Technology that Makes Cents

Technology that Makes Cents

Looking for less whiz-bang and more practicality, courthouse administrators and clerks of court turn to technology to get the most bang for the bucks.

By Sean Roth

Real Estate Editor

"Do more with less." That was essentially the impact of Revision 7 to Article V of the Florida Constitution on the state's clerks of court and court administrators. On July 1, the voter mandate transferred most of the responsibility for paying for court and legal-document record keeping from the county to the state.

An unintended consequence of this collective belt tightening among clerks and court administrators has been a continued expansion into the cost saving world of technology. In almost every case the goal of the technology is to directly or indirectly reduce the all-important cost - staff time.

"We could not carry out all the mandates in a manual world," says Karen Rushing, clerk of the circuit court and comptroller for Sarasota County. "We are fortunate that we live in an environment where there are a lot of electronic solutions. Our most expensive cost is labor, and we have been able to reduce the budget by 16 positions over the last year largely because of technology."

Sarasota and its sister county to the north - Manatee - are in many ways leading the pack in public records and courthouse technology. Both Rushing and R.B. "Chips" Shore, Manatee's clerk of circuit court and comptroller, are leaders in adopting public record Web sites that give viewers access to documents, including deeds, mortgages and judgments.

Prior to the Florida Supreme Court's moratorium earlier this year against placing court records on Web sites, both counties had imaged court records on their Web sites. Following the moratorium, most Florida counties, including Sarasota and Manatee, continue to scan court documents for courthouse viewing and in preparation for the moratorium being lifted.

Aside from its public benefits, imaging requires less physical storage space, fewer specialized machines (specifically microfilm machines) and reduced staff management.

Sarasota County has moved slightly ahead of Manatee in the field of e-filing, a process where attorneys and other filers submit court documents electronically to the clerk.

"We are now officially offering e-filing for attorneys," Rushing says. "As soon as we get some alternative usership that we can evaluate, we plan to start offering it to others as well. We are moving to a self-service model for filing. While we are going through the transition period we are not going to tell people we will not take paper filings. But if someone comes in and says they want to file a small claims case, we will say, 'Sit down here (at the public access computers) and file electronically.' "

Manatee is following closely and has an ongoing test program with a Bradenton law firm. The state attorney's office and child support enforcement division now use the e-filing system in Manatee. E-filing has the potential to save the clerks' staff time and reduce the possibility of errors from retyping, plus there's the benefit to attorneys and other users.

Sarasota, Manatee and Desoto counties, which are covered by the 12th Judicial Circuit, all plan to use the same vendor software, Courtview, to handle case maintenance and central cashiering.

The circuit also uses an image management system, called E-bench, to give judges access to all the documents related to a court case electronically through Coutview.

"Eventually I am confident that when we have this working to everyone's satisfaction we will not have to create case folders," Rushing says. "This will save on binders ... and the people to produce them. Naturally there is some early resistance ... (but) this is really going to be the way of the future."

Shore agrees and says that the improved integration of the different data fields could have a profound effect on court cases.

"Let's say a judge is being told in a child support case that one party doesn't have the money to pay," Shore says. "With the new system it is possible for a judge to automatically check if that person owns property in one of the those (Sarasota, Manatee or Desoto) counties."

Shore is the founder and chairman of the Florida Association of Court Clerks committee that developed the Web site, myfloridacounty.com. The site was designed to be a unified index of official records and a central cashier for child support and traffic citation payment for most Florida counties. The site allows users to order a public record from each county or make a payment at one Web site. Ultimately, Shore says the site will add the dockets from every court case in the state. Currently 56 separate Florida counties participate in the Web site.

Manatee's latest technical project is working with software to find social security numbers in imaged documents and redact the information automatically. All of Florida's clerks of court are working under a 2006 deadline to redact financial (bank account, debit, charge and credit card numbers) and social security numbers from their collection of public records.

On the courthouse side, the 12th Judicial Circuit has created technology to make video conferencing more available and has installed free wireless Internet access in its courtrooms.

"We are the first court in the state to be wireless," says Walt Smith, the circuit's court administrator. "The big savings there is really in convenience."

In Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, both court systems have installed new technology to record audio digitally in courtrooms rather than having a traditional transcriptionist.

"The cost of a traditional stenographic report in a misdemeanor or juvenile case is usually unnecessary," says Mike Bridenback, trial court administrator for the 13th Judicial Circuit covering Hillsborough County. "The advantage for digital recording is its quality, and that it can transport in a much more efficient way."

If one of the parties needs a transcription, the staff can either burn a CD or e-mail it to the circuit's contracted transcription company. Bridenback is also working on digital video recording, desktop video conferencing and establishing wireless Internet access in the courthouse buildings.

The 13th Circuit has also outsourced its technology support to the University of South Florida.

The college "will be managing our computer services," Bridenback says. "Overseeing our desktop support and running our digital court reporting. We will get the benefits of their size in purchases. It makes the price predictable month to month."

Both the court system and the clerk of court for Hillsborough County have switched their phone systems to Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system.

"There are a great deal of upfront costs," says Jack Etheredge, chief deputy of technology for the Hillsborough County Clerk of Court. "But we will get those costs back through savings on the back end for maintenance. In one year with the old system we probably spent about $140,000 on maintenance. Now that will be just $45,000 a year."

Bridenback agrees and says that VoIP also has the added benefit of bundled-services for one monthly cost similar to consumer VoIP products. Both officials expect their offices to recover the initial upfront costs from VoIP in the next five to six years.

In Pinellas County, the clerk of court's office, one of the first in Florida to allow computer users access to court records via a subscription service, now takes a more gradual approach to its Web site and technology. The clerk offers an index of its official records and court dockets through its subscriber-based system. But no images of the documents are available outside of the office.

Myriam Irizarry, chief deputy for the Pinellas County clerk of court's office, says the clerk has started imaging several record types, but has not found a way to redact financial and social security numbers to meet a provision of the Supreme Court's moratorium.

"Next up we will be looking at automating the tax deed process," Irizarry says. "We will also be looking at what Tampa federal court has done with its e-filing program."

To the south in Lee County, which includes Fort Myers, Charlie Green, clerk of court, not only uses the Internet to allow virtual access to official records; his office uses that remote-access technology to allow about 20 employees to work from home.

"I would like to see that increase," Green says. "This really comes from T1 lines and base scanning."

Currently, Lee County's virtual-office staffers primarily work in the areas of accounts payable, information technology, recording and document verification. Not only can remote office work appeal to the area's semi-retiree mark, it can expand the geography of available employees. Green currently employees a staff member in Atlanta to work on the clerk's software and database systems.

Asked about the natural tendency of a technology like that to lead to overseas outsourcing, Green agreed it very well could extend employment that way.

"I am going to provide the most quality service I can for the very best price I can," Green says. "I may end up outsourcing, but that is at least five to 10 years away."

Green is also relying on technology to keep the size of his staff as small as possible. While the population in Lee County grew by 47% in the past decade, the clerk's staff grew by 25%.

"I would like that to be 7% to 9%," Green says.