Let the record show that on September 19, 2008, the Records Management Committee of the Indiana Supreme Court will celebrate its twenty-fifth (25th) anniversary. The Committee was created by Supreme Court Rule and is charged with the duty to study the practices, procedures, and systems for the maintenance and management of court records and to make recommendations to the Supreme Court for their modernization, improvement and standardization. Mr. John J. Newman, Director of Information Management for the Division of State Court Administration, was present at its inception and recalled that the Committee evolved from an ad hoc group that was created in 1980 to provide direction to trial courts on the creation, maintenance, access to and disposal of records. With the adoption of Administrative Rule 4 in September 1983, the Records Management Committee became an official committee of the Indiana Supreme Court.
John Newman’s first association with the Records Management Committee was in his capacity as Indiana State Archivist and Deputy Director of the Indiana Commission on Public Records. However, when the Supreme Court adopted an early recommendation of the Committee to create a Records Management Section within the Division of State Court Administration, John became its first Director. He has held this position since July 1986. Mr. Newman recently announced his retirement, effective at the end of July 2008. At the latest Records Management Committee meeting held on June 13, 2008, Committee Chair Indiana Supreme Court Justice Brent Dickson thanked John for his many years of service to the committee, for which John received rousing applause from its members.
In its twenty-five year existence, the Committee has studied a variety of topics, including retention schedules for court records, microfilming, document imaging, preservation of records, courthouse security, application of technology, confidentiality of records, and video-conferencing, just to name a few. While dealing with the immediate problems of the day, the Committee has always kept one eye toward the future when making its recommendations to the Supreme Court. For example, the revisions to Trial Rule 77 that created the concepts of the chronological case summary (CCS) and the record of judgments and orders (RJO) were made with the future automation needs of the court system in mind.
The Committee was recently expanded to consist of twenty-six (26) members, and many of the new members attended their first meeting on June 13th. In addition to Justice Dickson, the membership includes eleven (11) trial court judges and judicial officers, four (4) staff members from the administrative agencies of the Indiana Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, three (3) circuit court clerks, three (3) court administrators, two (2) practicing attorneys, the Indiana Public Defender, and the Executive Director of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Council.
At its most recent meeting, the Committee addressed issues involving access to information (Administrative Rule 9), cooperation between the Records Management Committee and JTAC (Trial Rule 77), retention and disposal of records (Administrative Rule 7), document imaging and microfilming (Administrative Rule 6), video-conferencing (Administrative Rule 14), and creating a special needs case type (Administrative Rule 8). New committee member Glenn Lawrence, Marion County Court Administrator, remarked that he found the issues interesting and the discussions stimulating. The liaison for the Committee is Tom Jones, Records Manager, Division of State Court Administration, [email protected].
