By David Fenker
david@nmpaper.com
WABASH COUNTY, Ind. – The Wabash County Courts may be migrating to a new case management system throughout the next 15 months.
Wabash County Circuit Court Judge Robert R. McCallen, along with Mary DePrez, director of trial court technology for the Indiana Supreme Court, presented information on the Odyssey Case Management System at the Monday, Oct. 2, meeting of the county commissioners.
“We are proposing that the county move to the statewide case management system, Odyssey, effective January 2019,” McCallen said.
“Judge – now Justice – [Christopher] Goff and I have been looking at it, and we’ve also been working with [County Clerk Elaine Martin].”
According to DePrez, the state began deploying Tyler Technology’s Odyssey software in December 2007, with the software currently being used in more than 260 of the state’s nearly 400 courts.
“We started out replacing 23 different court case management systems that didn’t really talk to or communicate with each other,” DePrez said.
“The Supreme Court has paid the initial licensing fee, and pays the ongoing maintenance and support. Your county probably pays ongoing maintenance and support for your JTS court case management system today, so that will go away once we implement Odyssey in the courts and clerks offices here.”
She said that, pending official approval, the conversion will take nine to 12 months, with an anticipated “go-live date” of late 2018.
“We’ll be on site for two weeks following go-live to make sure that you don’t lose employees and that they stay sane because change is difficult,” she said.
She also noted that her department provides more than 30 no-cost applications to Indiana courts, including a state-mandated protection order registry and an e-ticketing program, which Wabash County already uses, that allows the tickets to be electronically filed in Odyssey. There is also free software available for the county’s probation department.
“Odyssey also offers free public access. For all your non-confidential cases in the courts, Odyssey has a website called MyCase, and we are working with the Supreme Court now and offering – in addition to just data and financial information on MyCase – we are now offering documents to attorneys,” she said, adding that that aspect is still a work in progress with the Supreme Court.
Benefits of the statewide software include more efficient sharing of documents between counties and the state, in addition to the reduced cost to the county.
County Attorney Steve Downs noted that he and DePrez have been working together on a memorandum of understanding, and that his only remaining concern was the cost of hardware replacement, which he said DePrez had agreed to assist with.
Her response: “We will replace your hardware.”
“My understanding from the IT assessment that we completed – which we’ll probably have to do again… – it looks like you’ll need 12 computers replaced, and some printers,” DePrez said.
“We won’t do that until we get closer to the time.”
She also said that there is a special Odyssey software for judges – which McCallen dubbed “Odyssey for Dummies” – that allows them to use Odyssey in the courtroom via a touchscreen computer, which her office usually can provide.
According to DePrez, they rely on local information technology (IT) departments to set up and maintain the software.
Downs will review and finalize the memorandum of understanding with DePrez, for the commissioners to sign at their next meeting, and draft a resolution to make the switch official.
“It looks like you guys have it all taken care of,” Chairman Scott Givens said.