Serving as the primary information collection department for the County’s judicial system, the Clerk’s office was experiencing huge process and workflow inefficiencies fueled by millions of paper-based records that hampered its ability to effectively support and service the public and the county judiciary. The system was plagued by inefficiencies due to the time required by staff to receive, review, copy, sort, file, secure, store, track, retrieve and move paper-based court files.

“We spent the majority of our time dealing with the paper – either processing the individual pieces of paper or preparing the files, filing things away, and then also pulling cases and sending them to other locations,” said Diane Elliot, Probate Department Manager. “It impacted everyone: our staff, the judges or general magistrate, the public and attorneys.”

Legislative mandates also required the Clerk’s office to support e-filing to provide citizens with electronic access to courthouse records and forms via the Internet.

The Pinellas County Clerk of the Circuit Court’s office deployed Global 360’s Case Management solution, Case360, to manage and standardize their Probate court case workflow, act as the central repository for all Probate court records, enable greater collaboration between office workers, provide tracking, auditing and monitoring of court records as they flow through the court, and make the documents available for public viewing.

“The Case360 system facilitates the movement of these court documents through the system,” said Jeff Gates, Director, Court & Operational Services Division. “At any time, we can precisely know the status and priority of all work in the system.”

Paper documents are captured at the front-end, using the existing Global 360 Execute360 system. The resulting images are then passed to the Case360 system where they are routed among four major groups of individuals: Intake, Audit, Magistrates, and Judges. The system allows Intake and Audit users to “prepare” cases for the Magistrates and Judges by identifying the key documents to be reviewed and acted upon, as well as the additional supporting documents that may be needed for proper handling of the case. Users, such as Judges, also have the ability to apply electronic signatures to working documents.

 

Impact on Participants

The case management solution has changed the way work gets done within the Clerk’s office, making the staff more efficient, effective, and happy delivering data and services to their customers. The staff no longer wastes times looking for lost cases and pleadings, which took a tremendous toll on staff morale. Employees are more motivated to do their work and have the added benefit of constantly being able to see the amount of work pending in their queues, enabling them to concentrate on more constructive work within the system.

Case files and records can be viewed simultaneously by multiple stakeholders at multiple remote locations, and all Clerk of the Circuit Court staff, Judges, Attorneys, and county citizens now have immediate access to court records and files via the Internet.

The staff feels more comfortable with the information they are providing to court and citizen requests because they can see the documents in their role-based user interface and know they are delivering the information requested.

Impact on IT

Access to court records and the workflow that supports them can still be carried out from remote sites, enabling the Clerk’s office to maintain business continuity and service to its constituents.

The Global 360 system has also increased the county’s ability to plan for and recover from a disaster or other disruption in business operations. While catastrophies such as hurricanes remain an obvious threat to coastal PinellasCounty, business disruptions can also result from power outages, equipment malfunctions, cyber-terrorist attack, or the inability for staff to man jobs caused by illness. PinellasCounty now has the ability to electronically store all of their records off site and secure them against natural disasters.

 

“The Global 360 application and processes that we have put in place for the Probate department, can also provide the same type of business solution in other court areas like misdemeanor, criminal, juvenile and also civil”,

Jeff Gates, Director, Court & Operational Services Division