State Court System Asks for $29.7M for IT Projects

The state court system, which includes the Office of the State Courts Administrator (OSCA), is requesting $29.7 million for three technology initiatives in its legislative budget request (LBR).

OSCA was created in 1972 to assist the chief justice in carrying out administrative duties for the Florida Supreme Court, six district courts of appeal, 20 circuit courts and 67 county courts, according to OSCA’s website.

These courts comprise the state’s court system and work alongside OSCA as it “prepares the branch’s budget requests, collects and analyzes court-related data, certifies and trains mediators and court interpreters and coordinates education programs and publications for judges and court employees.”

The court system’s largest request is $26.9 million for case management technology.

More specifically, the funds would be used to implement the first year of a two-year plan to ensure trial courts have the necessary resources to provide a foundational level of case management functionality for the state’s judicial circuit.

Currently, the court system relies on trial courts’ case management systems, or court application processing systems (CAPS), to provide judges and court staff access to electronic case file information from various sources.

For example, trial court judges can use CAPS to perform various case management functions, including accessing electronic case files and other data sources, scheduling hearings, recording and reporting judicial activity and preparing, reviewing, modifying, electronically signing, filing and serving court orders.

According to the LBR, three CAPS models are used in Florida’s trial courts:

• An “in-house, shared Integrated Case Management System (ICMS)” developed, maintained and supported by OSCA
• An “in-house, not shared system” developed and maintained independently by a circuit
• A vendor model developed and maintained via a contractual relationship with an outside provider

Funding for case management technology has come into question because a subsection in Florida’s Constitution stipulates that counties are required to pay for “communications services“ as part of trial court technology costs instead of the state.

As a result, a Workgroup on Trial Court Technology Strategies was created in 2021 to assess the issue, finding that “the state is responsible for ensuring that a foundational level of effective case management tools is funded in the trial courts.“

Based on this understanding, the state court system asked the Legislature for 75 full-time equivalent employees and $42.8 million last year — but it didn’t make it into the final budget.

Other notable IT funding requests from the state court system include:

• $2 million for critical technology resources, including hardware, software and a “hybrid cloud-based/physical premises solution” to host file servers from its appellate case management system 
• $721,737 to modernize court interpreter and mediator databases, purchase and implement a governance, risk and compliance software platform for the Office of Inspector General and upgrade IT helpdesk software 

More information about the state court system’s legislative budget requests can be found online.