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Court technology grants now available

RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter

Published: February 25, 2015

The Ohio Supreme Court is expanding its efforts to upgrade the state’s court technology levels by offering a new grant program to local courts.

Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, long champion of modernizing court technology, said that, “the Supreme Court supports the efforts of local courts to increase access to justice and provide for the efficient administration of justice. The technology grants will lend additional resources to further enhance those efforts. I encourage all Ohio judges and court administrators with eligible projects to apply.”

The grants are open in scope, with some limitations, said Stephanie Hess, director of court services for the Supreme Court.

“The chief justice intends to see what we receive from the courts, and then go from there,” she said.

There are no guarantees. “We will look at every project individually,” said Hess.

The grant monies will be available by application through the Ohio Courts Technology Initiative, and any court of appeals, common pleas court, municipal court or county court is eligible to apply, said Hess.

Hess said that she has no projections about how many courts may apply, and for what technology projects, but that she expects courts to apply for funds for a diverse set of projects, including new computers (but not tablets or phones), court security equipment, case management systems upgrades (but not new systems) and other technology upgrades.

But the first priority is to get the last two dozen or so Ohio courts who are not connected to the Ohio Courts Network to do so, said Hess, and the next priority would be to finish the process of connecting all state courts to the Computerized Criminal History database for the electronic transfer of final disposition data.

The Court Technology Fund totals $3.35 million and was established to facilitate the exchange of information and warehousing of data by and between Ohio courts and other justice system partners through the creation of an Ohio Courts Network, to deliver technology goods and services to courts and to operate the Commission on Technology and the courts.

Although that is the total of the fund, which means that $3.35 million could potentially be the maximum total amount awarded, Hess did not seem to think that the total awards would amount to that.

“Not knowing yet how many courts will apply, the project totals, and eligibility, we are not able to determine the level of funding for the technology grants from that fund at this time,” said Hess.

As mentioned above, connecting all Ohio courts to the Ohio Courts Network (OCN) is a priority for these grants. However, this does not mean that there will be one underlying software, or cloud, system for the courts, said Hess. Each court will be responsible for its own court management system (CMS), she said.

The OCN, as explained by the Supreme Court’s Information Technology Director Robert Stuart, is connected to the state of Ohio’s network, “and is made up of a multitude of applications, several dozen databases, and multiple data warehouses.  In addition, the OCN connects to and communicates with several other state agency systems, such as the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and county jails.  The system is housed here at the Supreme Court and runs in our datacenter.”

When asked about the possibility of the entire OCN functionality being housed in one data center, rather than having each individual court responsible for its own CMS, Stuart said that the technology would not currently allow that arrangement.

“OCN was designed and built before cloud-based storage service was prevalent,” said Stuart. “While some of the databases could conceivably use cloud-based storage, the data storage is just one component of a very large complex system.  It would be a significant cost to re-engineer the system to use cloud-based storage at this point, but certainly something we may consider in any future plans for change.”

The time window for applying for these grants is very short, said Hess, because of the structure of the court’s fiscal year. Review of applications and selection will begin March 1, 2015, with applications accepted and reviewed on an ongoing basis through the end of the business day on May 15, 2015.

All qualifications and applications, as well as the appropriate contact information, is on the Supreme Court’s website.


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