What It Is and How It Works
As Chief Justice Dickson announced in his State of the Judiciary address on January 15, 2014, the Division of State Court Administration (Division) deployed a new INcite application called CMS Search. The CMS Search application enables court staff to search and view court records across multiple case management systems. Currently, the application is successfully implemented and is being used for cases in the Odyssey Case Management System (CMS) and the QUEST CMS / QUEST REPOSITORY. Odyssey is the Supreme Court’s state CMS, which is being deployed statewide by the Division. QUEST is the CMS used by several Indiana courts for managing their juvenile cases. Because this interface provides access to both confidential and non-confidential cases, the CMS Search application has different permission levels. Users can have access to non-confidential cases or to both non-confidential and confidential cases. Access to confidential juvenile cases is available to judges, juvenile probation officers and adult probation officers who are required by IC 31-39-2-4 to complete presentence investigation reports.
There are a number of ways to search for records in CMS Search and a number of filters can be applied to narrow the results by case type, county, and case management system.
Why It Was Developed
In 2009, the Indiana General Assembly enacted “information sharing and exchange provisions” to IC 33-24-6-3(a) that required the Division to develop protocols that would enable information sharing and exchange for three software applications developed or managed by the Division. The applications outlined in the statute include the Protection Order Registry, the electronic citation and warning system (eCSW) and the case management system developed and operated by the Division. The Division, on behalf of the Supreme Court, had purchased a statewide license for Odyssey in 2007 following a competitive procurement involving judges, clerks, and court IT professionals from throughout the state. This enterprise-wide license allows the Supreme Court to install Odyssey in all Indiana courts and clerks’ offices at no additional cost, regardless of how many additional users are added to the system. To date, Odyssey has been installed in 177 courts in 48 counties comprising over 50% of the state’s caseload.
As directed by the legislature, the Division developed and published all three protocols on or before the December 31, 2009 deadline.
The purpose of the CMS Protocol is to provide the technical specifications that enable any other court case management systems to interface with Odyssey. Once the interface was developed, the ultimate goal was to allow authorized users of Odyssey and other court case management systems to have the ability to view case information in each other’s case management systems.
Although the Division was ready and willing to work with any CMS vendor to implement an interface to Odyssey, only one CMS vendor, representing CSI, Inc., expressed an interest but did not follow up.
During the 2013 legislative session, new language was added to IC 33-24-6-3(a)(7) that required the Division to not only publish the CMS protocol but also to implement it by December 31, 2013. In order to implement the interface protocol, software had to be developed by both the Division for Odyssey and by the vendor supporting the corresponding case management system.
Pursuant to this new requirement, the Division began work on implementing the CMS protocol with two willing CMS systems, one used by the Lake County courts called CourtView and another called QUEST, used for managing juvenile cases in most of the larger counties. And at the request of the Boone County judges, CourtView is evaluating its capability to interface with the CMS Search application in INcite. The Division has reached out to CSI, Inc. in order to implement the interface to CMS Search for all CSI counties, but, as of the date of this writing, CSI has not indicated if or how this can be accomplished.
Within two weeks of the initiation of the joint effort, the Lake County system was successfully pulling data from Odyssey using the CMS Protocol.
Although the work with QUEST took a few months longer to implement, QUEST was able to incorporate the interface into the QUEST software. Similar to Odyssey, QUEST has a central repository containing a subset of data from all QUEST courts. This enables all QUEST users to share information among each other and enabled QUEST to interface with Odyssey.
At the same time Odyssey and QUEST were building the QUEST-to-Odyssey interface, the Division developed an INcite application called CMS Search, which makes the shared information available to all users of INcite.
What Users Are Saying
“Anytime Probation can have a resource that makes gathering criminal histories more accurate and efficient, it is a “win/win” situation! CMS Search will speed up the process for us, and as time goes by and even more information is available through CMS Search, it will be even better. There is always a concern about being able to have the most accurate background possible on a client, and this is just one more tool to aid in this process. The better the information on the client, the better the Officer is able to make good recommendations. We are excited to have CMS Search!”
—Susan Lightfoot, Chief Probation Officer, Henry County
“The CMS Search application has been beneficial for probation officers. We frequently use INcite to enter risk assessment information and to conduct BMV driving checks. INcite has been a time-saving ‘one stop shop’ for gathering pertinent offender information all in one website. The CMS Search site has proven to be very user friendly and a valuable resource.”
—Kara Mahuron, Juvenile Probation Officer, Monroe County Circuit Court
CMS Search provides an unprecedented sharing capability, which enhances public safety and greatly improves the administration of juvenile justice. For the first time, all judges and juvenile probation officers can now look across their county lines and share information about juvenile cases for the 10 QUEST courts and the 40 Odyssey counties, many of which involve the same Indiana vulnerable youth.