The Client
The 19th Judicial Circuit Court serves constituents in four counties in the State of Florida. The Clerk of the Court is responsible for the maintenance of all court related case records, which involves the frequent sharing of documents used by Judges, Court Administration Staff, State Attorney, Public Defender, Clerks, Law Enforcement, and other agencies that support the Circuit Court System. Securing, accessing and transporting these case records had become an overwhelming task, prompting the 19th Judicial Circuit Court to contract with CGI to design and implement a comprehensive system to simplify document access and sharing for three of the four counties within the circuit.
The Challenge
In the past, when court documents needed to be retrieved, a formal request was required and physical transportation of the documents to the requesting agency or county occurred. The process could take as many as four to six days.
Each county had an existing case management system, yet the documents associated with these systems couldn’t be easily accessed. This resulted in a long manual process, which slowed down the entire court system.
CGI faced the challenge of creating a document management system that would allow court officials within and from any of the three counties to store, manage, share and access case documents in a secure environment.The Strategy
CGI conducted a thorough analysis of each county’s existing network infrastructure, document types, workflows and legacy systems. CGI then created a detailed design document to specify the new system architecture, hardware and software requirements.
To reduce necessary training and promote ease of use, all user interfaces were browser-based and incorporated an intuitive, graphical design. Each county would control its own scanning, indexing and storage of court documents in its own image repository.
To increase the sharing of documents throughout the legal system, CGI linked each county’s document management system allowing access by County Sheriffs, Public Defenders’ Offices and State Attorney’s Offices through out the circuit.
The Technology
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Electronic Records Information Management Solution (eRIMS)
The Results
Its new record management system has brought the 19th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida increased efficiency. Instead of submitting written requests, court staff can now search and retrieve case documents immediately. They also expect to realize a significant reduction in paper processing as well as improved communications and productivity.
