State Court Locks Out Competition
Kudos to Marcia Oddi over at the Indiana Law Blog for bringing attention to the move by the Indiana Supreme Court’s administrative division to bring its plan to connect all county courts through a centralized computer network, and in the process, block out a private company that already links about half of Indiana county courts.
The Office of State Court Administration is rolling out its first test site in Monroe County, one of the first counties that had its scheduling data on the web via Doxpop. Marcia notes:
The entry went on to quote from a DoxPop memo that began “The Courts of Monroe County are planning changes that will affect your ability to access up-to-date Monroe County case information via the Doxpop system after December 17, 2007,” and then continued by explaining that DoxPop was attempting to work out an interface between the JTAC and DoxPop systems.
Apparently these efforts have thus far proven unsuccessful, according to a letter sent out today by Ray Ontko, President, which begins:
To all Doxpop users:
The Courts of Monroe County plan to stop sending case information to Doxpop on December 17, 2007. Doxpop plans to continue to provide access to historical case information, but new information about current cases will no longer be available via the Doxpop website.
The Monroe Courts are switching to a new case management system (CMS) provided by the State Court’s Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC). On October 25 we formally requested access to Monroe County case information via the new system. We are waiting for the Division of State Court Administration to act on our request.
It looks like JTAC’s “pilot program” may not encompass any effort to interface the new CMS system with the long-term and wide-ranging existing networks upon which the legal community relies.
December 4th, 2007 09:41
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
December 4th, 2007 09:58
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
December 5th, 2007 21:39
Lock Out Competition indeed. See a local Monroe County blog and its discussion of the Indiana Supreme Court’s anti-competitive actions to eliminate competition for case management system (CMS) software in Indiana (http://www.pin-the-tail.com/?p=712#comments).
The Indiana Supreme Court has for now locked out doxpop.com but also the CMSs that supplies doxpop.com its information. One such CMS is from my Hoosier company (CSI) that has 48 Hoosier counties as its partner. At no charge to the county, CSI supplies Doxpop its information from those counties wishing to post their public case information to the Doxpop system every ten minutes.
CSI pioneered CMS software in Indiana in 1986. CSI was the first vendor in Indiana to provide e-filing with the BMV and Indiana Department of Revenue. CSI was the CMS that provided the pioneering doxpop system with the Monroe County data in 2002. And now CSI and Doxpop have partnered with Proslink (another Hoosier software company that provides prosecutor management software for 89 Hoosier counties) to provide criminal case e-filing. The next step is to get approval from the Indiana Supreme Court to provide infraction e-filing, civil case e-filing and the posting of electronic court documents from the CSI CMS to Doxpop.
The CSI, Doxpop and Proslink partnership has already brought to Hoosier courts and the users of this information a proven and effective statewide and worldwide CMS.
The Indiana Supreme Court who plans to spend nearly $100 million taxpayer dollars is offering courts a CMS system that forces a court to transact, store and retrieve court information including confidential juvenile, mental health, adoption, personal information over the internet and this confidential information will be housed under the Indiana Supreme Court’s control and view.
With the Indiana Supreme Court housing all this historical court and personal information, does this move this state towards the European inquisitorial system versus our American adversarial system?
Internet hacker intrusion or shutdown, insufficient internet bandwidth, electronic document management over the internet, central system shutdown, security of confidential information, who has access to all of this confidential information, loss of local control, lack of competitive influences to advance technical enhancements and motivated support, are just a few of the critical issues involved in the Indiana Supreme Court’s risky, costly and unnecessary centralized internet takeover.
In contrast to the risky and costly Indiana Supreme Court internet system, CSI has provided and will continue to offer Hoosier counties an alternative to the Indiana Supreme Court’s risky, costly and unnecessary internet system that has failed once already.
CSI is dedicated to all Hoosier counties who want to have local control over their confidential information, share public information worldwide, implement efficient e-filing statewide and receive motivated support from a motivated Hoosier software company.
Hopefully local counties will be able to have choice and funding (give counties a portion of the $10 million per year that counties collect and send to the State which is funding the Indiana Supreme Court’s system) to implement a system that provide local courts control on how they want to manage, secure and share their court information.
December 6th, 2007 09:47
[...] folks, as an update to this post, be sure to go back and check the [...]