Client: Midwest Supreme Court
Industry: Government, Judicial

Summary
The state is divided into approximately 100 counties with almost 400 courts at varying levels of jurisdiction. The courts are lead by elected judges and clerks. The tradition of judicial independence requires that change be well thought out with special consideration given to stakeholder “buy-in” and communication. A Judicial Technology Committee (JTC) was created to make the courts more efficient through standardizing their processes and procedures and to implement new technology. The JTC’s primary mission is implementation of a state-wide case management system. The JTC has also sponsored additional projects, when appropriate, to improve court efficiency and service to state residents.

Business Goals & Objectives
The JTC asked Entara to assist with the selection of a case management system (CMS) vendor and lead in the implementation of the new CMS solution. While the new selection process was taking place, the Court felt it was important to begin work on several smaller projects to foster greater standardizing of the processes and procedures within the courts. Entara worked with the Court to prepare the grant applications that provided funding for these projects.

Entara Solution
Entara led the acquisition process for the JTC’s statewide case management system. Entara also assisted in the development of requirements and conducted a gap analysis against those requirements for all vendor proposals submitted during the procurement process. Entara facilitated the proposal review and selection process, including management of multiple vendor demonstrations and site visits. After selection of a CMS vendor, Entara was asked by the Court to act as an advisor during contract negotiations. Entara then prepared the master CMS implementation plan.

Entara assisted the JTC in implementing several other projects:

• Protection Order Registry – The JTC’s goal was to implement this system in all counties. The project uses standard forms for protective orders and has an automated interface to the state police and National Crime Information Center databases making the orders visible to law enforcement agencies across the country within minutes of being ordered by a Court.
• Electronic Citations – The goal of this project was to implement the newly developed e-Citation system across all law enforcement agencies in the state. The e-Citation System allows officers to issue tickets on their vehicle laptop computers or hand held devices. Citations that have been served are then sent electronically to the courts through a central repository. The courts no longer have to wait for paper tickets to be delivered to them to take action. Dispositions are sent electronically to the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles to be added to the driver’s record.
• Court Statistics –Entara was asked to perform an assessment of a stalled court caseload statistics initiative. After review of Entara’s assessment report, the JTC asked Entara to rewrite the core statistics collection application. Entara delivered the revised application within three months and revitalized the JTC’s statistical modernization initiative.
• Electronic Tax Warrants – The JTC’s goal for the tax warrant project was to eliminate manual processing of tax warrants received from the state Department of Revenue by the various County Clerk of Courts’ offices. Tax warrants are now received electronically from the Department of Revenue, appropriate civil court cases are opened, and the automated filing information is returned to the Department of Revenue. This enables the Clerk’s staff to make timely and accurate filings. When a tax warrant is satisfied through the Department of Revenue, the information is electronically passed to the appropriate Clerk’s office and the court record automatically closed.
• Automated Interfaces – Entara was asked to develop interfaces for each of the applications described above to the new case management system.

Client Results
• Entara is currently managing the JTC’s CMS multi-year CMS deployment. • Entara has implemented the Protection Order Registry in over two thirds of the state with deployment efforts still under way to achieve state-wide coverage.
• Entara has deployed the electronic citations system to State Police and several local law enforcement agencies, with deployment efforts continuing to achieve state-wide coverage.
• Entara has completed development and state-wide deployment of the court statistics application. All counties can now electronically submit their caseload statistics. This deployment has saved the Court significant staff time in capturing these vital management statistics, which now can easily be rolled up into a state-wide view.
• Entara has deployed the tax warrant application to most of the counties that previously processed them manually. Many of the counties that were using third party software to process their tax warrants have begun the process of migrating to the new state-provided system to save money and to prepare for the implementation of the new case management system.
• Entara has completed interfaces to the new case management system for the electronic citation and tax warrant systems. Entara is developing similar interfaces for all other Entara-provided applications.

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