Travis County Commssioners Court
May 20, 2003
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Item 6
We did indicate this morning at 1:30, as close thereto as possible, we would call up item no. 6, which is a briefing on civil courts e court E-Courtrooms project. We do have judge dietz and company here.
>> have you all received this document?
>> yes.
>> we sure have. [laughter]
>> judge, Commissioners, I think this will be relatively short. So we did want to -- to keep you up aul dated -- you all updated. It was two years ago that I was trying the melinda ballard versus farmers insurance case, which was a -- was a five-week case where the courtroom was -- was wired for electronic presentation. There were 1500 exhibits during that case and neither I nor the jury ever touched a piece of paper during that case because it was all done electronically. It also happened that that was at or around the time that we were doing the fy 2002 budget. And I remember dragging some of you all over to look at this equipment because it looked like what we needed to put in to the district courts. Y'all were very kind and gave us in fy 2002 approximately $360,000 and the proposal at that time was intended to -- to see if we could wire up two to three courtrooms. Since that time we have spent the last year and a half studying. I myself have traveled to phoenix. We have been to el paso, san antonio, orlando, florida, studying the implementations of electronic courtrooms. Looking at what works, what doesn't work. And then we began a process of trying to retrofit how we were going to retrofit this into our 73-year-old courthouse. Roger -- roger el khoury and his staff, leslie strickland were very instrumental in helping us because every room that we have over there is i'd syncratic -- idiosyncratic. No uniform design, shape, we began working on things like electricity. We also worked with planning and budget because it became obvious that we were not going to be able to spend all of the mope by the end of fiscal year 2002 and working with christian and travis we received permission from the Commissioners court to carry the money over. I’m happy to report now that we are at the stage of -- we have studied it and we are at the stage of beginning purchasing. The one difference between the proposal that we brought to you two years ago and what we are going to do today is that instead of outfitting three courtrooms, we are going to outfit nine courtrooms. Every district court will be fitted with the -- with these devices that we have within this exhibit. Additionally, what this will allow us to do, this will the presentation system that will work both during non-jury and jury trials, it will allow us an attorney doesn't have to bring in a box of material anymore. This will be able to take somebody with their laptop, we will be able to use, we think, video conferencing along with this stuff in the future. So really what I’m here to tell you is that with you all's patience and with the cooperation of a number of other county departments, we have been able to take what was originally going to outfit three courtrooms, we are now going to be able to do nine courtrooms. And we also thank I know in working with nolan martin out of its, that this is the type of technology that I think they are going to be recommending that you all install for your work in your court sessions. I’m here to answer any questions and I wanted to give you an update.
>> what new budget implications should we anticipate?
>> we understand the budget situation. We are staying totally within our budget. They are not going to be coming back, at least with respect to this project, and asking for any more money. We believe that we are going to be able to get the coverage for the nine courtrooms, in addition to address the training issues because, as you understand, there are 5,000 lawyers here in Travis County, probably about a thousand of them are heavy users of the courthouse. We are going to have to engage in training of those attorneys. We believe that we will be able to address those in cooperation with the Travis County bar under present budget without any addional funds.
>> in that case the good news just got better.
>> how are you able to do that, judge? I mean, what -- what happened that -- that allowed you to go from what, three, initially to nine? It was a process that once we began to ask ourselves, how would you really implement this, we quickly ran into a problem which was given our central docket, we run off of a central docket as opposed to each individual court having their own docket. So then we began to look around and to see if it would be very difficult to run a central docket and only have three courtrooms wired. Then we began to search out if there were other place that's had larger coverage but cheaper installations and we found that in el paso and I think five district judges went out to study el paso very, very carefully. Then working with facilities in strickland, we were able to sort of say, okay, here's what we really need to make this work. And then to go around and look at the idio sing creases of each courtroom. For instance we have historic courtrooms with 20-foot ceilings, then we have other courtrooms that are more like this room and so we began to see that screens probably were not appropriate and that devices like this would be more apropos. So really, Commissioner, it was just a matter of rest skelling with all of the issues of how do you really implement it and what will work here and then sort of serendipity in working with its, they suggested we use this 3 m wall unit that resolved a number of problems for us. We have been working with purchasing and others but we have included a time line, but we are ready to -- we think we are very excited about it, think it will work, not only that, we think 80's technology that will come over and be useful in other departments within the county. I think that we will have this up and running by October.
>> I certainly wanted to be paperless since '95.
>> well, we are taking -- Commissioner, with y'all's help, we are taking the steps. This is one of them.
>> this is great.
>> e filing and electronic document management. It will be a secondbig step. But just wanted to share the news. Thank you all very much.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
Last Modified: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 3:52 PM