By Jan Pudlow
Senior Editor

In 2001, the U.S. Department of Commerce invited Sarasota County Clerk of Court Karen Rushing to advise on creating a court system in Angola, ravaged by a 30-year war that left its rebel leader assassinated.

“I took a third-world country that didn’t have electricity, and in less than five years, put them into a fully automated system,” Rushing said, explaining how she and the U.S. Commerce Department enlisted help from Portugal, Angola’s former colonial rulers.

If she could accomplish that challenge with a unique collaboration, surely the Florida courts and clerks can work together on creating an integrated court computer system and statewide e-filing, right?

“I am an advocate that this can be done,” said Rushing, who serves on the Electronic Filing Committee chaired by 13th Circuit Chief Judge Manuel Menéndez. Rushing has had the option of electronic filing in her county for years, and has asked her chief judge to mandate electronic filing that she said could save Sarasota County $1 million per year.

“From a statewide perspective, and speaking on behalf of all clerks, we do embrace a unified way for those we provide service to file electronically through a system that is unified,” Rushing said.

Now the Legislature, through SB 1718, is mandating that “each clerk of court shall implement an electronic filing process” to “reduce judicial costs in the office of the clerk and the judiciary, increase timeliness in the processing of cases, and provide the judiciary with case-related information to allow for improved judicial case management.”

And CS/CS/SB 2108 added House language creating the Legislature’s Technology Review Workgroup of court and clerk information technology systems tasked with “identifying and recommending options for implementing the integrated computer system established in §29.008(1)(f)2, Florida Statutes.” During the period of study, clerk of court information technology purchases are limited.

The first deadline is July 1, when the Florida Supreme Court must set statewide standards for electronic filing to be used by the clerks of court. And the court clerks must begin implementation no later than October 1, with a status report to the Senate president and House speaker by March 1, 2010.

Legislative oversight — stitching together a patchwork of frustrated and underfunded efforts ongoing for more than 13 years — is welcomed by 11th Circuit Judge Judith Kreeger, chair of the Florida Courts Technology Commission, even as she scurries to schedule a meeting — tenatively scheduled for June 15 in Miami — in order to make the July 1 deadline.

Because of the budget crisis, her group could not afford to travel to meet together, but because of the tight deadline, Kreeger said, the Office of the State Courts Administrator “found a few bucks. We will meet in person across the table. All of this is unfolding in the last few days. We’re doing our best to meet the challenge.

“I feel pretty good about what the Legislature has done. I think that the judicial branch is almost as eager to get to the point where we can do e-filing as the lawyers are,” Kreeger said. “The Supreme Court certainly stated its objective to go there. But there was some background work that needed to be accomplished.”

First, there was the tedious business of protecting confidential information in court files, which necessitated amendments to Rule of Judicial Procedure 2.420. After oral arguments on the work of the Committee on Access to Court Records, Kreeger said, “that piece should be in place by fall.”

A second piece, Kreeger said, is the Electronic Filing Committee’s recommendations sent to the Florida Supreme Court that describe the concept of a “portal” — a doorway through which all electronic filers may come statewide. That single e-filing portal, where any attorney could e-file with any clerk through a single site, was requested by Barbara Pariente, when she was chief justice in 2005.

Passing Through the Portal
A member of the Electronic Filing Committee is Manatee Clerk of Court Chips Shore, who launched the state’s first real-world test of electronic access to court records in 2007. (At that time, the Supreme Court blessed Shore’s pilot, while ordering a “modified limited moratorium until permanent procedures were put in place to protect privacy.”)

“The committee evaluated several systems but did not move forward because of funding issues,” said Shore.

The Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers (FACC) “took Justice Pariente’s request to task and has been developing an e-filing portal funded by the clerks, which is in the final stages of development,” he said.

“We hope to present that system to the Florida Courts Technology Commission soon and hope to have their approval and have the system operational by the end of the year. This should help all the clerks comply with the legislation and make e-filing easier for all filers,” Shore said.

“I applaud the efforts of the Legislature requiring the courts and clerks to move forward with e-filing and a uniform case maintenance system. I have had e-filing in place now for several years and it is clear that a voluntary system is not effective. We studied the cost of dealing with paper and determined that my office could save almost $1 million per year if everyone e-filed. We have mandatory e-filing in foreclosure actions and it has been a great success. I hope to meet the legislative October 1 deadline to require e-filing in all court divisions,” Shore said.

Lastly, when it comes to a statewide case maintenance system, Shore said, “there has been talk and work on that for years with little movement. The FACC did develop and manages CCIS, the Court Case Information System, which is a statewide system that gathers data from all the clerk systems and makes it available to all judges, state attorneys, and public defenders.

“The system is more data than case maintenance. FACC is now developing Clericus, a new case maintenance system that 40 counties have joined that could serve as a statewide system. We hope to have that developed and ready to present to the Florida Courts Technology Commission by the end of the year,” Shore said.

“Florida is such a diverse state with so many different local requirements and procedures that I don’t see a one-size-fits-all approach for all aspects of the court system, but a system that has as many uniform data elements and processes will benefit us all in cost reductions. The clerks will work with the courts to achieve economy through e-filing, standardized systems, and processes. And it is good to see the Legislature stepping up to oversee this.”

Asked what she thinks the biggest barrier has been so far, Rushing said she didn’t want to cause more friction with the courts, but, “There seems to me a concern about the clerks developing the system. It seems to me the court somehow wants to develop the system. . . . From the day of Noah, we always bought the equipment to record the document. Hundreds of years ago, it was pens and books and then it became a big mainframe. Now it’s a distributed system, and we’re talking about you, the court, deciding what it should say and capture and we will ensure we have met [the court’s] criteria so that it can be rolled out without disappointment. To me, that seems logical.”

If We Build It, Will Funding Come?
Judge Kreeger points out that the Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability (OPPAGA) conducted a study in January titled “Judicial Case Management Practices Vary Throughout State; Better Case Data Needed.”

One of the important factors it cited is “using court technology effectively.”

While some counties are providing electronic court filing to increase efficiency, OPPAGA noted, the “availability of electronic filing may be limited by the existing technology used in each county clerk’s office, and funds are limited to update or replace these systems. The federal court system has implemented electronic case management for the federal courts, and the Office of the State Courts Administrator is presently pursuing the establishment of an electronic case management system for the district courts of appeal to increase case processing efficiency.”

The OPPAGA report noted that “judges frequently voiced concerns about the accuracy of court data reported to them by their county clerks,” downloaded nightly into the CCIS system maintained by the FACC.

“The Legislature may wish to consider convening a workgroup of judges and county clerks of court to examine the case management information available to judges statewide under the current clerk of court case maintenance and data reporting practices,” the OPPAGA report concludes.

Stressing it is her own opinion, Judge Kreeger thinks the language in the new legislation is wise.

“This bill is rather consistent with the OPPAGA concerns,” Kreeger said.

She thinks it’s a good idea to have a technology group “whose members are not just the judicial branch, not just the legislative branch, but technical people who understand what we need in an integrated system of technology for the state courts and government.

“While we would like things to happen quicker, too, and perhaps have unilateral control, if you will, I think for the good of government that it makes sense,” Kreeger said.

Second Circuit Judge Charlie Francis, Kreeger’s predecessor as chair of the Article V Technology Board, said two big issues to be answered remain: Who has measured the necessary bandwidth and server capacity? Is the Legislature going to fund it or is it an unfunded mandate of counties?

Judge Kreeger said this is where OPPAGA and shifting revenue streams come into the complicated technology picture.

“Some filing fees are going to the clerks and will go into a trust fund for technology. Somebody is going to cost out how much the technology will cost, and they will look at various sources: the clerks, the counties, the trust fund money. One thing for sure is the courts don’t have it,” Kreeger said.

“I’m not familiar enough with finances to say this is where it should come from. But having terribly disparate systems around the state is much more costly than building an integrated system for the whole state.”

State Courts Administrator Lisa Goodner, in her January 16 response to the OPPAGA report, pointed out “that the counties have experienced a drop-off in the technology fee collections specifically, which is of great concern to many of the circuits since it is the only dedicated source of technology funding for the trial courts.”

In an interview with the News, Goodner said: “My issue is: How do you pay for this? And what is the obligation of the clerk and what is the obligation of the court through the counties?”

While the clerks were given specific resources to accomplish e-filing, Goodner said, “The courts have not been given anything.”

On October 1, “We’re not going to all be able to wake up and have every court record in the state coming in electronically and getting it to judges electronically,” Goodner said.

“I think the issue of what is needed to do the court’s business more efficiently, getting that out on the table, is a good thing. Because we don’t have a system to create the most efficiency in doing the court’s business, in terms of paperwork. We didn’t object to any language the Legislature put in. It shines a light on the technology of the branch that is a big frustration to us. It brings it up in an arena where we can discuss it with the funders. We can’t do this without having the funds. The funders are the Legislature and the counties.”

Tom Hall, clerk of the Supreme Court and a member of the Electronic Filing Committee, said he personally wishes all courts statewide had e-filing, because it is so much more efficient and saves money. He has been invited by Indiana Court of Appeals Judge Margret Robb to speak at the Appellate Judges Education Institute’s Summit 2009, November 19-22 in Orlando.

“I look at my desk and you wouldn’t know I’m interested in e-filing. I have too many pieces of paper,” Robb said. “But I think it helps with efficiency.”

Some older people on the court may ask: “Why do I turn off the computer by pushing the start button?” But Robb sees e-filing and integrated computers as the wave of the future and she said no one does it better than Arizona.

It’s a national issue and Hall’s panel will try to answer: What are the barriers to making electronic filing happen?

“We could do electronic filing right now at the Supreme Court. The problem is there is no documents management to take that electronic document and make reasonable use of it. We had money to get the system, but it was taken away from us by the Legislature a couple of years ago,” Hall said.

The federal system’s e-filing works differently, Hall said, because, “They can dictate: ‘You will do this.’”

But Florida, Hall said, has 67 counties, with no unified top-down management, but 67 bosses who want to do it different ways. Indicative of Hall’s frustration is that some county clerks have told him they don’t even have scanners to prepare documents for transmitting electronically.

“It’s a mess. It’s not that there’s any one barrier. I was quoted in the Bar News when I was first selected as clerk 10 years ago that I’d like to accomplish electronic filing,” Hall said.

“I don’t think it will happen before I retire. I have four years to go. I’m not optimistic.”