the client and the database is stored on the server.
