Central Court Docket System
In the spring of 1991, South Carolina Court Administration (SCCA) asked the ASG director, who was then Associate Dean for Graduate Studies of the College of Science and Mathematics at the University of South Carolina, to direct a grant to design a prototype system for electronic court-docket data in South Carolina.
A proposal was developed for a modern UNIX computer system with a robust relational database to receive modem transmissions of electronic court-docket data from the forty-six different counties in South Carolina. The proposal was submitted to the State Justice Institute (SJI) with cost of the computer system matched by the South Carolina Bar Foundation (SCBF) and substantial managerial effort contributed by SCCA.
Award and Development
SJI funded the grant in October 1991 with technical development assigned to USC and the ASG director as principal investigator. An IBM RISC System/6000 model 550 was chosen as the UNIX computer and Oracle as the relational database.
The system was rapidly developed in the ensuing months, and it became operational to receive general-sessions docket data in the spring of 1992. Only a few courts, however, had the ability to transmit electronic data to the central system.
Hardware and Local Support
Concurrently, the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) had awarded South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) a large grant to manually enter court disposition data and to work toward electronically transferring general-session data from county clerks.
Although manual data entry was successful, the existing SLED computer system could not easily receive electronic docket transmissions. Consequently, ASG was subcontracted with only a few months left in the grant to develop a prototype for the county clerk site systems.
ASG rapidly developed the county database, like the central court database, using Oracle software. The grant purchased IBM 486 personal computers for six test sites with a plan to distribute the database software to all sites at a later date. The county site systems were distributed with the hardware, successfully meeting the constraints of budget and time. By the end of the grant period, the six sites were able to maintain docket databases and electronically transfer docket data to the central database.
A Flexible System
SJI awarded a second year of funding through SCBF to ASG in the fall of 1992 to continue the operation and enhancement of the central IBM-Oracle computer system. ASG focused on continually adding counties that transmitted data using their own existing proprietary systems.
BJS also funded ASG to add other county sites that would collect and maintain general-sessions docket databases on personal computers. Because there was only enough money to purchase a few personal computers, small counties that needed networks and computers were funded. The theory was that most large counties already had computers and programming staffs and could transmit data from existing systems.
With forethought and additional effort, ASG designed the database with the flexibility to accommodate data from different courts that could eventually participate in the central court information system. The database could intake data fields not only for general-sessions, but also for family, civil, and estate-probate courts, thereby allowing the software to be useful for many different courts.
Successful Migration
By the summer of 1994, the central SCCA computer system and the county sites were functioning so well that SJI awarded a small additional grant to ASG to continue system maintenance. Simultaneously, SCCA funded ASG to reprogram all thirty existing reports in Oracle and to move thirteen years of archived tape data from SLED to the central computer.
Upon completion of the maintenance grant, the central computer and the title to the systems were moved from USC to SCCA. ASG trained a new employee at SCCA to serve as systems analyst and database administrator. As a result of hiring this on-site employee, SCCA saved operating and maintenance costs for the central system as well as for the county sites. SCCA also was able to phase out several manual data-entry positions.
Although the grants were originally awarded to develop and test a prototype, the system that ASG developed was so successful that it was deployed as a full production system. By the end of 1995, all counties performed electronic transmission of general-sessions docket data directly to SCCA every evening. Likewise, SLED could download this data by modem each night from SCCA. Thus, criminal charges and convictions registered by county clerks' offices were electronically moved into the SCCA and SLED databases on a daily basis.
Pioneering Significance
The Central Court Docket System was a pioneering system for integrated information in South Carolina. Designed, developed, and deployed before most such systems were conceived across the United States, the system was built with a vision that all remaining counties could eventually transmit family, civil, and estate-probate dockets to a system that would not only maintain an entire set of dockets, but also allow exchange and integration of information from one area to another.
