Minutes of Thursday meeting

["John M. Greacen" <john@greacen.net>]

Draft Minutes of the Meeting of the Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee (including conference telephone call)

Thursday, December 8, 2005    Las Vegas, Nevada

 

Attending:

John Greacen

Don Bergeron

Robin Gibson

Christoph Hoashi-Erhardt

Rex McElrath

Michael Robinson

Tom Carlson

Tom Clarke

Brian Hickman

James Cusick

Terrie Bousquin

Jeff Barlow

 

Attending on conference call:

Nick Pope

John Ruegg

Robert O’Brien

Roger Winters

John Messing

Dallas Powell

Jim Harris

 

The ECF 3.0 IEPD and Specification was presented to the COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee yesterday and accepted into the its standards process.  The Committee is considering a proposed change to the standards process, so it is not yet clear what the process will entail and what additional work may be required by the proposed process changes.  The proposed new process includes new requirements such as interoperability tests and an environmental scan to identify other possible options the Committee might consider.  Also accepted yesterday into the standards process were the IEPDs submitted by the National Center: Arrest Warrant, Traffic Citation, and Order of Protection and the National Center’s consolidated CMS functionality standard.  There was no controversy concerning any of the submitted work products.  Tom expects that the Committee will take several months to decide whether to adopt the new process.

 

The TC discussed the proposed Proxy Document Signature Profile 1.0 and Symmetric Key Document Signature Profile 1.0 submitted by Nick Pope.  The members were not able to identify from the submissions the business use cases to be served by the profiles and their distinction from the XML signature profile already adopted by the TC.  Nike Pope, John Messing and Dallas Powell agreed during the conference call to develop a fuller explanation of the use cases for the two profiles and to show how they differ from the XML signature profile.  

 

We discussed the definitions spreadsheet prepared by Tom Carlson and Christoph Hoashi-Erhardt.  We decided to submit all of our definitions to the XSTF.  Tom and Christoph will create two separate documents – one will contain the ECF 3.0 element definitions drawn from the GJXDM, their path, and the corresponding GJXDM definitions.  The second will contain the ECF 3.0 extensions to the GJXDM, their paths and definitions and their derivations from other standards (i.s., UBL).  Tom Carlson will prepare a further analysis showing the definitions used in the National Center’s IEPDs so that the Center and the TC can decide whether these definitions need to be reconciled before submitting them to the XSTF.

 

XSTF members noted that GJXDM is undergoing major changes to become componentized to deal more effectively with relationships.  It is particularly important that we submit our proposed changes for inclusion during this major change process.  

 

Roger Winters has prepared a draft of a document to address an audience of chief or presiding judges and administrators.  The purpose of the piece is to make the case for the use of standards and to show how ECF 3.0 meets the requirements set forth in the National Center’s Standards for Electronic Filing Processes (Business and Technical Approaches). Jeff Barlowe, Don Bergeron, Terrie Bousquin, Jim Harris, Brian Hickman, and Robert O’Brien volunteered to help Roger develop this document.

 

The TC developed a new set of requirements for the “roadmap” for non-technical courts domain experts to enable them to review ECF 3.0 for completeness and correctness.  Instead of explaining how to navigate and understand the current ECF 3.0 artifacts, this new document will reproduce all of the classes, elements, code tables and definitions in an easy to read format.  The document will also include simplified diagrams showing the hierarchical relationships among the data elements.  The document will begin with Roger’s non-technical document.  Terrie Bousquin will prepare the first two substantive segments of the document and test them with actual court staff who have not previously worked with XML.  Jeff Barlowe and Tom Carlson will identify court CMS specialists to serve as vetters of the two segments.  These tests will be completed by the TC’s February teleconference scheduled for February 14, 2006.  

 

The members present decided not to move forward with a “roadmap” for implementers, on the grounds that technically trained persons will be able to make use of the existing artifacts especially in light of Roger’s overview and the Executive Summary.  

 

The TC discussed the desirability of greater participation by:

      CMS vendors

      eFiling vendors

      system integraters

      court managers, IT directors and court business analysts.

 

Face-to-face meetings were discussed for next year.  Definite meetings are May 13 and 14 in San Francisco in conjunction with the OASIS annual symposium and early December in Las Vegas in conjunction with the NCSC E-filing conference.

Other possibilities include February in San Francisco with CITOC and July in Ft. Lauderdale with NACM.  We are also looking for other industry venues that may be beneficial for presentations or demonstrations.

 

The following officers were elected to additional one year terms:

      Tom Clarke and John Greacen, co-chairs

      Robin Gibson, secretary and webmaster

      Roger Winters, editor and representative to the LegalXML Member Section Steering Committee

 

Friday's conference call is cancelled due to poor phone connections.

 

 

John M. Greacen

Greacen Associates, LLC

HCR 78 Box 23

Regina, New Mexico 87046

505-289-2164

505-289-2163 (fax)

505-780-1450 (cell)

john@greacen.net