SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The Judicial Council of California voted today to use money from the state's trial court trust fund so that San Luis Obispo's superior court can create a case management system that is expected to use parts from a controversial IT project terminated in March.
The Council made available up to $3.36 million from the trust fund for San Luis Obispo to develop a case management system, but the amount is contingent on a final state budget and level of the county's fund balances at the end of the fiscal year, June 30.
The vote came after Judge James Herman of Santa Barbara County, who chairs the system's Internal Committee, described the unwinding that has taken place since the Council terminated development of the Court Case Management System, or CCMS, which took more than 10 years and cost the state a half-billion dollars, but was only ever implemented in a few counties.
Committee member Judge Robert Moss of Orange County contributed to the review, saying, "The HMS CCMS has been hit by the iceberg and sunk. We have 58 lifeboats out there. Some have crewmen on board to row and oar and some don't. What do we do? We develop a recommendation to the council of where we should go with technology."
"We go to the CCMS reuse, and this has become kind of the 800-pound gorilla because of the money that's available to see what we can salvage from CCMS. We have this on the front burner," Moss said.
"We need to convince the legislature that we need $5 million to do this work, and that's what we're trying to do first," Moss told the Council, adding that there are 19 components of CCMS "that might be salvageable."
Judge Herman said his committee is negotiating with Deloitte Consulting, the AOC's contractor on the CCMS project, to gain access to software code that Deloitte has maintained is proprietary, but without which, Herman said, it will be tough to salvage the useable bits from the fourth and last iteration of CCMS, known as V4.
"We're basically going in two directions in terms of how we leverage the V4 technology and its components, which includes document management, E-filing, E-exchange of information, as well as the public and stakeholder portals. One track is this information is of no cost to the trial courts," Judge Herman said.
"The other track we're pursuing, is there any vendor interest in a business relationship that involves V4 licensing arrangement, purchase agreement, etc.?" Judge Herman said. "Because, as we do know, everyone that's looked at V4 said that it will perform as designed and it's a very good project."
"We have gone to Deloitte and said on the one hand we want to see what we can do in terms of use of V4 and pieces and components with the trial courts but on the other hand we want to see if there's a potential commercial opportunity. They have said, well, yeah, but we have this intellectual property that we want to protect," Judge Herman said, adding that his group will continue to look for ways to move ahead with either Deloitte Consulting or another vendor.
Chief Justice Tank Cantil-Sakauye commented, "I think this is very exciting. We're able to learn from past incidents but able to move forward and bring everyone along. It just sounds like we're making the best of a situation."
