Perhaps there really was nothing comparable in the state of Indiana.

I haven’t been convinced that this is the case though. Intuitively, it’s hard to believe that we have no homegrown talent and skills through Indiana’s institutions of higher education— with which to tackle software problems and needs.

Currently, Odyssey will still require continuing work with a firm (Tyler) in Dallas…Texas…I’m sure we’ll hear all about why it’s been worthwhile to have outsourced this statewide project… this afternoon?

The meeting will be filmed by CATS.

For $75 million, the Indiana Supreme Court and JTAC are offering no worthwhile improvements for Indiana trial courts, taxpayers and citizens that are involved in the court system, especially at this horrendous price tag and when there are already systems in place now that are providing what JTAC hopes to some day replicate.

Another major concern to the Indiana Supreme Court’s unnecessary takeover is privacy. The Indiana Supreme Court has outsourced this takeover to Texas based Tyler Technologies and their system called Odyssey. Odyssey is a centrally hosted internet based system. This means confidential juvenile, mental health, adoption records and an a plethora of additional personal information will be transacted, stored and accessed over the internet. This will no doubt be a very tempting target for internet hackers that want access to this kind of personal information. Additionally, having a centrally state controlled internet system presents the potential of a total shutdown of local county courts that use this system should there be a central system shutdown, hacking or internet failure. Who else will be able to access and view this confidential information?

Why would locally elected officials delagate their responsibility to locally protect personal and confidential information to the Indiana Supreme Court over the internet? One reason might be that local county courts have been forced to send to the State of Indiana and the Indiana Supreme Court $10 million per year. This $10 million per year is generated from an additional tax on all new court filings that began in 2001. Rich or poor, each citizen that files a new case with county courts must pay an additional $7.00 that is then used by the Indiana Supreme Court to fund their risky and redundant project.

Competition? The Indiana Supreme Court hopes to make the Odyssey system statewide by using very anti-competitive tactics. The competitive marketplace that has already automated over 90% of Hoosier counties must now compete against the Odyssey system which the Indiana Supreme Court intends to give away for free to Hoosier counties. The Indiana Supreme Court hope $75 million of taxpayer dollars will eliminate the competitive marketplace and replace Hoosier high tech tax paying jobs with State tax consuming jobs.

Locally elected officials that are willing to give up their responsibility of protecting local citizens’confidential information to state bureaucrats currently just may never again regain this control.

BTW, I came in at the tail-end of the presentation yesterday, and I was surprised to see that our favorite news fabricator, Kurt Van der Dussen was there and asked questions. Has he been let out of the dog house?

I did ask one of our local electeds about the “free” aspect of Odyssey that was being lauded on Monday.

Disclaimer: I didn’t resist pointing out that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch…” in this conversation.

As I suspected, the tangible cost to Monroe County Government so far has been in the form of additional time in the form of real human beings’ hours of work.

———————————————————-
Rethie’s Roommate…for you:
The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics

Monroe County receives conservatively about 31,000 new filings per year. Therefore, by legislative enforcement, Monroe County has sent the State and Indiana Supreme Court over $1.3 million of local taxpayer money since 2001. There will be more hard dollar costs coming as a result of this new internet system.

During the 2006 legislative session, Representative Eric Koch and Dick Dodge co-sponsored HB 1304 that would have returned this money to counties that did not want to participate in this risky and unnecessary internet based system. The bill also would have allowed the county to keep $4 of the $7 which would provide an additional $124,000 per year for Monroe County to maintain their own case management system which currently is being supplied by a Hoosier company. HB 1304 was never allowed a vote on the House floor.

Unfortunately, Monroe County could have used this money to update their existing case management system which has not been updated for over 5 years and is currently operating on a 10 year old server.

So what does Monroe County lose now besides money? By Monroe County joining with the Indiana Supreme Court, Monroe County will lose another valuable tool that Monroe County pioneered in 2002 and that local and statewide attorneys and the public have relied on since 2002. This tool is the doxpop.com internet system that receives public case information (note, ONLY public case information) from Monroe County’s existing case management software. The public can access this public court information from Monroe County and 42 other Hoosier counties via the internet, 24 hours per day, seven days per week. The doxpop.com system is free to Monroe County and since it is entirely a separate system, internet hackers have NO access to Monroe County’s data which is securely stored locally by your own in-house technical staff.

Monroe County Recorder also post their information to the doxpop.com system providing even greater information and services to your constituents. A great service to the people by Monroe County now lost.

If Monroe County were to implement the document scanning system that the existing case management system can provide, all court records could be electronically and securely stored (free up enormous space!). The public could then access the electronic court documents locally and via the same doxpop.com system. This is now lost and with internet limitations it maybe a long time if ever that the Indiana Supreme Court can provide this critical imaging capabilities over the internet.

The Monroe County Prosecutor recently switch to another Hoosier company so that they could have all their criminal and traffic infractions filed electronically with the existing case management system. This revolutionary advancement and the tremendous efficiency this would have provided Monroe County is now gone indefinately.

Monroe County courts and clerk already partner with a Hoosier company that has a proven and functioning 21st century statewide case management system that Monroe County has total control over and share their information with the BMV, Indiana Department of Revenue, Indiana State Police, Indiana Prosecuting Attorney Council, local prosecutor, Indiana Supreme Court, the and the worldwide public.

Now, Monroe County courts have decided to give control over their data to the Indiana Supreme Court via a very risky internet based system in Indianapolis and will lose all the above benefits from your proven statewide case management system for an unknown period of time. Monroe County has absolutely lost control over their own data, how the system will function and who can access your local constituent’s confidential information.

What a substantial step backward not only in terms of losing the proven capabilities of the existing and functioning statewide system and the tremendous financial loss to taxpayers that have to pay for the Indiana Supreme Court’s unnecessary internet based system but now the horrific prospect of exposing your people’s confidential information because of this internet system hosted in Indianapolis.

If the Indiana Supreme Court eventually can access all the court data from every county in Indiana, what does this mean for our system of blind justice!?

Hearing from you does shed light on nagging questions I’ve had, things I’ve intuitively wondered about; no rocket science on my part…just a natural suspicion of mine of 1. outsourcing and, 2. state control/influence over local choices…

I think I’ll send a link to this blog entry to a variety of people in Monroe County Government and see what kind of answers I might get from people working directly in the frontlines with the transition.

As I mentioned before, I asked one elected official about the “free” aspects and at that time I also asked if he had knowledge of how this might affect the Public Defender and Prosecutor offices (for they were not really mentioned in Monday’s presentation) and you’ve indicated to me some things I can ask both of those offices about directly.

Thanks for your information; more importantly, your final question is especially striking…what does this mean…? In this internet, cybersecurity age?

Question: Why should Indiana taxpayers fund a system that is not needed? The judges tell us that they need this information. But stop and think. Our system of justice is based on two sides presenting their case to the court. The judge is to be unbiased and disinterested. If Odyssey is successful it would mean that the judge can look up information independently of what is presented by either side in court. Do we want this? This is the European inquisitorial system, not the American adversarial system.

Question: Why should Indiana taxpayers again fund a system that will merely replace systems already in place that are doing more than Odyssey will do and have already been paid for? For example, existing systems in about half of Indiana counties have the capabilities outlined by Kevin above which are significantly ahead of where Odyssey is now. The competitive marketplace has provided solutions to the case management problems of Indiana courts and now the Supreme Court wants to replace private enterprise with their own monolithic system.

Question: What will this white elephant really cost Indiana taxpayers? No one is talking about that. It is being touted as “free” but as Sophia points out, there is no free lunch. And the numbers that Kevin cites are on the low end. The fact is that the Supreme Court has squandered millions so far and millions more will be wasted. Monroe county is getting its data converted for “free” but other counties will have to pay.

Question: If there are existing court systems that manage local cases; if there are interfaces in place that allow for the sharing of the public part of this information; if cases and data can already be sent between courts, prosecutors, clerks, BMV, Dept of Revenue, etc.; then what is the REAL reason the judges want this new system???

What has been most annoying about all of this is that absolutely no one in the Legislative branch of government which provides the money or the local council or commissioners has asked any real questions. To the extent that anyone has asked, they’re given B.S. answers and they don’t know enough to follow up with the next question to get at the truth.

At the end of the day, (if the thing works at all; their last attempt crashed) we are going to radically increase the power of judges over all of us, dangerously expose private, personal information over the internet, put several Indiana businesses out of business and waste millions of tax dollars.

And all because the judges tell us that they “need” a system to make them more efficient or whatever. What they don’t tell you is that they already have a system that works; it just doesn’t give them the control and access to personal information that they want. If our elected Legislators and local officials won’t ask the hard questions and demand truthful answers, then we’re going to be stuck with something that will be Orwellian indeed.

You think they should continue working on a system that’s five years old? Are upgrades available from the original vendor? Do they modernize the system such that it uses the web-based interfaces that we’ve all grown used to over the last five years? Based on this information it seems possible or likely that the users will be thrilled with the switch. Just sayin’.

(On the other hand, Odyssey may be every bit as poorly designed from a user’s perspective. And an in-state vendor would have been a lot better too, if there is one available).

So why Monroe County didn’t update, I can’t answer that but they certainly could have and probably should have to make the Odyssey more accountable.

Regarding the question of “Do they modernize the system such that it uses the web-based interfaces that we’ve all grown to used to over the last five years?”, this a matter more of how the user “views and interacts” with the software versus the more important question you raise and that is how well does the existing or new system function to the users’ needs, efficiencies of use, secure data sharing and integration with other modern tools like email, adobe, word processing, scanning etc. There are many great systems that are not and do not need to “web-based” especially since data collection is (and should be) a local issue and there are e-filing/data sharing standards using XML.

I would also suggest that in the long run, the competitive marketplace is the more cost effective and capable source for providing high tech advances/functionality as well as providing the critical resources of motivated people to support the software. State bureaucrats that give a darn if local Monroe County users are satisfied when they have a monopoly???

If the competitive marketplace is then required to adhere to standards and requirements established by and enforced by the Indiana Supreme Court and/or local IT requirements, I think then you might just have the perfect world.

In 1995, the Indiana Supreme Court paid then Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) hundreds of thousands of dollars (AIMS III project) for their opinion on this very issue and received the suggestion of working with and NOT replacing the competitive marketplace with the Indiana Supreme Court establishing standards of data collection, sharing and technical issues.

The Illinois Supreme Court and Ohio Supreme Court are excellent examples of such a partnership where the competitive marketplace supplies the local software and support within the standards established by the Supreme Court.

Regardless of whether the system is web-based, GUI, etc, I am just appauled at the whole concept of centrally collecting and storing confidential information via the internet and the enormous financial cost and onging tax burden to taxpayers of implementing this very flawed and unnecesary concept. Not to mention the issue of why should the Indiana Supreme Court or any centralized state entity even be allowed to be the custodian of all this information.

He also doesn’t mention the fact the the Supreme Court delayed selection of the vendor for this in order to INCLUDE his company, whose presentation did not address the questions of the Justices or those in attendance.

Convenient memory, Kevin.

Mr. Sam Allison, the Monroe County Recorder, called and wanted to correct my statement where I stated that the Monroe County Recorder information is being posted to the Doxpop.com system. This was incorrect and the Monroe Recorder information is NOT being posted to the Doxpop.com system. Mr. Allison further stated that his office would like to seek more input on the issue of posting this information to the Doxpop.com system before making this important decision.

scanning of court documents, e-filing, advanced court scheduling, modern server and operating system, integrated forms processing, a very user-friendly point-n-click local public access system, email notices and more.

Designed to be sold, rather than used, perhaps? I agree that not every system has to be web-based, but users are very sensitive to software niceties such as mouse wheel support, intuitive tabbing between form fields, and resizable windows that can take advantage of extended monitor screen space. I’m still curious to hear reactions of the users as they try out the new software.

There is a great article from the Evansville Courier Press Editorial (see below for link) that I hope every taxpayer, state legislator and locally elected county official would read, understand and take heed especially the comment made by the Indiana Supreme Court’s Court Administration regarding the taxpaying private sector (doxpop.com) that will “earn a profit off public records that the state itself seeks to make available online for free?”. The article also poses an excellent question about the issue of FAIR competition.

Free online public records? The Indiana Supreme Court with the continued approval by Indiana legislators will cost cash strapped Hoosier taxpayers over $100 million to make public records “free” using their Odyssey internet based system supported by millions of dollars per year of tax consuming jobs and with no interface with the other 87 counties that already have a CMS.

Taxpayers did not have to pay for the doxpop.com system which has served the public since 2002 (pioneered by Monroe County). Rather, the private sector that benefits from public court information supports the total cost of development and the ongoing operations of the statewide doxpop.com public access system.

Fair Competition? There can be NO fair competition when the Indiana Supreme Court is allowed to continue to spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money every year in a deliberate effort to eliminate the competitive private sector marketplace in Indiana that has already provided Hoosier counties, the public and other state/federal agencies with a safe, secure and stable statewide system of court information with statewide sharing. Taxpayers in 87 counties have already paid for a statewide CMS supplied by the competitive private marketplace.

This tremendous taxpayer burden does not factor the additional cost and risks associated with an internet based system like the Indiana Supreme Court’s Odyssey internet based system. The Odyssey internet based system will increase the risk of exposing a person’s confidential personal and court information to unauthorized persons because local counties using the Odyssey internet based system must transact confidential information over the commercial internet system. Also, who at the state level has access to view, update or even delete a county’s data that is stored by the Indiana Supreme Court in Indianapolis?

When there is a security breach, loss of data or a shutdown that affects every county on the shared Odyssey internet based system, who will voters blame and hold responsible for any debacle? Will it be the locally elected leaders or the un-elected people at the State?

Evansville Courier Press Editorial:

Online court records The Issue: Tired of waiting for statewide system, Vanderburgh County moves forward on its own. Our View: State Supreme Court should resolve incompatibility between state project a

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2008/mar/27/online-court-records-the-issue-tired-of-waiting/

Sophia