Odyssey Case Management System Launched in Monroe County and Marion County’s Washington Township
The Indiana judiciary’s ambitious plan to equip all Hoosier courts and clerks with a 21st century case management system took a dramatic step forward at year’s end when all nine courts in Monroe County and the Washington Township Small Claims Court in Marion County began using the Indiana Supreme Court’s “Odyssey” computer system to manage their cases.
“The Odyssey Case Management System will change the way we do our work in ways that we have not yet imagined,” Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard predicted. Shepard said the ground-breaking work of the ten pilot courts in Monroe and Marion Counties will benefit the entire state. “Being first can be a point of pride, but it also requires a special commitment and a lot of hard work. Monroe Circuit Court Presiding Judge Kenneth G. Todd, Monroe Circuit Court Clerk Jim Fielder, and Washington Township Judge Kimberly Brown, and their colleagues and staff gave us the full measure of their input and expertise,” Shepard said in appreciation.
Odyssey was developed by Tyler Technologies, Inc. The Supreme Court’s Division of State Court Administration chose Tyler to provide the Odyssey case management system for Indiana following a competitive procurement process, public demonstration sessions, and the recommendation of three review committees. The Odyssey project is under the direction of the Supreme Court’s Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC).
Drama and Hard Work Accompanied Deployment
After months of preparation, actual deployment of the Odyssey system began in Washington Township at the close of business on Wednesday, December 12, when the court ceased processing cases on its old case management system. Technical experts from Tyler and JTAC under the direction of consultant Ben Balke immediately began electronically to convert the data on over 100,000 old cases into the format required by Odyssey. The arduous conversion process took all Wednesday night, all day Thursday, and well into Thursday night. But when the court was ready to open for business Friday morning, Odyssey was too. At 8:50 a.m., Project Director Donna Edgar, on site in Washington Township, e-mailed the Supreme Court’s Director of Trial Court Technology Mary DePrez, “We are up and running. Stay tuned.” An hour later came news that the first new case had been added to Odyssey.
On hand to assist Judge Kimberly Brown and her staff throughout “go-live” day were Project Directors Edgar and Mary Wilson, Washington Township Team Lead Gaye Lynn Strickland, and additional staff from both JTAC and Tyler. In fact, JTAC and Tyler staff remained on-site in Washington Township for several weeks thereafter until Judge Brown determined that Odyssey was operating to her satisfaction and her staff no longer required on-site assistance. Support continues to be available via the JTAC help desk.
As exciting as it was to go-live in Washington Township, that court has but one judge and handles but one case type. Monroe County—with nine courts (one of which opened for business for the first time on January 2, 2008), 10 judicial officers, all 35 case types, and nearly 40,000 filings per year—would be much bigger and more complicated.
The old case management system in Monroe County was turned off at the end of business on Friday, December 14. As had been the case in Washington Township, JTAC and Tyler technical experts immediately began electronically converting data on all of the old cases in Monroe County into the Odyssey database. This was a massive effort as there were well over 500,000 such cases. And the time window for completing conversion was relatively small. Monroe County Clerk Jim Fielder, JTAC, and Tyler had agreed that Fielder’s entire staff would come into the office at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Decem-ber 16, for a dry run on the new system prior to the office opening for business on Monday morning. Sure enough, Odyssey was up and running in Monroe County in time for the 1 p.m. training session—despite a big snow storm that had hit Bloomington the night before.
When the Monroe County courthouse opened on Monday, December 17, all of the staff in the clerk’s office and court administrator’s office, and all of the judges, court reporters, and other staff in the courts were using Odyssey to manage their cases. Project Directors Edgar and Wilson had moved down to Bloomington from Washington Township over the weekend where they joined Monroe County Team Lead Nate Pelczar and several dozen other JTAC and Tyler employees in assisting Monroe County employees in their work and in identifying and resolving problems. Many JTAC and Tyler employees remained on-site in Bloomington for this purpose through the end of January.
Configuration, Training, and Network Efforts Preceded Deployment
Key to the successful deployment of Odyssey in Washington Township and Monroe County were intense efforts by personnel from JTAC, Tyler, Washington Township, Monroe County, and the Indiana Office of Technology in three areas: configuration, training, and networking.
While the Odyssey case management system is designed to meet the needs of Indiana courts and clerks generally, special modifications needed to be made to reflect the particular business practices of Washington Township and Monroe County and the rights and roles of the staff there. These were conducted under Edgar’s leadership by JTAC and Tyler personnel in close cooperation with court and clerk personnel.
As the deployment date approached, Wilson, Strickland, Pelczar and their staff identified the individuals in both locations who would be using Odyssey and conducted training classes for them. Principal users of the system each received approximately 60 hours of training prior to deployment.
Historically, each Indiana court has maintained and run its own case management system from within its own courthouse. One of the most revolutionary aspects of Odyssey is that the system runs on a centralized group of computer servers maintained by the Indiana Office of Technology (IOT) in Indianapolis and is connected to the users’ desktops over the Internet. This presents a host of technical requirements supervised by JTAC Project Director Andy Cain: acquiring the servers and installing them at IOT; installing Odyssey on the servers; assuring the Internet connection between IOT and Washington Township and between IOT and Monroe County was both fast enough and secure enough; assuring that the network within the Washington Township and Monroe County courthouses was adequate; and installing the so-called “Odyssey client” on the individual desktop computers in the courthouses.
No Charge for Public Access to Case Information
Another of the major innovations of Odyssey is that public information on cases in these courts is available at no charge via the Supreme Court’s website (www.courts.in.gov). Every time a new court begins to use Odyssey, its case information will be added to the public website.
Public access and connections between Odyssey and law enforcement and other government agencies further the Supreme Court’s goal to connect Indiana’s court case management system to those who need and use court information. Electronic connections—called “interfaces”—already exist to transmit SR-16 information from Odyssey to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles; tax warrant information to Odyssey from the Indiana Department of Revenue; and traffic citation information from law enforcement to Odyssey. The last of these interfaces is producing dramatic results: hundreds of traffic infraction cases have already been filed on Odyssey in Monroe County electronically—without any data entry required at all in the Clerk’s office!
These Courts Were Called Pilots for a Reason
While deployment in Washington Township went smoothly, several major—but not insurmountable—problems were encountered in Monroe County. Perhaps the most disconcerting was the inability of the new system to produce court calendars that accurately reflected court hearing dates and times set prior to December 17. There were also problems with the accuracy of certain financial information in the pre-December 17 case data. These problems—indeed approximately 90% of the problems encountered—were not with the Odyssey program itself but with difficulties in accurately converting old case data into the Odyssey database. Tyler and JTAC staff have worked very hard to correct these problems as they have arisen and have learned important lessons about data conversion for future deployments.
In addition, changes to the Odyssey program to meet Indiana court and clerk requirements continued to be made until only a few days before deployment in Washington Township and Monroe County. This meant that the training provided prior to deployment did not take place using the same version of Odyssey that users faced on the go-live dates. This meant that the advance training was not as comprehensive as desired. This problem should be avoided in future deployments as comparable changes will not be being made to Odyssey at the last minute.
Finally, it was not possible in advance to know whether the network would be fast enough to meet the needs of the courts’ users. “Bandwidth” and other adjustments have had to be made in both Washington Township and Monroe County to improve performance.
Aggressive Plans for Odyssey in 2008 and Beyond
While the simultaneous deployment of Odyssey in ten Indiana courts is a mile-stone to celebrate, 2008 promises to be a year of even more aggressive progress toward the Supreme Court’s goals.
A significant upgrade to Odyssey is scheduled to be released in late winter, adding even more features to help Indiana courts and court clerks—and we hope to have many additional courts using Odyssey by next year’s end. Statewide roll-out will continue over the next several years.
Although the Odyssey system is and will be used by local Indiana courts, the Supreme Court is and will be responsible for all costs associated with the licensing, maintenance, and further upgrading of the system. The General Assembly has directed that a portion of court filing fees underwrite the cost of this project, and we are deeply grateful for the Legislature’s confidence in this effort.
“With approximately 1.8 million cases filed in Indiana courts in 2006, Hoosier courts and court clerks need 21st century case management systems and Hoosier law enforcement officers, lawyers, government agencies, and citizens need timely and accurate court information,” Shepard concluded. “With ten Indiana courts using Odyssey, free public access to their records, and aggressive rollout plans for 2008 and beyond, we are well underway toward meeting those needs.”