electronic Filing & Service for Courts

Indiana: Online docket offers access to records

Lake County system replicates data from court record every 15 minutes.

From The Indiana Lawyer, April 6, 2005

Ron Browning

Attorneys accustomed to standing in line are upgrading to searching online for information from Lake County courts.

The northwest Indiana county's online docket system allows lawyers and others who rely on information from the courthouse to access everything from judicial orders and hearing dates to chronological case summaries and child support payment histories with the click of a mouse.

The system became available online Jan. 31 for commercial subscribers (not equal symbol) attorneys, title companies, governmental agencies, and the like. A free public site will become available this spring.

Lawyers and the public all rely on information from our system, said Lake Superior Judge Jeffery J. Dywan. It provides an efficient system to allow access to that information.

Lake County's Circuit and Superior courts receive more than 85,000 new filings each year, Judge Dywan pointed out. With courts located in four communities (not equal symbol) Crown Point, Hammond, Gary, and East Chicago (not equal symbol) gaining access to information can be daunting enough for Lake County attorneys. But attorneys from across the state represent clients with cases in the county, the judge said.

Now, rather than trying to track down a file themselves or turning to the clerk's office for help, attorneys can help themselves by checking the progression of a case online, Judge Dywan said.

The new system saves time not only for those seeking the information but for personnel in the clerk's office, as well, he said.

Work to offer such a system began in 2003, but its roots stretch to the late 1990s when Lake County replaced its case management system that had been in place since 1976. The new system wired all of the county's courts into a central system in Crown Point.

In 2003, Lake County embarked on a project to update and upgrade its Web site to make it more functional.

The county decided to go to a more interactive portal, said Judge Dywan, who added the county's judges and the clerk decided to take advantage of the opportunity and place its docket online.

Judge Dywan was chosen by his fellow judges to act as a point person for the project, overseeing a committee looking to make the dream a reality.

From late 2003 into early 2004, they held a series of meetings with attorneys, title companies, governmental agencies, the media, credit bureaus, and banks (not equal symbol) anyone who might utilize such a system (not equal symbol) to learn what type of system they would find most beneficial.

That information was utilized to create a project proposal that was approved by the county's judges and then by the Indiana Supreme Court Division of State Court Administration in June 2004.

The project has forced the county's technical staff to work in ways it never has.

It was fairly daunting, said Mark Pearman, executive director of Lake County Data Processing. We have an automated court system here in Lake County, but going as far as putting stuff up on the Net like this, we had to get a lot of people's input.

Indiana

Plan to link 400 courts hits a wall
Costly software glitch halts effort to computerize records statewide

By Staci Hupp
[email protected]
March 8, 2005

(Please note: This is not an eFile or eServe Project)

Standing in a stuffy Clay County courtroom among television cameras and civic leaders, two state Supreme Court justices last summer raised their glasses of punch in a toast.

This county southwest of Indianapolis would be among the first in Indiana to test a new statewide computer system that promised to revolutionize how courts do business. Clay was among more than a dozen Hoosier counties, including Tipton, Starke and Crawford, with the most to gain -- where court workers have no computers and still rely on typewriters and metal filing cabinets to process paperwork.

That was months ago. And in Clay County, court officials have heard little since.

The $74 million project to computerize and link all of Indiana's courts has ground to a halt after more than two years, millions of dollars and a major software glitch.

Now, after recent layoffs and a management overhaul, project leaders are trying to calculate their next move. What was to be a six-year project now is on hold as state officials reassess plans.

If successful, the project would link Indiana's labyrinth of roughly 400 civil and criminal courts, a system recognized as one of the most complicated in the nation. Today's system is so antiquated that in one county, strips of paper are drawn from a bucket to assign cases, and in another, a criminal can inadvertently be released because of a computer glitch.

The Indiana Supreme Court's venture has eaten up at least $7.5 million so far, although officials say they aren't sure how much they've spent overall. The state committee overseeing the project has turned to the woman who started to clean up the scandal-plagued Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Mary DePrez, to salvage the courts project.

"Clerks and counties are getting discouraged," said Mary Brown, Clay County's clerk. "But we manage because we don't know anything different."

Software development was scheduled to wrap up this year and be run on a test basis in a handful of counties, including Clay and Marion.

The problem: Software designed by contractor Computer Associates International Inc. -- already paid more than $6 million by the state -- doesn't work. No one knew it would fail until 21/2 years into the project, said members of the Indiana Supreme Court's Judicial Technology and Automation Committee, which is in charge of the project.