Missouri courts move data, prove technology

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Content date: 12/14/2005

Missouri courts move data, prove technology

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The nation’s leaders are looking to XML technology to fight terrorism. Now, those same leaders will be looking to the Missouri Judicial Branch as leaders in this new technology.

Complex Requirements and Technology Solutions
Missouri’s Judicial Branch has been involved in implementation of a statewide case management system for almost ten years. One of the slowest, most costly and most complex parts of bringing every division and every level of court onto one, statewide system is merging the historical data from a variety of old automated systems into the new case management software. However, due to financial and reporting requirements, this conversion was mandatory.

Conversion was a tedious process due to the complex nature of the data and the information each piece of data represented. In an effort to reduce the time and cost of conversion, project staff from the Missouri Office of State Courts Administrator (OSCA) became involved with the development of national standards for the use of a technology called Extensible Markup Language (XML) and a national standards initiative called the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM).

The involvement with XML technology paid off this year. Despite continuing budget challenges, the statewide automation project was able to continue successfully moving courts from old and dying systems to the statewide model. According to XML partner, Asynchrony Solutions, Missouri’s conversion project is the most ambitious GJXDM project ever successfully attempted. “To become a national model is an extraordinary statement of success that was accomplished through the public-private partnership we’ve had with Asynchrony,” said Michael L. Buenger, Missouri State Courts Administrator.

State Solutions with National Implications
The success of this statewide project has now positioned Missouri to exchange its court information nationally. GJXDM is being used by the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Missouri is now a model as these national agencies begin to electronically share and transfer critical justice information.

“We have been an active contributor to GJXDM from its beginning,” stated Missouri director of court automation Jim Roggero. “Those contributions have paid off in both time and money and we look forward to helping the global justice community as they repeat our success.”

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Attached is a case study from Asynchrony Solutions that explains this program in greater detail: