Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would attend Princeton. Boasting two former presidents, several supreme court justices, the founder of Amazon, and chairman of Google as some of the famous alumni. Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go to “Princeton, NJ” for the second Industry Summit coordinated by the National Center for State courts (NCSC). The goal of the summit was to bring NCSC staff, court representatives and their system providers together in a non-tradeshow environment to talk about the current and future state of technology in the courts.
Admittedly, the courts are a little behind Amazon and Google when it comes to automation. They won’t be using drones to deliver your jury duty summons anytime soon, but they have made significant strides in recent years. The summit featured some of the thought leaders nationally from NCSC, COSCA, NACM, CITOC and the IJIS Institute. As if there are not enough acronyms already – the groups have established a Joint Technology Committee (JTC) to develop, and promote, technology standards for the courts. While the group assembled isn’t necessarily representative of the court community as a whole – it shows a desire for courts to embrace change to improve customer service to all court users (whether internal or external). Their focus is on technology demands over the next two to six-year time horizon.
Much time was spent discussing, and defining, the key components to the Next-Generation Court Technology Standards Application Component Model that came out of the inaugural industry summit in 2015. The motivation…enable courts to integrate the best solution regardless of the vendor and without concern about how it integrates with existing systems. By taking a business first approach and vendors developing a flexible, agile, and modular solutions they can achieve their vision. See the draft document detailing the Component Model here.
The draft describes the components as, “building blocks of an overall software architecture.” Let’s say a court has identified a gap in their business process, but unfortunately their current provider does not offer a solution. The component model would make it possible for the court to identify possible solution providers that could meet their needs, and with standards in place for the two systems to interact it would make the process easier than it is today. View the mark-up with the results of the groups discussion here.
If you’d like to participate in the Court Component Model and interface standards the NCSC has provided a few suggestions for you to do so.
- Subscribe to the Court Technology Bulletin: https://courttechbulletin.blogspot.com/
- On LinkedIn, join the IJIS Courts Advisory Committee group
- Join OASIS and participate in the new Litigant Portal Technical Committee
There were a lot of other great presentations and discussions from the Industry Summit that I may cover in future blogs but I’ve provided the complete agenda, and links to additional information, for those that are interested.
As a vendor that frequently is required to interact with existing document or case management systems – we would certainly like to see open data standards to communicate with other components. I look forward to the next-generation of the courts.
To learn about Extract Systems and the automating features our software has please don't hesitate to contact me, and I would be happy to schedule a quick 15-minute call to review how Extract can partner with you.
About the Authour: Troy Burke
With 30 years of experience providing clients with stellar service and strategic solutions for growth and development, Troy is committed to ensuring his customers receive the highest quality solution, training and support with every implementation. He frequently speaks on the topic of redaction and is actively involved with National Association of Court Management, Property Records Industry Association and several other government organizations.