Hiccups in courts' new records system

By RALPH BARTHOLDT

Staff Writer

A new Idaho court system meant to eliminate paper files by replacing them with electronic court records has caused bottlenecks in 14 counties resulting in courtroom delays, time-consuming searches and inadequate online court calendars, according to attorneys and judges.

The hang ups are temporary, court administrators said.

“When the site goes down and there are people in court, that’s a problem,” Sara Thomas, administrative director of Idaho courts, said. “That’s a struggle.”

In the olden days in Kootenai County, a month ago, before the rollout of the state’s latest iCourt system — called Odyssey — judges on the bench referred to hard-copy documents usually in a manila file folder.

The new system, however, is electronic, accessed digitally via computer screen.

Some judges have complained that Odyssey’s lack of court calendars has added an element of uncertainty to a usually tidy system, and attorneys said the latest system’s clumsy format makes it difficult to quickly view criminal histories and dispositions.

The rollout last month in 14 counties, including Kootenai, has been years in the making. More than a dozen of Idaho’s 44 counties already had the system. The rest of the state should be online later this year.

The $22 million electronic Odyssey system, which replaces the Idaho Repository online, was meant, in part, to get rid of the many paper files that increased daily and were difficult to store.

In places like Nez Perce County in Idaho’s 2nd District, where limited storage space was an issue, the new system is supposed to relieve pressure by storing old and new records in a cloud.

“We had files stuffed into every nook and cranny in the courthouse,” auditor Patty Weeks said. The old county jail on the courthouse’s top floor was jammed with boxes of court files.

“We had preservation and access issues,” Weeks said

Since Nez Perce County adopted the Odyssey system last month, however, implementation has been problematic, Weeks said.

“We had a case going to court, and we didn’t have the electronic documents,” Weeks said. “It’s slowed things down.”

Despite the latest challenges, Weeks said, the new system is a necessary inconvenience.

“We had to switch,” she said. “The old platform was obsolete.”

The latest system may seem inefficient, cumbersome and confusing, but Weeks shrugs it off as growing pains.

Federal courts have used an electronic filing system for years, she said. The federal system works efficiently. It is a matter of becoming accustomed to it.

“It’s the industry standard,” she said.

Kootenai County court services director Diana Meyer said getting the system operational by cleaning up data and moving away from the paper files has been a hurdle.

“There is a learning curve any time there is a new system,” Meyer said.

She anticipates the latest system, once it is working as designed, to outshine the former iStars-based repository system.

“It will be a really good system,” she said.

The latest system will allow court records to be centralized, said Thomas. Before Odyssey, she said, every county had its own forms, files and data — such as sentencing or conviction data. Retrieving the data often had to be done manually, case by case, because it wasn’t collected or stored.

“Formerly the system had 44 servers in 44 counties and no centralized data,” Thomas said. “The Supreme Court had to ask for the data from each individual county.”

Getting the system up to speed, however, will require patience and time, Thomas said.

“That’s what we will really build out next year,” she said.

Last month’s rollout was a step in the direction of centralization.

Kootenai County District Judge John Mitchell said viewing new cases in the Odyssey system is easy because they have no paper files. Older “legacy” cases are presented as a combination of paper and digital files.

“Any new case is great … everything will be there in that Odyssey file, and you can do what you need to do in those cases a lot faster,” Mitchell said. “Older cases are a mixed bag.”

As clerks and court personnel work through the bugs, things are getting better.

“Last month has been tough here,” Mitchell said. “A lot of very hard and appreciated work is being put in by all of the deputy clerks.”