(CN) - San Luis Obispo Superior Court is in the midst of a two-week "fit analysis" to see how its old record-keeping system works with a new e-filing system bought for $3.1 million.
The court that covers the seaside resort of Pismo Beach and the wine region of Paso Robles was next in line to receive a statewide records system called the Court Case Management System, pushed by California's central court administration. Before it could be installed, the half-billion-dollar CCMS project was abandoned.
In the wake of that debacle, the Judicial Council that sets policy for California's courts endorsed the purchase by local trial courts of case management systems sold by private vendors. In June, the council approved $3.36 million for that purpose for San Luis Obispo.
During a bidding contest in July, Dallas-based Tyler Technologies bid $3.1 million while a number of other contractors bid substantially less. Tyler distinguished itself within the bidding criteria by offering to sell its system outright.
"The part that's really attractive is that we bought the license," said Presiding Judge Barry LaBarbera. "We're not renting it."
In essence, San Luis Obispo owns the e-filing system that it is now fitting into place and any fees charged to lawyers for e-filing would go to the court.
LaBarbera said the central Administrative Office of the Courts was involved in the process but the decision to award Tyler the contract was made by him and his staff in San Luis Obispo.
The otherwise well-appointed courts of San Luis Obispo were mired in the technological past, using a micro-fiche system to store court documents. With the move to e-filing, the court is taking a roughly 50-year technological leap.
"We'll have one system instead of 21 systems," said Court Executive Officer Susan Matherly, going on to describe a hodge-podge of computer systems that handle everything from traffic violations to murder cases.
She said Tyler's web-based Odyssey software will also help the court do away with its mainframe computers, maintained by programmers who are retiring.
"We have the potential to go paperless," she said. "We'll be able to get rid of microfiche and we'll phase e-filing into the system."
After the CCMS system was abandoned last year, LaBarbera told the Judicial Council that he thought CCMS would have worked for his court, but that, in any case, the need for replacement of the court's jumbled technology was desperate.
"We've been without a system for 12 years," he said at the time. "Really dysfunctional for the last six. We don't have a civil system at all."
This week, with a new contract inked, LaBarbera said he hopes the coming changes benefit the public as well as the court.
"We are hopeful the system will give the public more access to things they are entitled to see," LaBarbera said.
But the question of whether to charge for public documents online has not been decided.
"We're waiting on statewide rules on public access to documents, but conceivably the public will be able to access a lot more information online," said court executive Matherly.
California courts have so far fallen into two camps, divided between north and south, on whether to charge for public documents on the web.
