The Paperless Prosecutor

Digital Case File demo

I created a demo screencast for the staff to show everyone how the digital case file is set up to work.

Here’s a screenshot of the main part of the screen.

I also thought I’d post a demo to the web and was able to get that done today. Unfortunatley, the audio level is a bit low and I didn’t have time to redo the screencast. Otherwise I think the screencast pretty well demonstrates how the TiddlyWiki based case file functions. Digital Case File Demo

Final modifications to the case wiki

The interface we’re going to use in order to keep track of and access all of our case content is just about finished. Just one or two modifications left to do and then we’ll see what everyone in the office thinks about the setup. Once it’s finished, I’ll create a screencast to demonstrate the various features of the digital case file and upload it.

The Green Light

I decided to draw up a proposal for going paperless and run it by my boss. While the idea seemed reasonable to me, I wasn’t sure how it would be received by my boss and the rest of the staff. If it didn’t make sense to the county attorney, it wouldn’t matter what anyone else thought, so I decided to lay out a proposed plan to Frank and see what he thought.

After reviewing the proposal, he asked a few questions and then said “do it.” With a green light from the boss, I shared the proposal with the rest of the staff.  The reactions ranged from “I can’t wait” to “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  Surprisingly though, there wasn’t really much resistance to the idea, just some concerns and questions about how such a transition would work. I think the fact that most of the staff was already used to being able to access digital copies of court documents and police reports from their desktop, the idea of a paperless file perhaps didn’t seem that far-fetched.

With the proposal approved, the real work was about to begin. We needed some type of interface to work with a digital file. Our CMS doesn’t currently include an imaging component and we didn’t have funds allocated to purchase a system from a vendor.  While searching for an affordable solution I came across an open source project that looked like it might be flexible enough to meet our needs…TiddlyWiki.

After a few weeks tweaking the file, it looked like it might actually be a very nice solution to our problem and end up providing our office with a far more useful digital case file than I’d originally imagined.  That was the middle of October.  While it’s taken longer than I’d hoped, the file is just about done and ready for a test run.

Inspiration at the NDAA Technology Conference

In September 2007 I was able to attend the National District Attorney’s Association technology conference that was held at the NAC in Columbia, SC. A couple of the sessions focused on paperless prosecutor offices. Jeffrey Sauter, DA for Eaton County, MI and some of his staff explained how their office went paperless in 2004. Kelly Burke, DA for Houston County, GA and some of his staff discussed their plans to transition to a paperless office in the next few months.

When I arrived at the conference, the possibility of moving to a paperless office wasn’t even under consideration. However, after hearing about the positive impact others had already experienced the idea of going paperless seemed like it was a real possibility. I discussed with Jeff and others about what our office already had in place and going paperless not only seemed possible, but a downright reasonable next step.

We’ve been scanning all police reports to pdf since March 2006. A few months ago, Leavenworth District Court began imaging all file-stamped documents and supplying pdf copies via email. Between those two categories of documents, there’s not a lot of additional paperwork that needs to get scanned in order to be made available in digital format.

So, I came home from the conference with a goal in mind…but would my boss and co-workers want to make the transition?