National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues

Outline of Basic Computerized Judicial Case Management Tasks for Dependency Case

Automated reminders (ticklers) to prompt users.
Supporting hearings – helping ensure that the court takes all necessary steps in connection with each court hearing (including each major hearing type).
Automated downloading of data from court documents into the case management database.
Capacity to accept electronic filing and communications in individual cases or groups of related cases.
Capacity to electronically transmit information to parties, participants, and other agencies.
Tracking – checking status of individual cases (or group of related cases) and involvement of parties and other persons in such cases.
Automated creation and printing of documents.
Automated generation of summary information for specific cases – e.g., "registers of actions," "cover sheets," or "dockets."
Opening and closing cases – helping ensure that the court takes all necessary steps when opening and closing cases.
Scheduling – determining times and places of judicial hearings.
Generation of calendars – outputting times and rooms for hearings by electronically distributing or printing out this information.
Management reports – conveniently retrieving and outputting information, upon request, to assist court management and to assist selected categories of external users.
Analysis and allocation of judicial and staff workloads.
Performance measurement – collecting and disseminating statistics related to the quality and timeliness of court activities and decisions.
Receiving large amounts of data (data dumps) from entities external to the juvenile court and downloading them into judicial databases.
Sending large amounts of data (data dumps) to external entities.
Security and confidentiality of documents and information.
Internal administration of the court.
Financial management and accounting.

Mark Hardin, Director, National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues