Reengineering through changes to business processes and technology
Centralization of functions:
- Electronic processing of payments, i.e. fines, fees, restitution, and juror per diem
- Automated referral to collection departments or agencies
- Collections processing
- Traffic citations processing
- Call Centers to answer questions about any case in the state
- Jury management functions
- Jury summons
- Juror qualification questionnaires
- Processing and issuance of default judgment orders
- Probate annual reports
- Education for judges and staff
Videoconferencing (Interactive Television)
- Arraignments for incarcerated defendants
- Detention hearings for detained juveniles
- Child support hearings
- Motions in civil cases that do not involve testimony
- Additional simple hearings
- Interpreters for persons with limited English proficiency
- Off-site live testimony
Processes
- Establish a statewide fine schedule for petty misdemeanors
- Expand the list of misdemeanors and ordinance violations that are payables
- Implement “in-court updating” to make docket entries into the case management system, preparing sentencing and other orders and to affix electronic signatures
- Transition to digital recording of court proceedings
Structure
- Create a single tier trial court or a single tier limited jurisdiction court
- Consolidate the number of districts
- Reallocate judges to districts based upon weighted caseload
- Review jurisdiction and venue, particularly as it relates to the centralized filing of cases and the centralized issues of orders
- Expand the use of subordinate judicial officers to hear:
- Small claims
- Housing
- Traffic
- Child support
- Other: ...
- Consolidate clerks/managers with expansion of responsibility to multiple locations
E-Everything
- Electronic filing
- Establish one or more centralized filing centers, by region and/or by case type
- Turbo-tax type software to simplify document filings for self represented litigants (i.e. A2J)
- Electronic citation by all law enforcement agencies
- Create an electronic file with an electronic document management system
- Develop electronic workflow
- Enable judges and staff to affix electronic signatures on orders and notices
- Make electronic case files from every court in the jurisdiction accessible to one or more call centers and/or to all court locations
- Create a virtual Web-Based Information Center to provide direct public access to court records and to provide information helpful particularly to self represented litigants