FCTC moves to make electronic records more usable
FCTC moves to make electronic records more usable
“Box-diving” is out. PDF/A is in, or soon will be.
That’s a shorthand way for saying the Florida Courts Technology Commission, at its October 26 meeting, continued to carry out and perhaps accelerated the Supreme Court’s mandate to convert Florida courts from paper to electronic records. It also took steps to make those electronic records more usable.
The FCTC received reports on a survey of clerks of courts about filing original arrest reports in criminal cases electronically instead of via paper, on its recent recommendation that all judges e-file orders by next September, and on requiring documents electronically filed with the courts to be in the PDF/A text format, which is better for long-term electronic storage and can make the documents more user-friendly. The commission also passed two resolutions on PDF/A. It has already set the goal that PDF/A will be the future format for court documents, but has not recommended deadlines for the conversion.
Box-diving was the term used by Tyler Winik of the Brevard County Clerk of Court’s office at a meeting of the commission’s Criminal Case Initiation Workgroup, which met a day before the full FCTC. The workgroup was reviewing the ongoing survey of court clerks on electronic initiation of criminal cases. Winik explained that Brevard County is well along in that process, which has virtually eliminated the need for clerks to go pawing through boxes to find the needed criminal case documents.
Workgroup Judge Martin Bidwill reported that 18 clerks had responded to the survey; four were doing criminal electronic case initiation, and 14 were not. He said he expected responses from the rest of the clerks over the next month and a full report for the FCTC’s February meeting. From there, the workgroup will sit down with clerks, prosecutors, public defenders, the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, law enforcement, and other interested parties to work on ways to electronically file criminal charges.
“The ultimate goal is to try to come up with a process by which all of these things are generated initially electronically and then stored by everybody electronically,” Bidwill said.
One potential hitch: Criminal and probate procedural court rules require some records to be created and stored on paper.
FCTC Chair Lisa Munyon, a Ninth Circuit judge, reported that she had transmitted the commission’s recommendation to the Supreme Court that all judicial orders be electronically filed and served by September 1, 2018. At the request of Chief Justice Jorge Labarga, she presented that to the quarterly meeting of circuit chief judges the week before the FCTC’s meeting.
“and large, the chief judges were not opposed to judges e-filing their orders, but everyone recognized the devil is in the details,” Munyon said.
PDF/A matters came to the FCTC when Bidwill, who also chairs the commission’s Portal Subcommittee, presented a motion calling on the statewide e-filing portal to begin the conversion to PDF/A and to notify lawyers they should begin filing documents in that format. (PDF/A is a derivative of the popular PDF format.)
PDF/A makes it easier to include “intelligent” information in the filings, such as bookmarks, active links, and to search the documents, which enhances their usability, he noted.
(The current PDF standard allows some of the same tools, but most lawyers print out their documents, manually sign them, and then scan them when converting to PDF, which removes bookmarks and links and makes it harder or impossible to search the documents, Bidwill said.)
PDF/A is also the designated eventual format for clerks to use when storing documents, because it uses less computer space. Most clerks now use the TIFF format for storage, which takes much more space and, being basically a photograph of the document, removes bookmarks and links.
The commission passed the motion on first reading and it will come back for final approval at the FCTC’s February meeting. If it passes, it will go to the Supreme Court.
The motion envisions that the portal will convert documents from other formats to PDF/A, and that lawyers will be notified they should be filing in PDF/A (except for things like exhibits which may not be able to be converted from other formats).
After that motion passed, FCTC member Murray Silverstein made an additional motion to ask the Bar’s Rules of Judicial Administration Committee to clarify how long electronic court records must be retained by clerks, to specify that future court records must be retained in PDF/A, and to set a date to begin maintaining those records in PDF/A.
Silverstein argued there is ambiguity about retention times, since the current rules largely refer to paper or “permanently recorded” documents (which usually refer to microfiche) and that it is necessary to set a deadline for converting to the PDF/A format for maintaining records.
That motion also passed on first reading and will come back to the FCTC in February meeting. Members also discussed how to educate lawyers about PDF/A, since they will be expected to use it in future court filings.
