The Commission report, complete with strategies, a
timeframe, and information on required resources, became the foundation for the plan to
integrate technology into Texas courts. Background:
The Judicial Committee on Information Technology was established in 1997 through Senate
Bill 1417, now Chapter 77 of the Texas Government Code. The creation of the Committee and
its charges, included in Senate Bill 1417, were based on recommendations by the Texas
Commission on Judicial Efficiency (the Commission), a body formed by the Legislature in
1995 to conduct a statewide, comprehensive study of the Texas Judicial System.
The Commission was directed to compile and submit to the Legislature findings and
recommendations regarding judicial selection, funding parity, staff diversity, and
information technology. Task forces were established to investigate and report to the
Commission on each area. The Information Technology Task Force provided the Commission
with an assessment of technology in Texas courts, and that assessment served as the basis
for establishing state judicial technology goals and elements of the agenda for
improvement.
The Task Force reported that despite the availability of technology with applications
for improved judicial administration, technology had yet to be fully integrated into Texas
courts; nor was hardware and software compatible or connectable. Some individual courts
across the state were in various stages of adopting new information technology, but such
unsystematic implementation was making consistent access to court data and documents
within and across court jurisdictions more difficult for the public, courts, attorneys,
litigants, and government agencies. In most cases, electronic access was impossible.
The Task Force findings were incorporated into the Commission's full report to the
Governor and Legislature. The Commission recommendations that resulted from those findings
envisioned a Texas court system that functions more efficiently by providing consistent
access to standardized court data and documents statewide, with access to national level
data. In its report, Governance of the Texas Judiciary: Independence and Accountability,
the Commission recommended:
The Commission report, complete with strategies, a
timeframe, and information on required resources, became the foundation for the plan to
integrate technology into Texas courts.
The Legislature then passed, and the Governor signed into law, Senate Bill 1417 which
gave JCIT and OCA its mandate to implement the recommendations of the Commission.
The Commission recommended creating a statewide system in six years with $10.7 million in state funding each of the three biennia. House Bill 1, the General Appropriations Act for fiscal years 1998 and 1999, appropriated a reduced amount, $3.5 million, for the initial biennium to allow the newly created JCIT to establish a direction, plan, and standards which greater appropriations would support in future biennia.
Initial funding was appropriated based on collections of a time payment fee by the trial courts. The fee was suggested by the Information Technology Task Force as a dedicated funding mechanism for court technology. The 75th Legislature approved the fee in Senate Bill 1417, but did not dedicate the collected monies for any purpose.
Chief Justice Thomas R. Phillips appointed the 15 members, and 3 liaison members, of JCIT on August 11, 1997, designating Peter Vogel, an attorney with Gardere & Wynne, as chair and Dr. Don Hardcastle, a Baylor University professor, as vice-chair. Members of JCIT represent all levels of the courts in Texas and also include a state representative, state senator, and a district attorney.
During the 1998-99 biennium, JCIT:
The OCA, as staff to JCIT, conducted research and implemented JCIT projects. OCA has eight information technology staff and eight help desk staff to implement and support JCIT projects.
Recognizing the limited resources of local and state governments, JCIT delineated the roles of various levels of government in sharing responsibility for implementing the technology plan and accomplishing the vision.
Census of the Texas Court Environment:
The decentralized structure of the Texas court system provides
JCIT with some unique challenges. Each of Texas' 3,000 judges in 2,800 courts (see Court
Structure of Texas, page 17) operates autonomously, as do the state's approximately 430
district and county clerks and approximately 325 district and county attorneys, all of
whom are independently elected. Roughly 11 million new cases and appeals are filed in
Texas courts each year. There are over 20,000 court and prosecutor officials and staff
(see JCIT Court Officials and Staff, page 16) spread over an estimated 1,750 locations
across the state. Each of the state's 254 counties has at least four courts (district,
constitutional county, justice of the peace, and municipal) operating in each county seat
and in most cases one or two other courts in each of the state's 850 municipalities. Most
of the courts' funding comes from these counties and municipalities.
The courts' workload and the constituency that they serve continue to grow (as
evidenced by the graphs below) with fairly static resources. With the implementation of an
integrated justice information system, the courts will be in a better position to serve
Texas. Another concern is with the rapid growth of cases per judge with no projected
growth in the number of judges to handle the cases.
A recent public trust and confidence survey of 1,215 Texas conducted by the Supreme Court of Texas, OCA, and the State Bar of Texas in 1998 found that:
Although courts are autonomous, they do have a common mission - the administration of
justice, and a common function - public service. They are the final arbiter of processes
that are initiated in the executive branch of government, such as criminal justice,
juvenile justice, child support, mental health, regulatory, and licensing cases. Justice
of the peace and municipal courts, for example, perform state functions when they process
Department of Public Safety traffic citations and collect revenues in the form of court
costs submitted to the state. Moreover, the lower courts are responsible for magistration
of persons charged with criminal offenses (i.e., informing the criminally accused of his
or her constitutional rights and setting bail on behalf of the state).
The courts have been grappling with administering justice for a much more mobile and less sedentary Texas citizenry. This mobility creates challenges of ensuring public safety and protecting citizens' rights because people are now moving faster than the information about them.
JCIT and OCA must clearly understand court officials' day-to-day work needs and deliver information technology solutions which serve those needs. To this end JCIT and OCA has involved judges, clerks, court administrators, prosecutors, and court reporters from all levels of the judiciary, as well as, government agencies, and the public in its planning process.
By creating technology standards, JCIT, as agent for the state, ensures integration of data among courts, ensures integration of data between courts and other government entities, and provides the public with access to judicial information via a central search location.
The number of courts and the degree of autonomy make systematic statewide automation challenging. Because of the life cycles of current technology and the need for ongoing support, reliable streams of funding must be identified and secured. A long term plan and commitment to develop integrated information systems beyond the typical two year cycle is needed.
While no other state is as complex as Texas, many similarities exist between Texas and
other large states like California and Florida. There are four basic approaches to
statewide court automation in the U.S.:
(1) some states are doing nothing;
(2) some states are setting standards and do not provide any assistance with implementation;
(3) some states (including Texas) are setting standards and providing implementation assistance; and
(4) some states have a de facto standard because they have one statewide court information system.
JCIT has adopted the most appropriate approach to statewide court automation forTexas.
With the creation of JCIT, Texas was positioned to move from a do-nothing approach to a
fairly aggressive approach. JCIT, the Supreme Court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and
the Texas Judicial Council have enough specific authority to put standards and policies in
place to move the courts to a standard data and communications approach to statewide court
automation.
Goals of JCIT:
The recommendations of the Commission targeted making the courts more efficient and accessible through information technology. Specifically, the goals of JCIT are to:
- keep the courts' customers more informed;
- provide the tools to deliver timely, reliable, pertinent information to decision-makers;
- increase the friendliness of the courts' processes;
- increase the reliability and support of court technology systems;
- reduce the generation of paper based documents and reports;
- increase the speed of communication in the justice system;
- reduce the amount of redundant data entry and data entry errors in the justice system;
- enable the courts to administer the cases of a very mobile society;
- enable the courts to administer increasing caseloads;
- make it easier for courts to successfully implement information technology;
Key Information Technology Elements:
JCIT identified the following as key elements to accomplishing these goals and to automating court workflow and management:
Integration from the Courts' Perspective:
Through its meetings and research, JCIT sees that there is a planning and funding role for each level of government in automating the courts of Texas.
A significant finding of JCIT is that, as it has been taking a piecemeal approach to creating national data standards through reporting requirements and federal grant programs for various executive branch functions, the federal government has created an incoherent web of data standards for state courts.
These 
national data standards are being developed to
facilitate administering government programs for a much more mobile citizenry. These
efforts were not originally envisioned to have an impact on the courts, but the successful
administration of the programs necessarily requires court action and subsequently their
data.
Three prime examples are initiatives involving child support, criminal justice, and juvenile justice. Since the courts were not foreseen as having a significant role in the administration of such government programs, they were not targeted in the grant programs. Some jurisdictions, however, experienced success in partnering the courts with executive agencies to share grant funds to assist with the exchange of crucial court data.
As a result of this piecemeal approach to court data standards issues, state and local courts often use entirely separate and distinct software and hardware to administer these various functions. This obviously compounds the complexity of the tasks that court officials perform. This approach falls short of maximizing what truly could be a meaningful partnership to exchange data. More grant programs like this could lead to a clerks office with several computers, but each could be used for only one purpose.
JCIT supports the concept of an integrated justice system. A system in which the data
related to a case or person flows logically from one government entity to the next as the
administration of that case or person proceeds. At a minimum, an integrated justice system
speeds the administration of cases, limits redundant data entry, and limits data entry
errors. It is important that, in the course of integrating with executive agencies, courts
have the option to operate one information system that is capable of administering all
types of cases. Some jurisdictions may choose to use separate systems for different case
types, but that should be an option, not a funding requirement.
Municipal and county governments' role should be to actively participate in the planning process (including the Texas Municipal League and the Texas Association of Counties) and to assist in funding the basic infrastructure needed for court officials. This includes: computers, local area network equipment (servers, hubs, cards, cabling, operating systems), office suite software, case management software, and electronic legal research user fees. State and federal monies should be available to assist with this basic information technology infrastructure and to facilitate inter-jurisdictional administration of cases.
The state's role should be to: 
The federal government's role should be to provide an overarching plan to allow data
sharing across states and to promote inter-jurisdictional data sharing within states. This
is being accomplished through grant programs administered by federal agencies. These grant
programs are established in support of requirements imposed by federal legislation. Since
so many government agencies seek data from state courts, funding should be targeted not
just for the data integration applications but also for basic infrastructure and
networking. The federal government should also be responsible for creation and maintenance
of national databases which combine state level databases to facilitate inter-state
administration of cases. Efforts are underway at the federal level to accomplish these
objectives.
Assumptions:
JCIT and OCA will build the statewide system in the six year timeframe (by the end of fiscal year 2003) established by the Commission. The following assumptions are used:
- requirements will be supported by grants for compliance
- requirements will be targeted across civil and criminal case types
- grant conditions will continue to be very restrictive to courts
Implementation Timelines and Costs:
The Judicial Committee on Information Technology will complete an initial set of court technology standards by September 1, 1999. These standards must be reconsidered and revised as technology continues to evolve. JCIT will also continue to guide the state's and specifically OCA's court technology projects. Statewide contracts will be developed in cooperation with the Department of Information Resources and the General Services Commission. Project planning, research, and grant writing and administration will also be conducted by the OCA staff dedicated to JCIT.
State appropriations requested for Fiscal Years 2000 and 2001: $296,000 per year.
The Judicial Information Management System will consist of the following components:
(1) statewide standards for data elements, case management software functionality standards, and electronic filing standards (estimated completion date is September 1, 1999);
(2) OCA Case Management Software for Windows (estimated completion of conversion to Windows of all software is June 1, 2000);
(3) an internet-based court data index; and
(4) OCA's court data management system to collect electronic case-level court data for performance analysis and public access.
State appropriations requested for Fiscal Years 2000 and 2001: $775,000 per year.
The Judicial Internet Server will be maintained and content will be expanded. The server will be a central information distribution point for and about courts. It will host: court web sites, legal research, electronic benchbooks, electronic procedure manuals, electronic practice manuals, other Texas legal resources for courts, and data sharing.
State appropriations requested for Fiscal Years 2000 and 2001: $140,000 per year.
The Judicial Help Desk provides technical assistance and training for hardware and software, primarily related to the use of OCA Case Management Software. OCA is the only independent resource in Texas for information about court technology implementation.
State appropriations requested for Fiscal Years 2000 and 2001: $800,000 per year.
Training of the 6,607 court officers of the state (see page 16) is needed to ensure that the investments in equipment and software are used effectively.
State appropriations requested for Fiscal Years 2000 and 2001: $1,400,000 per year.
Network and Infrastructure Assistance for local courts is needed to supplement local investment and provide consistent installation and support of the infrastructure to support data sharing and public access statewide.
State Telecommunications Infrastructure
State appropriations requested for Fiscal Years 2000 and 2001: $2,000,000 per year.
Trial Court Technology
State appropriations requested for Fiscal Years 2000 and 2001: $2,125,000 per year.
Appellate Court Technology
State appropriations requested for Fiscal Year 2000: $2,690,000 and Fiscal Year 2001: $990,000.
The Recruitment and Retention Package is being requested to assist OCA in acquiring the human resources, whether employee or contract, to implement the technology solutions in the current information technology employment market. Consistent with the recommendations of the 75th Legislature's House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Job Classification Plan Review and Major Information Systems, as well as the State Auditor's recommendations to the 76th Legislature for inclusion in Article IX of the General Appropriations Act for fiscal years 2000 and 2001, these funds would be used to augment salaries of state FTEs or compensation packages of contract personnel in a manner to achieve more competitive levels of compensation.
State appropriations requested for Fiscal Year 2000 and 2001: $150,000 per year.
Conclusion:
The Judicial Committee on Information Technology and the Office of Court Administration are fulfilling the mandate of the Judicial Efficiency Act to implement information technology systematically into the courts of Texas. Significant progress has been made with initial funding. The second biennium of funding, $19 million, will enable JCIT to stay on track and complete the initial implementation by 2003.
Texas' massive, decentralized court system poses a great challenge to coordinate the various efforts on-going. JCIT will connect and serve 20,000 court officials and staff in 2,800 courts in 1,750 locations in Texas.
JCIT's plan is to meld an integrated justice information system from existing and future investments by local, state, and federal governments. This system will enhance the courts' ability to serve the citizens through better public safety and more public access.
An integrated system will enable data sharing among courts and their customers to better serve a Texas citizenry that is very mobile. Executive branch agencies have attempted to integrate their information systems with courts to improve the functions of law enforcement, juvenile justice, child support, foster care, and mental health because of their reliance on the courts to conduct their vital government services. In the past, each executive agency had to deal with each jurisdiction individually. The creation of standards by JCIT will solve much of the mystery of exchanging data with the courts.
JCIT has clarified the roles of local, state, and federal governments in moving the
Texas courts to an integrated justice system. Investments must be made at all of these
levels to achieve the goals set forth by JCIT and the Legislature.
Federal
grants may become available in fiscal year 2000 to assist states and local governments
with the implementation of integrated information systems for criminal and juvenile
justice functions. These funds will only be made available to support statewide plans
which specifically include courts and prosecutors. This is the function that the Judicial
Committee on Information Technology and the Office of Court Administration are performing.
In addition to providing seed money for federal grants, this budget request will bring efficiencies, increased revenue collection, and cost savings to local governments and the state. The project does not just support judicial functions. The most demanding and important functions of court data support public safety, law enforcement, child support, juvenile justice, mental health, eldercare monitoring in guardianships, and various other executive branch functions. These crucial government services can be hobbled by the lack of accurate, timely court data and its ability to be shared for public safety and other reasons.
