On August 14, 2013, the trial court technology section of the Indiana Supreme Court’s Division of State Court Administration (Division) hit a major milestone when it filed its one millionth traffic ticket electronically in the state’s Odyssey court case management system.
During 2008, the first traffic case was “e-filed” in Odyssey in Monroe County without the Monroe County Clerk doing any data entry. The ticket data was extracted from the electronic ticketing software developed by the Division. The data was pushed into Odyssey through its Application Portal Interface or API. The ticketing software, called eCWS (electronic Citation and Warning System), was piloted by the Indiana State Police in the second half of 2007 and was deployed to the entire agency at the beginning of 2008.
Since those first days, over 320 additional law enforcement agencies have implemented the software. Currently, over 8,000 officers use eCWS, resulting in over 6 million tickets and warnings in the eCWS database. Tickets ‘written’ using eCWS are uniform and legible, factors that are appreciated by judges, clerks and even recipients of the ticket. The officer uses a scanner to ‘read’ the bar code on the license and registration. The scanned data then populates the ticket, leaving little additional data entry for the officer. Because tickets are issued faster, the time an officer is on the roadway is greatly reduced, improving officer and motorist safety.
In 2009, the Marion County traffic court, the busiest court in the state, deployed Odyssey in order to take advantage of the e-fling capability of eCWS tickets issued by the Indiana State Police. Within months of the court’s conversion to Odyssey, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department started sending their electronic ticket data to the Division for filing to Odyssey. Marion County Judge James Joven, praised the Supreme Court for providing this service to the court: “Like all government entities, courts are being asked to do more with less, and the ability to file electronically thousands of traffic cases a year in Odyssey has ensured that cases are filed timely, that case data is accurate, and has enabled our limited staff to turn its attention to customer service.”
In 2012, 75% of all infraction and ordinance violation tickets issued in Indiana were issued using eCWS. Approximately 300,000 (36%) of all infraction and ordinance violation cases filed in the state were electronically filed in Odyssey. During 2012, the Division sent 151,000 (19% of total cases filed) eCWS infraction and ordinance violation tickets to prosecutors or other court case management systems to be filed electronically.
Since 2008, over 695,000 tickets have been sent from the eCWS system to other case management systems to be e-filed in the respective courts.
Today, the Division electronically files eCWS ticket data to more than 100 Odyssey courts in 45 counties. Odyssey is available to any court and the Division pays for the installation, training, licensing fees and on-going support.