On December 8, JTAC made its final 2009 presentation to the monthly stakeholders meeting held at our office in Indianapolis. The presentation highlights the milestones in court technology that have been achieved this year, including the continuing implementation of the Odyssey case management system in the counties as well as enhancements to the software application, and advances related to JTAC’s many other technology projects.

View presentation slides

Earlier this week, JTAC Directory Mary DePrez traveled to Madison in Jefferson County to deliver a project update to those in attendance.

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Last Tuesday, JTAC held the August Stakeholder meeting.  Representatives from the Department of Corrections, Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, the Indiana Judicial Center and Judge Jeff Dywan, Lake County,  were in attendance.

Mary DePrez provided an update on the ‘Public Access’ pilot for the Protection Order Registry and recent grant awards.  She also mentioned two recent awards:  A ‘First Place’ Best Practices Award by the Association of Transportation Safety Information Professionals;  and the Peter K. O’Rourke Special Achievement Award for JTAC’s positive impact on traffic safety.  Both awards were a result of the successful partnership with Tyler Technologies, Inc., the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, the Indiana State Police, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and numerous judges, clerks and local law enforcement agencies  for working together to make the eCWS/Odyssey/BMV data exchange model a nationally recognized model.

Donna Edgar gave an Odyssey deployment update.  Since the July Stakeholder meeting, Owen County and 4 Superior Courts in St. Joseph County started to use Odyssey.  Donna also ‘unveiled’ the Odyssey Supervision module that has been under development since last Fall.  The application is undergoing rigorous testing and should be ready to deploy in the coming months.  Dylan Vester also demonstrated the latest eCWS release for the handheld devices.  The eCWS team is expected to begin testing next week and deployment of this release will begin in early September.

The meeting concluded promptly at 4:00!  Contact Mary Kronoshek at 317-234-2710 or mkronoshek@jtac.in.gov if you would like to receive a reminder for the monthly Stakeholder meeting.

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JTAC Staffer David Steward (left) meets with Sgt. Falkinson (right). Falkinson was directing a question to JTAC Staffer Farrah Hoffman (not pictured).

Our electronic Citation & Warning System (eCWS) is getting a lot of great attention regionally in places like South Bend, LaPorte, Lafayette, Chicago Land and now eCWS is getting noticed internationally, too. On Wednesday, Sgt. Blair Falkinson of the Toronto Police Service flew from Canada to Indianapolis to see JTAC’s full-service eCWS system in action.

Blair saw the system work from the moment a ticket is written and how it’s submitted to the prosecutor, court, and to the BMV. He is interested in getting the software from JTAC for customization and then deployment in Toronto.

Blair will return to Canada with his findings to begin the process of a feasibility study. We showed the eCWS application on a laptop and on the mobile handheld device, the prosecutor screen of the eCWS Central Repository, the Odyssey CMS, and the INCite BMV application.

The Toronto Police Service has approximately 5,700 uniformed officers and 2,500 civilian employees.

This month’s presentation to stakeholders included discussion of JTAC’s 100th deployment of the electronic Citation and Warning System, new legislation effective July 1, and updates on several key projects—including the deployment of Odyssey, which is in some state of progress in 37 counties.

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Every month, stakeholders in JTAC projects from state agencies attend a meeting in which JTAC provides an update on the Odyssey case management system and other projects.  The presentation and handouts from this month’s meeting are available below.

Handout: What has JTAC accomplished?

Handout: e-Tickets Project Status

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Some people have a hard time with change, but we are confident most of you won’t have any trouble with the improvements coming to INcite this year.  As part of a project to rebuild INcite using more current technical specifications, we have completely revamped the look and feel of the site to provide a more user-friendly experience.

Here's a glimpse at what the new INcite looks like. Click for a better view.

Currently, the Department of Child Services (DCS)/Probation application is the only application running on the new INcite, which is accessed from https://mycourts.IN.gov.  On Tuesday, February 24, the Protection Order Registry (POR) will be making the move.  If you are a POR user, check https://incite.IN.gov for instructions on how to login to the new INcite.

We’ll be moving each application (i.e., BMV SR-16 filing, e-Tax Warrants, Marriage License e-File, etc.) to the new INcite one at a time, so if you use multiple applications on INcite, there will be a period of time that you will need to access both the old site and the new site.

We have also built in new functionality to INcite, which may require some action on your part as users of the system.  Here’s a rundown of the major changes:

• Cleaner look and feel that is far less cluttered and easier to navigate.
• Each application will run in a separate window allowing you to view more detail on the screen.
• Desktop icon for one-click access to the site.
• Online reset for forgotten passwords.

Because there are times when JTAC must be able to contact users through INcite, each user will be asked to provide a unique email address and a phone number, and you must have a unique email address to reset your password online.  So for users that share email addresses or don’t have one at all, options are available to you, but you will be required to call the JTAC help desk to reset your password.

If you need help or wish to provide feedback about the new INcite, please contact our help desk at help@jtac.in.gov or 1-800-275-5822 CORRECTION: 1-888-275-5822.

JTAC has been working hard over the past several years to help Indiana’s trial courts and clerks work together seamlessly with the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles. One of the major elements of the JTAC-BMV Project is the creation of an application in JTAC’s INdiana Courts Information Technology Extranet, or INcite, that allows trial courts to input data about serious commercial driver violations (but works for all drivers!) quickly and electronically. The data is then sent to the Indiana BMV without the need for paper or postage.

With any development of web or software applications comes bugs, glitches and the need for more new features. Yesterday, JTAC’s INcite developers released an update to the SR16, the form used to send information to the BMV:

• The SR16 form within the BMV application, which had not been revised in over two years, has been upgraded. We fixed lots of minor defects and issues that we’ve lived with for the last two years. For instance, if the exact statute number is known, it can be typed in directly without going through the Search Statute form.
• Courts will receive an initial warning if a case number doesn’t conform to the current convention of 2-digit year, 2-digit month, 2-character case type, and 1-6 digit number. But, they will still be allowed to save SR16s with non-current convention case numbers. This will allow them to submit SR16s for old cases with old case number formats.
• The application has also been upgraded to include Operating While Intoxicated (OWI) fields, and the OWI offenses are now available for you to enter and electronically submit them. We’ve also improved the search functionality and added Save Draft and Search Draft functionality.

Staff that use JTAC’s INcite to transmit infractions to the BMV now have access to more information, and easier to use reports. Some of the highlights include:

• No more separate tabs for different parts of the driver record – they are all listed in one report.
• License types are now correctly interpreted, and will no longer default to Agricultural CDL.
• Suspension histories now include much needed case number information. The old lookup did not provide this, and courts had a hard time telling if a suspension was for their court.
• Courts can see the entire case number for the suspension which should assist them in entering matching Payment/Reopen SR16s to close suspensions.

The old driver license lookup is still available through the Edit SR16 form ‘DLLookup’ button. This will eventually point to the new DL Lookup as we upgrade the Search SR16, New SR16, and Edit SR16 forms to match current BMV SR16 forms and include the OWI fields.

We anticipate upgrading these additional forms within the next month.

2008 – Year in Review. On December 9, JTAC made its final 2008 presentation to the monthly stakeholders meeting held at our office in Indianapolis.

The presentation highlights the milestones in court technology that have been reached this year, including the beginning of the second phase of Odyssey CMS implementation, the growing use of the public access website, new modules and enhancements to Odyssey, and advances related to JTAC’s many other technology projects.

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