California's Judicial Branch Is Going Digital

The California Judicial Council — and the state's courts as a whole — have been undergoing a technology overhaul, according to the Judicial Council’s CIO and the Third Appellate District’s clerk administrator.

CIO Robert Oyung leads “branchwide initiatives” to provide technology solutions to local branches.

“The Judicial Council brings together the IT community throughout the courts. It’s really up to the local courts to implement those strategies,” Oyung said last week at Techwire’s State of Technology California Industry Forum.

Technology advisory groups at the Judicial Council also direct the movement toward more accessible justice. Vendors can sit in on the four to six meetings a year for information about active projects and upcoming plans.

Andrea Wallin-Rohmann, clerk/executive officer for the Third Appellate District and Oyung's counterpart on the panel, said, “We really rely pretty heavily on Rob’s staff and the solutions that they bring in to support our courts.”

Appellate courts can also find tech solutions independently, but Wallin-Rohmann’s court attempts to work with other courts first.

Branch-level IT is driven by the chief justice's leadership and is outlined by the Access 3D vision. This plan focuses on creating physical, self-serve and multi-language access to the justice system. These three components include attempting to make as many courts paperless as possible.

All of these components and the branch’s other efforts keep four goals in mind from the strategic plan, which outlines technology goals over the next year, and the tactical plan. 

"I would encourage you all to take a look at the strategic plan and the tactical plan, especially the tactical plan, because those are the areas we are going to be focused in the next two years," Oyung said to vendors hoping to sell to the Council.

Those goals are:

• Promote digital courts
• Optimize resources
• Optimize infrastructure
• Promote rule and legislation changes

ImageSoft software was adopted a year ago across several courts in an attempt to manage e-filing. This was paired with a case management system, but in Wallin-Rohmann's appellate court, several solutions were created as "gap solutions to enable us to move documents between the clerk's office and the justice's chambers electronically." While the Third Appellate is fully paperless, each of the six appellate courts independently chooses its technology, and some have not adopted any paperless solutions past ImageSoft.

Moving into digital judicial services will allow California residents to access services more readily, so "our focus is really on the digital courts," Oyung said.

Before that effort, "internally, from a technology perspective it was extremely chaotic." Until five years ago, each of the state's 58 trial courts and the appellate courts all procured their own tech. The branch had just come out of a failed project, Oyung said, which launched the strategic plan. The plan was developed by representatives from each court and the California Department of Technology. It allows for innovation by checking into each court's solutions and sharing programs that work across all levels.

"Even at the appeal court level, we've really just started to have cross conversations about 'What are you doing in your court, and  how can I benefit from that in my court?'" Wallin-Rohmann said about sharing technology across courts.

The courts will push for more language access and self-help services in the next year. Several local jurisdictions have already begun using chatbots and machine learning to answer residents' questions.