MINUTES
COURT TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE Front Conference Room Supreme Court, Bismarck June 25, 2010 9:15 a.m.
Members Participating Dale Sandstrom, Supreme Court Justice, Committee Chair Becky Absey, Clerk of District Court Rita Fisher, Deputy Clerk of Court Sally Holewa, State Court Administrator Joel Medd, District Judge Donna Wunderlich, Unit Trial Court Administrator Frank Racek, District Judge Daniel Narum, District Judge Penny Miller, Clerk of Supreme Court Douglas Mattson, District Judg
Members Absent William Herauf, District Judge Lee Ann Barnhardt, Director of Education & Communication
Guests Jim Gienger, Project Manager for UCIS Replacement Project Allan Schmalenberger, District Judge Chris Iverson, Unit 2 Trial Court Manager Barbara Hill, Clerk of District Court Kathy Ouren, Clerk of District Court Rod Olson, Unit Trial Court Administrator Don Wolf, Director of Finance
Staff Larry Zubke, Director of Technology
The meeting was called to order by Chair Sandstrom.
Approval of Minutes from April 9, 2010 Meeting.
Judge Joel Medd moved to approve the April 9, 2010 meeting minutes. Rita Fisher
seconded the motion and the motion carried.
Odyssey Implementation
Jim Gienger began his report by going over the Project Status and Project Variance reports. The
project is 1.7% behind schedule at this time. The overall project budget remains the same as
before and the project is 4.3% under budget.
The highlight of the last couple of months is that the rest of Unit 2 has gone live with an
additional twelve counties and four municipal courts as of April 19, 2010. The four municipal
courts include Wahpeton, West Fargo, Valley City and Jamestown.
One Risk Management issue to note is issue 17 which deals with the future Interactive Voice
Response (IVR) payment processing solution. Tyler Technologies has plans to replace the
Sonant solution by providing core functionality within Odyssey to process IVR traffic payments.
Testing is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2010 and deployment is targeted for the
first quarter of 2011.
An E-Signature pilot was deployed in Cass County for the clerks. The E-Signature module will
allow clerks and judges to place an electronic signature on forms that are generated from within
Odyssey. It streamlines the process by eliminating the need for users to print the form,
physically sign the form, scan it back into Odyssey and attach it to an event. E-Signature
automatically attaches the document with the signature to that event. The pilot is going well
enough to expand to other clerks and forms. Eventually judges will also have this capability.
The electronic signature looks like the actual signature.
Wiznet E-Filing was acquired by Tyler back in January and recently changed the name to
Odyssey File and Serve. Initially the system could only handle subsequent filings. Tyler
rewrote the system to also handle initial filings for contract collection and foreclosure case types.
We went live in March with the new system and two law firms filing contract collection and
foreclosure case types into Cass County. The law firms have been instructed to start filing into
other Unit 2 counties as well. Richland County has accepted some of the filings that have come
into the system from the two law firms. Serkland Law firm has also been contacted and we are
in the process of training them to use E-filing. Tyler is working on expanding the types of cases
to allow divorce, civil, family and probate cases to be filed. Criminal case documents and PSIs
will be added as subsequent filings at a later date.
Judge Racek stated that the Regional Child Support office would be a good candidate to include
in the E-Filing pilot.
Justice Sandstrom stated that the wording and approval for the Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) is almost ready. The MOU will grant law firms access to the secure public access
information if they agree to use E-Filing where possible.
The committee discussed the slow progress that Tyler has made with expanding the types of
cases and the number of law firms using the system. The decision was made to send a letter to
Tyler's management to express North Dakota's disappointment with their progress. Judge Racek moved to express our disappointment with the lack of timeliness, diligence,
and urgency on the part of Tyler related to electronic filing. Rita Fischer seconded the
motion and the motion carried.The use of IVR for traffic payments has been increasing. IVR went live around the 1st of the
year in Cass County. According to the usage reports, there were 19 payments made in the month
of May and 35 payments made to date in the month of June. The committee discussed the issues
and costs to expand the use of the current IVR system. Issues include additional programming
costs, additional merchant account costs, handling of city payment splits, balancing of a single
account, transfer of funds back to individual counties or the need to have the State Treasurer's
office accept a single payment for all. Tyler has just announced a new integrated IVR solution
that will be available to the Courts in the 4th quarter of this year. This solution will allow
expansion to other counties in a more economical manner than expanding the current solution to
other counties.
The Statewide Automated Victim Information Notification system (SAVIN) interface has been
configured and tested. Currently, the Protection and Restraining orders are being sent to CJIS
for the Attorney General and Law Enforcement agencies. This interface takes the information
from CJIS and makes it available to the SAVIN system. What is currently missing is the hearing
information for those Protection and Restraining orders. That is targeted to be rolled out in July.
This will then allow any victim to sign up to be notified when there has been a hearing or a
change in the order. The other part of the interface that is being configured is criminal case
dispositions and hearings that have been set, reset or continued. This is scheduled to go live on
January 1, 2011.
Phase 3 training has begun in Unit 1. The Subject Matter Experts (SME's) were trained in late
May. The configuration meetings have started and will continue into July. The first data push
for this unit is scheduled for July 9th. Originally there was a total of five data pushes scheduled.
This number has been reduced to four. The clerk training has been scheduled for October in
Grand Forks. The municipal courts of Devils Lake and Rolla are also getting prepared for their
conversion to Odyssey.
Phase 4 planning has begun. The current Go-live date is set for May 1, 2011. SME training has
been scheduled for November 15, 2010.
The Session Works: Clerk's Edition is being configured and will be piloted later this year in
Grand Forks and Stutsman counties. In August we'll be able to see the product working with
North Dakota data in a test environment.
The VIQ interface has been deployed for connecting the digital audio recording systems to
Odyssey.
Judge Medd stated that the Parks and Rec. department would be a good candidate for building an
interface to accept electronic citations.
2011-2013 Technology Budget
Larry Zubke covered the draft Technology Budget for the next biennium. Overall from last
biennium's budget, we are coming in with a 42% increase in costs. The IT Data Processing
category has increased 53% primarily from increased ITD networking costs. The IT Telephone
category has increased 10% primarily from converting from county phone switches to ITD
phones. The IT Software and Supplies category has decreased 11%. The IT Contractual
Services category has increased 161% primarily due to the Odyssey maintenance support
contract, Odyssey support services, proposed In Session: Judge's Edition, proposed Odyssey
IVR expansion, and increases in existing service agreements. The IT Equipment under $5,000
category has decreased 16%. The IT Equipment over $5,000 category has increased 362%
primarily due to a proposed disk and server expansion to support additional Odyssey document
imaging and continued rollout of digital audio servers.
The committee discussed the proposed In Session: Judge's Edition. Estimates from Tyler
included $5,000 per Judge for licensing the software and additional costs for the hardware to run
it.
Judge Racek moved to remove the In Session: Judge's Edition from the next biennium's
budget. Rita Fischer seconded the motion and the motion carried.
Continuity of Operations
The committee discussed potential risks to the continuity of government as it relates to Odyssey
and other Court systems. Storing the digital images in Odyssey has increased the importance of
having the Odyssey system available at all times. The committee agreed to further research
options and costs.
Penny Miller moved to have staff research and prepare continuity of operation options for
the next biennium's budget. Judge Medd seconded the motion and the motion carried. In order to discuss the continuity of operations options and additional budget changes before the
budget due date of August 15th, the committee agreed to move the next meeting to August 6th
instead of August 13th.
Court Docket Display System Larry Zubke reported on a proposed statewide docket display system. Larry researched a
solution from Docket Call which is a server based solution and could be used statewide to
display court schedules in ND courthouses. The committee discussed this solution and the
solution that Minnesota uses. The committee agreed to exclude docket display systems from the
2011-2013 budget due to the governor's request to cut the budget by 3%.
For the Good of the Order This meeting adjourned at 11:20.
Future Meeting Dates
The 2010 dates for the Court Technology Committee meetings are listed below. All meetings
will be held in the Front Conference Room at the Supreme Court. To the extent possible,
telephone and ITV will be available as an option for all meetings.
August 6, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. October 8, 2010 at 9:15 a.m. December 3, 2010 at 9:15 a.m.