Members Participating: Hon. Dale Sandstrom, Supreme Court Justice, Chair Hon. Joel Medd, Judge – North East Judicial District Hon. Frank Racek, Judge – East Central Judicial District Hon. Daniel Narum, Judge – South East Judicial District Sally Holewa, State Court Administrator Lee Ann Barnhardt, Director of Education & Communication Rita Fischer, Deputy Clerk of Court - McKenzie County Donna Wunderlich, District Court Administrator - Unit 3 Becky Absey, Clerk of District Court - Grand Forks County
Members Absent: Hon. William Herauf, Judge – South West Judicial District Hon. Doug Mattson, Judge – North West Judicial District Penny Miller, Clerk of Supreme Court
Guests: Hon. Allen Schmalenberger, District Judge Jim Gienger, Project Manager for UCIS Replacement Project Rod Olson, District Court Administrator - Unit 2 Chris Iverson, Trial Court Manager - Unit 2 Kathryn Ouren, Clerk of District Court - Cass County Deb Simenson, Clerk of District Court – Burleigh County Susan Hoffer, Clerk of District Court – Ward County Brandi Fagerland, ITD Project Oversight Manager Kristen Wheeler, Tyler Technologies
Staff: Larry Zubke, Director of Technology Cammie Schock, Technology Coordinator
The meeting was called to order by Chair Sandstrom.
Approval of Minutes from February 4, 2010 Meeting
Judge Medd moved to approve the February 4, 2010 meeting minutes. Rita Fischer
seconded the motion and the motion carried.
Odyssey Implementation
Status of Phase 4 Jim Gienger reported Units 3 & 4 went live on April 11th. Jim stated it was a success and the
smoothest rollout of them all. He attributes this to documenting lessons learned and going
through three prior go-lives which made us better prepared. This time, we set up a lot of the
major reports and all of the calendars prior to go-live. The data conversion was the cleanest
we’ve had. Jim reported there were 800,000 cases, 2.4 million parties, approximately 1 million
hearings, 140,000 warrants and around 2.5 million financial transactions converted. Time was
still spent cleaning up some of the data which is mostly due to inaccurate information in UCIS.
Jim continued by stating we had 31 people assisting with go-live. The 31 people were a mixture
of Tyler Technology resources and clerks from the eastern half of the state. He stated that prior
to that we had roughly 50 - 60 Odyssey calls a week compared to 184 the week after go-live,
which was to be expected.
Donna Wunderlich felt that the go-live went very well. She stated there were some minor issues
with multi-day trials converting correctly but overall it was a success. Rita Fischer stated it went
very well for them as well. Justice Sandstrom added that it went better than expected and is a
very impressive accomplishment. Kristen Wheeler thanked everyone for their hard work and
agreed it was the smoothest go-live and stated this was the fasted statewide roll-out for Tyler.
Variance Report Jim Gienger reported that as of the end of March the project was at .2% over schedule. Some of
this is due to not completely signing off on Session Works and prior activities. We are 6.1%
under budget and it is anticipated that this will remain about the same through the end of the
project.
E-Filing Jim Gienger reported the e-filing product is now called File & Serve. All clerks in the western
half of the state have now been trained. Units 3 & 4 will go-live on Monday, May 2nd. Jim
explained the File & Serve version we are on now is highly customized for ND and there is a
desire to move to the mainstream product which is currently at release 2.4. This version has
been out for approximately one month. Jim stated 3.0 will be coming soon which is a complete
rewrite and a web-based application. The hope was to wait for 3.0 however, with the testing and
training that will need to take place with both the clerks and attorneys it may not be feasible to
get this done in June. A decision will be made next week on whether we take 2.4 now or wait
until 3.0 is ready.
Jim explained the new functionalities of the mainstream product including the ability to have a
variable fee schedule, as well as, being able to enter multiple plaintiffs and defendants to a case
and have them transfer to Odyssey. Judge Racek inquired on the possibility of having the
attorneys relate the documents when filing rather than having it manually entered by clerks. Jim
stated that this will not be available in 2.4 however he will follow-up to see if it is included in
3.0.
In response to a question from Justice Sandstrom, Jim explained that Tyler’s development team
invested a lot of time on North Dakota’s version of the product. He stated that much of the
functionality was moved to their mainstream product which has much more of the look and feel
of Odyssey and because it is web-based, it does not require IT staff to update every user’s
computer when there are updates to the application.
In response to a question from Judge Racek regarding the ability to initiate criminal cases, Jim
stated that Tyler is working on this however; it will not be a part of 2.4 or 3.0. Currently on the
attorney’s side there is no place to specify an offense code and for criminal cases it is much more
important to find the correct party. As of now, there is no way to identify the differences on the
attorney’s side. Sally Holewa stated that we are currently looking into an integration with the
States Attorney’s system (STARS) as a way to initiate criminal cases and exchange data.
E-Signatures Jim Gienger reported that the use of e-signatures continues to expand. Many judges and clerks
are using e-signatures, although some more than others. We are taking a gradual approach to
introduce e-signatures into Units 3 & 4. One of the lessons learned is that there is a lot to learn
and although e-signatures are very important and the capability is great, this is an area we have
time to ease into. The week of May 16th we will have a session to talk about what forms exist
today, as well as what forms we still need to create. Cammie Schock has delivered one hour
web-ex e-signature training sessions and will continue to do so in May.
In response to a question from Judge Medd regarding the status of expanding e-signatures to
attorney generated documents, Jim stated that Tyler Technologies is working on this capability
but it will not be ready until the 4th quarter release of Odyssey 2012.
Municipal Courts Jim reported 6 municipal courts went live in Phase 4. The City of Fargo is tentatively planning
to go-live with Odyssey on June 27th, however, they are only in the process of their first data
push and Jim believes that they will be unable to meet this date.
Web Payments/Phone Payments Jim explained that credit card payments will be rolled out on Monday, May 2nd for over the
counter payments in Units 3 & 4. Also on Monday, web payments will be rolled out for the
entire state.
Attorney Web Access Jim Gienger reminded the Committee that private attorneys cannot gain secure public access
unless they sign up for e-filing and receive training. Larry Zubke reported that as of today, 122
law offices have been trained and 312 attorneys have registered for File & Serve. There are
currently 480 approved public employee users who have secure public access. These include
such groups as the state’s attorneys, child support workers, and parole and probation staff.
Session Works Grand Forks has been piloting Session Works for several months. The next phase is to roll it out
to Cass County. Cass County clerk staff attended a workshop on Session Works this week and
reported that it went well and they are excited to try Session Works. End-user training will be
the week of June 1st. The system will tested on Friday, June 3rd with actual courtroom use in two
courtrooms starting the following week. IT staff will be present in Cass County to assist with
these activities. A decision on when and where to further roll out Session Works will be made
after we have had a chance to assess how the product performs in Cass County.
Other Jim Gienger reported the state went live with the CJIS SAVIN (Statewide Automated Victim
Information Notification) program last Wednesday. Court related information, such as hearings
and disposition data, is updated every 2 hours. Crime victims and other interested parties sign up
to receive notification of events in the case and can access the system at anytime to obtain the
current status of cases.
Jim then reported that tonight Odyssey will be updated from 2011.0.10 to 2011.0.19. 2011.5.0
will be installed in May for testing by the clerks and IT staff with hopes of installing it in
Production on June 10th. Jim explained that this version provides functionality we have
requested, such as updates to the Monetary Award component, the North Dakota version of
Minnesota’s print order for criminal case sentencing, Interactive Voice Response functionality
and Public Access calendar search by date.
Status of docket display installations Larry reported he has received new quotes from In Fax, on a product called Docket Call. This is
a server based system. They have changed their product slightly and suggest using virtual
servers which fits well with what we are currently doing. Instead of having a personal computer
transfer data to a monitor, they have written an applet for Samsung TVs. Larry stated he has
also worked with Magic Box which is the company doing the legislative monitors. He reported it
is a nice system however; it is very expensive and has more capability than we would need.
After investigating the technology being used by these two companies and finding out that Sony
televisions now have internet browsing capabilities, Larry explained that the IT staff came up
with a low cost plan to write a docket display system in-house. He stated they wrote an
application last year to download the daily court sessions into the Voice IQ digital audio
recording systems. This same application can be leveraged for the docket display system. They
were able to produce a prototype this past week. This is a very economical solution as it will
only cost the price of televisions, mounting the monitors and IT staff time. Burleigh and Grand
Forks counties already have the wiring in place for the monitors and Cass and Ward are
currently working on their wiring.
Judge Medd expressed a concern regarding the timeliness of the data being displayed since court
information is continually changing. Larry stated that the timing and case information to be
displayed can be set to whatever we decide will work best. Right now, they are planning to
update every 5 minutes in order to capture any schedule changes as they are being made. The
plan is to display the case style sorted by defendant name, case type, judge name, courtroom, and
hearing time. Still to be determined is how the information will scroll on the monitors. Three
options they are considering are scrolling the entire day’s calendar, scrolling by morning and
afternoon blocks or display the calendar in 2 hour increments. Larry stated they are leaning
towards splitting it into displaying by morning and afternoon however; they will do some testing
with a large county to see how long the scrolling will take and whether the amount of
information showing at a given time is sufficient.
Status of Supreme Court video installation Justice Sandstrom reported that they have received various proposals and he expects the court
will make a decision next week. He said that some systems need a person in the courtroom to
switch the camera views but, ideally, the system we purchase should be voice activated to switch
the view to whoever is talking. While these systems cost more, the cost of having an additional
person in the courtroom supersedes the cost of the system. In addition, Justice Sandstrom stated
we should consider future capabilities and ensure that the system will have the capability for
lawyers to argue remotely in the event that the Supreme Court allows this in the future. He said
a major component of using video is public education.
Larry Zubke explained that using high definition cameras increases the cost of the project but
this is where the industry is going and it would not make sense to go with technology that is on
the verge of being obsoleted. Using high definition cameras has the added benefit of allowing
TV stations to carry the video feed.
Status of court technology funding for next biennium Larry Zubke reported that the 2011-2013 budget was passed, with the only changes to the
technology budget being the removal of $100,000 for the disaster recover study and $18,000 for
evidence display monitors in Cass County. In response to a question from Justice Sandstrom,
Sally Holewa stated that although the legislature had discussed adding money into ITD’s budget
for a state-wide disaster recovery study, they did not follow through with funding.
In response to a question from Judge Medd regarding adding color printers into the budget for
next biennium, Larry Zubke stated it would be cost prohibitive to replace current printers with
color printers. He added that most courthouses should have a color printer available already
which can be accessed through the network.
For the Good of the Order Justice Sandstrom stated the Williams County proposal for the equipment to include another
courtroom to have interactive capability was approved and asked if the equipment had been
ordered. Larry Zubke stated the purchase orders were processed and we are currently waiting on
the vendors to deliver and install the equipment.
The meeting was adjourned by Justice Sandstrom. The next meeting is scheduled for June 10,
2011.