David,
The first section of the ECF Specification describes the scope for which ECF is designed to support which is, primarily, the metadata included with a court filing that is needed to populate the case and document management systems of the courts or that is returned and/or served to the filer’s system(s). The specification allows the format of the filing attachments (the filed documents) to be defined by the court (e.g. XML., PDF, TIFF, Word, etc.) so that content was not part of the intended scope of ECF. When we added support for the bankruptcy case type to ECF, our subject matter experts looked at the data elements you referenced and selected only the most important elements for case processing.
My suggestion to you is to try to separate out the metadata and filing content data. The ECF bankruptcy case type extensions should provide much of what you need for the metadata and the rest of the metadata should be added through your own extensions. The content of the filing documents should probably be defined in your own schemas rather than the ECF message schemas. While you should try to leverage existing court XML data types and elements provided in the NIEM and ECF, you will probably need different structures for these documents than are provided in the ECF message schemas. Documents based on these schemas, can be included as attachments to the ECF filing.
Does that make sense?
Jim Cabral
MTG Management Consultants, L.L.C.
www.mtgmc.com
(206) 442-5010 Phone
(502) 509-4532 Mobile
Helping our clients make a difference in the lives of the people they serve.
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From: David_Milstein@ao.uscourts.gov [mailto:David_Milstein@ao.uscourts.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 3:32 PM
To: legalxml-courtfiling-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [legalxml-courtfiling-comment] ecf 4.01 specification comment
I am seeking to implement a portion of the specification for use in an application for Pro Se debtors to submit
fast-track petitions for bankruptcy.
However, the set of data that is required to be captured is large: the entire set of data from 22 bankruptcy official forms
(see http://www.uscourts.gov/FormsAndFees/Forms/BankruptcyForms.aspx ).
Therefore, I was having trouble figuring out where to fit these thousand or so new fields in the existing schema.
The Case-Type schema for Bankruptcy is woefully incomplete for my purposes (not just meta-data but all
data elements of the financial forms filers must complete to file: the petition, schedules A-J, B22A and C, B21, B8, B7, B6 Summary
and Declaration, B3A and B, B1, B1C, and B1D).
I would like to re-purpose the schema here for Bankruptcy Case information
http://docs.oasis-open.org/legalxml-courtfiling/specs/ecf/v4.01/ecf-v4.01-spec/csprd01/xsd/casetype/ECF-4.0-BankruptcyCase.xsd
to contain all of this data. As it is, it has just a handful of the elements we need.
I propose to implement this as a series of Document and ConnectedDocument objects, one per form, with their own schema definitions defining the data sets of each.
Instead of this in the ECF-4.0-BankruptcyCase.xsd:
<xsd:complexType name="BankruptcyCaseType">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>
Additional information specific to bankruptcy cases.
</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:complexContent>
<xsd:extension base="nc:CaseType">
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element ref="j:CaseAugmentation"/>
<xsd:element ref="ecf:CaseAugmentation"/>
<xsd:element ref="AssetNoticeIndicator"/>
<xsd:element ref="NumberOfCreditorsValueLevelCode"/>
<xsd:element ref="EstimatedAssetsValueLevelCode"/>
<xsd:element ref="EstimatedDebtsValueLevelCode"/>
<xsd:element ref="SmallBusinessIndicator"/>
<xsd:element ref="Section1121eIndicator"/>
<xsd:element ref="DebtorTypeCode"/>
<xsd:element ref="JointPetitionIndicator"/>
<xsd:element ref="NatureOfDebtCode"/>
<xsd:element ref="VoluntaryIndicator"/>
<xsd:element ref="BankruptcyStatute"/>
<xsd:element ref="Debtor" maxOccurs="2"/>
</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:extension>
</xsd:complexContent>
</xsd:complexType>
I am going to put in something like this:
<xsd:complexType name="BankruptcyCaseType">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>
Additional information specific to bankruptcy cases.
</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:complexContent>
<xsd:extension base="nc:CaseType">
−
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element ref="j:CaseAugmentation"/>
<xsd:element ref="ecf:CaseAugmentation"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB001"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB001C"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB001D"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB003A"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB003B"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006Declaration"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006Summary"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006A"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006B"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006C"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006D"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006E"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006F"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006G"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006H"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006I"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB006J"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB007"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB008"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB021"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB022A"/>
<xsd:element ref="cmecf:FormB022C"/>
<!- whatever common elements that exist throughout the forms, like court, debtor, authentication information, etc separately, including ->
<xsd:element ref="Debtor" maxOccurs="2"/>
</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:extension>
</xsd:complexContent>
</xsd:complexType>
All of the simple elements listed in your specification posted for comment (AssetNotice, NumberOfCreditorsValueLevelCode, etc)
are a data element from one of the listed forms, and would more logically be defined within that container.
I hope that this proposal has your support, as this system will be used by the United States Bankruptcy Courts,
with an eye towards refining the specification in the future to be used as the API for general case filing. Advice on how to better
implement this usage of this portion of the ecf specification is welcome.
David Milstein, J.D., PMP
Information Technology Specialist
Administrative Office of the US Courts
Office of Court Administration
Technology Division