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Subject: [legalxml-courtfiling] Official Transmission of Minutes from the OASISLegal XML Member Section Court Filing Technical Committee Secretary
Minutes Meeting of December 12th and December 13th
in Las Vegas, Nevada
The OASIS Legal XML Member Section Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee
These minutes cover the two Conference calls from 15:00 to 16:00 on
December 12th and 12:00 to 13:00 on December 13th.
They also cover the Face-To-Face held for two full days on
December 12th and December 13th, 2002.
The abbreviation *TC* or *(TC)* means that the action was conducted and/or
ratified during the formal Teleconference. Items without the *(TC)* prefix
occurred only at the Face to Face but not during the teleconference.
*(TC)* Present at the Teleconferences or meeting:
Mohyeddin Abdulaziz
Chris Andrew
Greg Arnold
Don Bergeron
Ron Bowmaster
Tom Clarke
Dwight Daniels
Shane Durham
Robin Gibson
Charles Gilliam
John Greacen
Allen Jensen
Catherine Krause
Dr. Laurence Leff
Rex McElrath
Jim McMillan
Robert O'Brien
Guylaine Papineau
Dallas Powell
Moira Rowley
John Ruegg
Christopher Smith
Tom Smith
Khaleel Thotti
Roger Winters
1. Introductory remarks
John Greacen, co-chair, reminded us of the Technical Committee's consensus
policy and discussed our agenda.
He announced that the following documents were approved by the Joint Technology
Committee as proposed standards for experimental use and preliminary adoption:
Court Document 1.1
Court Filing 1.1
Query and Response 1.1
(Hereafter, the phrase "Joint Technology Committee"
includes the National Consortium for State Court Automation Standards,
a subcommittee of the Joint Technology Committee of the Conference of State
Court Administrators (COSCA) and National Association for Court Management
(NACM))
2. The "California Project"
A report on the "California Project," a project of the California Administrative
Office of the Courts was given by Mr. Christopher Smith:
They are developing a "Second Generation" project and will create standards
by 2005. Specifically, they hope to create standards for the following within
eight months:
a) Court Filing
b) Court Policy
c) Request-Response
d) CMS-API
(TC) There is some possibility that these four specifications will be unified
into one.
(TC) This group includes major CMS vendors and organizations. Any Legal XML
members may register as observers. The group will share specifications with the
observers. They anticipate periodic sending updates to the observers, but observers will not be part of the conference calls. The group will, however, report
on these conference calls to the observers.
(TC) Their group includes major CMS vendors and organization. Any Legal members
may register as observers. Observers will receive specifications,
standards and periodic updates. However, the observers will not be in
conference calls.
As of the time of this TC meeting, they have had one conference call and are
discussing the use of "Use Cases" and Web Services/SOAP.
3. JXDDS
Ms. Gibson discussed meetings of the
Justice XML Data Dictionary Schema Tax Force (JXDDS) sponsored by the
Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)
See the Boston Minutes.) She does not believe that this work (Version 3.0)
will be ready until the Summer.
The Person Type will have subclasses for
Official Type
Judicial Officer Type
Enforcement Officer Type
Participant Type
Subject Type (an Offender)
Both Ms. Gibson and Mr. Arnold were quite impressed with the Georgia Tech
Research Institute's efforts. In particular, they are merging many sources
of data including this Technical Committee's Court Filing standards into
one model. Their tracking can tell the source for any item. They are very
helpful in bringing participants at their meeting up to speed. This includes
those who may not have a background in computer technology. They are generally
being "over-inclusive and optional" although they are leaving some specialized
needs to be added by the relevant organizations.
They will be discussing the Role Information sent out by Mr. Rolly Chambers.
They are currently planning to have an actor object which will connect
properties, organizations, and persons that may be involved in a court case.
Natural persons will be represented by the above described Person Type.
Also, their upcoming agenda includes court activities and sentencing, but
they are only modelling data, not the processes that use them.
4. Newly reconstituted and renamed committee: The Court Filing Process Models
Subcommittee
(TC) The CMS-API/Query and Response/Court Data Subcommittee gave their report.
They decided to change their goal to documenting the processes used by
the courts and will be renamed the Court Filing Process Models SubCommittee.
It was emphasized that other members of the Court Comnmunity were invited
to participate and their participation was particularly needed.
5. Defining the Court Filing "Architecture"
Mr. Donald Bergeron presented a proposed "Architecture" view. He identified
all functions in our documents and allocated these to conceptual components.
He wishes his effort to be open to input from practitioners. Mr. James
McMillan mentioned the Court-to-Court mailing list as a resource.
6. Domestic Violence Orders of Protection Project
Dr. Leff discussed the Statement of Work for petitions and orders for
Domestic Violence Orders of Protection. This will be based upon the
Court Document 1.1. As part of that project, we will update this to
reflect version 2.1 of the JXDDS document and convert Court Document
1.1. Dr. Laurence Leff will write to Messrs. Abdulaziz, Messing, and
Chambers to ensure coordination with any efforts they might be making
in this direction.
7. Certification Committee
(TC) The certification subcommittee produced a Statement of Work and
Requirements Document for certification. These will be posted on the
Technical Committee web site.
8. OXCI
(TC) There was a report regarding the Open-source XML Court Interface (OXCI).
The bidders meeting will be in Washington State on February 5th. The
final meeting of the states involved in the request for proposal
on February 4th. However some were concerned that they have more lead-time
to read the RFP prior to coming to the meeting. Also, there were questions
about whether the bidder's meeting would be required.
9. ebXML liaison activities
(TC) Dr. Laurence Leff discussed his work as EBXML liaison. He discussed his
report that was posted to the web site earlier (http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-courtfiling/200208/msg00007.html). However, he had not yet
contacted ebXML, pointing out that the OASIS rules provide for the
Joint Technical Committee rather than a liaison since ebXML
is an OASIS-supported project. It was decided not to form a Joint Technical
Committee as our Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee anticipates
using the ebXML standard, not contributing to its development.
However, some were concerned about intellectual property situations precluding
the use in our standard. In particular, IBM has asserted some patents in the
technology. Dr. Leff will write to Mr. Best and Mr. Gannon of OASIS to get
more information.
10. New Federal Legislation
(TC) Mr. Greacen announced that new federal legislation concerning electronic
government has been signed. He believed it contains standards for courts.
He will post the document.
11. Governance Issues
(TC) Governance issues were resolved, including when and how elections for
the two co-chairs will be conducted. The committee decided to have two-year
staggered terms. At the end of each period, a retention question will
be raised. If the current chair did not achieve retention, then nominations
and an an election would be held.
(TC) It was decided that the private co-chair's term would end in Calendar Year
2003. The public co-chair would end in Calendar Year 2004. John Greacen
and Mary McQueen were voted unanimously to be retained in these spots
until 2003 and 2004, respectively.
(TC) The representative to the OASIS Legal XML member section from our Technical
Committee will have a one-year term, subject to retention. That person
will be chosen at the face-to-face in April.
12. American Bar Association Committee and a view from Canadian laws
(TC) Mr. John Messing gave a report on the American Bar Association
Electronic Filing Committee (part of the Section of Science and Technology Law)
that he chairs. Currently, there is an exemption in the Electronic
Signature law for court records. Mr. Messing anticipates that this committee
will recommend that this exemption continue to exist, and it might cause
constitutional problems. Federal courts and the federal attorneys are on
record that they were exempted from this law. Other issues discussed included:
a) electronic notice by courts
b) electronic service of documents
c) public access to court records
d) authentication issues when attorneys accessed the system
e) criteria for evaluating electronic services
f) the impact of electronic filing on pro se litigants, particularly those
who might be on one side of the "digital divide."
(TC) The ABA committee's goal is to create a conversion between attorneys
and courts to promote rapid adoption. They will not be involved in standards,
but will keep the lines of communication open.
Mr. O'Brien talked about the Canadian Court efforts which include
having services available 24/7. Attorneys are concerned about their
liabilities should a computer going down interfere with one of their
filings.
13) Work Product Handling, File Naming, and Version Numbering
(TC) Mr. Winters reviewed procedures for work products and specifications
which includes:
1) Statement of Work
2) Requirements Document
3) Candidate Specification (termed by OASIS a committee specification)
4) Proposed Specification
5) Recommended Specification (termed by OASIS, a committee specification)
6) It may then be forwarded to OASIS to become an "OASIS standard" or
other groups such as the Joint Technology Committee of COSCA/NACM
Note that at the November 5th teleconference,
Ms. Mary McQueen announced that the National Consortium for State Courts
Automation Standards will, in the future, accept the specifications of the
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards Legal XML Section directly, without requiring additional review
by a Joint Standards Development team.)
Mr. Winters also reviewed the roles of the proposer of a Statement of Work and
the authors, as well as the Technical Committee's webmaster, editor, and
secretary. Mr. Winters also discussed the role of the proposer of the
"Statement of Work" in identifying the parties who will participate and
provide expertise for this project. Note that the authors of the specification
may not be the same parties that propose the Statement of Work.
(This was prepared by Messrs. Winters and Durham and sent out to the list as:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-courtfiling/200211/msg00038.html)
The Technical Committee also agreed to stop referring to these as "Mr. Winters'
procedures" as they have been approved by and are now owned by the Technical
Committee.
It was recognized that
1) Requirements would be assigned to releases. That is, some of the
needs in an area might be handled in release 1.0 of the standard with
other needs handled in later releases.
2) Some deliverables by the Technical Committee might not be specifications.
An example would be a "white paper." These may not follow all the
steps outlined in the procedure.
3) Requirement Documents might include a discussion of testing requirements.
4) "Use cases" may be helpful in eliciting and enumerating requirements.
(TC) Both the procedures and version number procedures were approved.
However, it was recognized that some version numbers in the sequence
might not be used. For example, there might be a version 1.1 of a standard
followed by a version 1.3 of a standard.
(TC) The Document Naming Conventions were approved. It was decided that
the XML form of the specification will be normative with other formats
such as HTML and PDF provided on the web site as a convenience to our
members and other users.
(TC) These documents will be forwarded to the OASIS Legal XML Member
Section Steering Committee for possible adoption by the entire steering
committee.
It might be useful to synchronize version numbers of one document with
version numbers of a related standard. Sometimes the related standard
might not be prepared by this Technical Committee.
14) Intellectual Property Issues
OASIS does not allow confidential information or trade secrets
to be presented to Technical Committees. Some members expressed concerns
that we not even hear about patented information. Other members said
that if we knew about it, this would allow the Technical Committee to
unknowingly infringe on the patent. The Technical Committee decided to
ask members to announce their patent information prior to talking about it.
(TC) This raised the issue of vendors who have patents for some of these
extensions. How do we get vendors to help this Technical Committee update its
standards without 'corrupting' the Technical Committee or endangering
the vendor's intellectual property.
There was concern that the General Public License being used by the
California Project would make it difficult for the Technical Committee to
comment. These comments would be owned by California, and then the person
making the comment could not use the information.
15) Interoperability
The group discussed interoperability. Earlier, this was divided into
four levels (See the minutes of the November 5th Teleconference.)
1) Communication and Basic Processing
2) Required elements for
a) case initiation
b) case update
3) required Elements for Filing Fees
4) a security Model
Several issues were discussed:
1) How can one tell that a document was transmitted from the filer to the
court's Case Management System or Document Management System
2) Can interoperability be achieved with Court Filing 1.1 since communication
protocols were not defined. Some courts may be required to use a
particular communication protocol such as SOAP or Microsoft .net by a
Chief Information Officer. Thus, the group might have to specify multiple
acceptable protocols, perhaps with one specified as an ideal.
A subcommittee assigned to work on interoperability, including messaging
and security. It may have inclusions for a minor version of 1.X
Mr. Dallas Powell will chair. The subcommittee will function on the full list
and may also provide recommendations for the next major release
of Court Filing. The full Technical Committee will review the continued
existence of the subcommittee after the deliverable.
Mr. Greacen announced that they extended the offer discussed in the Boston
minutes to Mr. Pat Urey of California.
Note: Hereinafter I will refer to the minutes of the meeting October 4th and
5th 2002 in Boston as the "Boston minutes."
There is concern about secrecy requirements, license models, and whether
the California AOC will use our Intellectual Property policy.
16) Upcoming Meetings and Conference Calls
(TC) This TC will generally have a conference call on the first Tuesday
of each month when there is no Face-to-Face meeting.
(TC) The next Face-to-Face will be April 17th and April 18th in Atlanta.
The subsequent two face-to-face meetings will be held to be convenient for
attendees of the National Association of Court Management in July
and the Court Technology Conference Eight in October. The December meeting
will be in Las Vegas. As it won't be scheduled in conjunction with another
related event, members should share with the Technical Committee Secretary
their preferences for an exact time in Las Vegas.
Here is a list of dates for your convenience. It should also
appear on the web site.
January 7th Conference Call
February 4th Conference Call
March 11th Conference Call
April 16th Court Filing Process Models Subcommittee
April 17-18 Face-to-face in Atlanta
May 6th Conference Call
June 3rd Conference Call
July Face-to-Face (in Washington D. C.)
August 5th Conference Call
September 9th Conference Call
October Face-to-Face (Kansas City)
November 4th (Conference Call)
December Face-to-Face in Las Vegas--precise date to be determined
17) Other XML Technologies
(TC) Mr. John Messing suggested looking into Resource Description Framework
(RDF) and XML Schema. A discussion of the role of RDF and how it helps
the users and receiver of documents followed. Concerns included the efficiency
of processing documents based upon XML Schema and whether documents prepared
with one technique would be valid in the other. The "post-validation
information set" was mentioned in regards to the latter concern.
18) Communications
(TC) Dr. Leff shared discussions amongst the Technical Committee Webmaster,
Editor, and Secretary regarding how to improve communications:
1) A monthly newsletter will be produced. This will include reminders of
important information including locations on our web site.
2) Important electronic mail such as "mail ballots" will be given defined
subject items. This will help those who use rule-based filtering techniques
for their incoming electronic mail.
3) An effort to convert our communications and information to XML is under way.
(TC) Mr. Mohyeddin Abdulaziz made a motion for a State of the Technical
Committee report to be submitted from time to time. It was decided that this
need would be covered by the Statement of Work's for various Technical Committee
deliverables, the Architecture Statement being prepared by Mr. Don Bergeron,
and the communication efforts identified above. This motion died for
"want of a second."
19) Court Filing "Blue"
The last discussion of the Face-to-Face was the new Court Filing standard.
Many members prefer that version numbers for documents be synchronized.
Thus, the Court Filing standard will be named for the time-being as
"Court Filing Blue" so that the version number could be assigned later.
Ms. Gibson is the author and reminded us of some of the ideas for this
standard from earlier meetings and discussions. The resulting list
is:
1) Court Filing Blue will use XML Schema.
2) Court Filing Blue will use the objects defined in JXDDS.
3) Specification testing will be established. It will include
a) certification of implementations
b) specification of interoperability
4) It will use SOAP and ebXML components for messaging.
5) It will include encryption and signatures including using the
XML Digital Signature Standard.
6) It will have a version number standard -- this was taken care of by
the technical committee earlier, so is no longer being included specifically
for "Court Filing Blue."
7) Confirmations of messages will be expanded.
8) It will have a formal change request process and a way of soliciting
input from developers.
9) Authentication and integrity issues will be addressed.
Discussion included:
1) having a composite specification rather than separated products.
2) including composite Request for Proposal Templates to assist Administrative
Offices of the Courts. These would be based upon various business
cases. It was also pointed out that this might be competition with members
who were in the business of helping prepare Requests for Proposals.
3) We must think about goals from the standpoints of the courts. Also,
business needs should drive the process.
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