Client: Municipal Court of Atlanta, Georgia - www.atlantaga.gov
Industry: Government, Judicial

Summary
For decades Atlanta, Georgia had two city court systems. The two courts were inefficient, expensive to operate and were unable to accurately account for funds of the courts. Court records for thousands of cases went unaccounted. The two courts consisted of eighteen judges, over four hundred employees and occupied two separate buildings. Case loads did not justify the number of city employees assigned to the courts.

For decades the city court systems had labored under dated court procedures. Each court used inefficient and human resource intensive case processing procedures and equally dated case management systems (CMS) to track the legal and financial status of their cases. Both courts centralized decision making within a small group of senior staff who discouraged process review. The two court case management systems could not communicate with each other, failed to track a large percentage of court cases, and could not properly reconcile the courts case financials.

Business Goals & Objectives
In an unprecedented move, Mayor Shirley Franklin ordered sweeping changes to the City of Atlanta judiciary following the recommendations made after an onsite audit by the Boston Group. The main goals of her court reform initiative were to significantly reduce the overall cost of the judicial system and to dramatically improve accountability of court financial records.

Both goals were achieved through a consolidation of the two City Courts into a single Municipal Court and the implementation of a single case management system to replace the two legacy case management systems.

Entara Solution
In 2005, the court obtained a new case management system. In late 2005, Entara was asked to manage the CMS project and provide guidance in developing new business procedures. While Entara was hired to perform the traditional role as the CMS project manager, we soon were helping the court in ways we had not originally anticipated:

• In our traditional role of project manager, we worked with the court, the vendor and the city information technology (IT) organization to develop, manage and adjust as required the following:
o Project scope
o Project schedule
o Project plan
o Communication plan
o Risk assessment
o Risk mitigation plan
o Data conversion plans (two different CMS databases)
o Interface development plan (14 different application/agency interfaces)
o Change control plan.

• In our role as courts subject matter expert we helped the Court Administrator and managers:
o Document current business processes as part of the business process review by the CMS vendor
o Define and develop new court business processes. These processes would traditionally be developed and defined by court staff, but as the court had few resources who understood existing court procedures “end to end,” Entara helped supplement that role.
o Expedite CMS application customization requirements definitions process and subsequent vendor specification development.

• Other duties included:
o CMS vendor liaison. Because of prior work, Entara was familiar with the CMS vendor’s engineering asupport processes. We were able to expedite resolution to issues, both small and large, due to our breadth of experience with the courts, IT organizations and CMS vendors.
o Trusted advisor. It was our privilege to be consulted on a variety of issues regarding the court which did not specifically deal with the CMS project.

Client Results
With Entara’s help, the court implemented significant process change and the new CMS on time and within the project’s $3.2 million dollar budget. Through court consolidation and implementation of a new case management system, the costs of delivery of judicial services was reduced by over $11,000,000 a year and the Court now accurately tracks all processes and financials associated with every case under its supervision.

The success of the project was due, in large part, to the vision, determination and support by the project’s Executive Sponsors: Chief Judge Deborah Greene and Mr. Doug Mincher, the Court Clerk/Administrator. While successful projects benefit from a qualified project manager, they require strong and determined project sponsors. The Entaraguided participation of our project sponsors was essential to project success.

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