TOPEKA—The Kansas Supreme Court has been awarded a $205,152 federal grant to continue implementing a statewide electronic court case filing system, Chief Justice Lawton R. Nuss announced today.
Called the Federal Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, it was awarded via the Kansas Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.
The grant will be used to fund the installation of electronic case filing (e-filing) in six additional district courts during the fiscal year that began July 1 and will end June 30, 2014.
Chief Justice Nuss said in announcing the grant, the courts are excited to be able to continue implementing this technological advancement begun by the Supreme Court several years ago.
This federal grant means that by the end of this fiscal year, e-filing will be implemented in counties with caseloads totaling 65 percent of our statewide filings.”
The Chief Justice said the Supreme Court had requested $1.1 million from the 2013 Legislature to implement e-filing statewide, but the legislature denied the appropriation.
“Despite that denial, with federal funds the Supreme Court is still able to proceed with a next step in bringing an important technological innovation to case processing in even more Kansas courts.
Electronic processing will increase productivity and reduce the task time and expense for the benefit of all court users,” Chief Justice Nuss said. “This is a good deal for Kansans.”
The grant will enable electronic filing of court documents in Wyandotte, Butler, Reno, Saline, Finney, and Geary counties. Pilot projects already are in place in the Kansas Supreme Court and Court of Appeals and in Leavenworth, Douglas, and Sedgwick counties. Shawnee County, which will implement e-filing following the pilot courts, is scheduled for its installation this fall. Johnson County already has e-filing available for several types of cases. The federal grant will also permit “batch filing” of cases, so that groups of like cases can be filed at one time, such as limited action debt proceedings involving multiple litigants.
Statewide, 443,779 cases were filed in Kansas district courts during fiscal 2012, the latest data available. This includes 35,002 criminal cases, 17,854 juvenile offender and child-in-need-of-care cases, and 43,118 domestic cases in addition to traffic, fish and game and similar less time-consuming cases.
Among cost savings and other efficiencies, the e-filing system working in conjunction with case management and document management systems will:
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Reduce the amount of time spent by court staff to process a case filing and to search for and handle case files.
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Enable court clerks, judges, and e-filing participants to access court files at any time, reducing the need for clerks’ offices to produce paper records during the workday.
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Increase the reliability of the official court record, reducing the chance for lost or misfiled documents, or damage to a file.
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Reduce the chance of data error because the need for multiple entries of data is eliminated.
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Reduce physical storage costs.
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Reduce expenses by eliminating or reducing costs for postage, delivery, photocopying, file assembly, and similar expenses for the courts, attorneys, and court users.