[legalxml-courtfiling] Salt Lake minutes

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

Dr. Leff has some technical problem that prevents him from communicating
with the list at the moment.  He has asked me to post the minutes from
the Salt Lake meeting.  Remember that these will become official within
ten days unless you bring some mistake to our attention.  I very much
appreciate Dr. Leff's efforts to produce this record of the meeting and
our conclusions.


                Minutes Meeting of June 20 and June 21st, 2002
                              in Salt Lake City, Utah
 The OASIS Legal XML Member Section Electronic Court Filing Technical
Committee

These minutes cover both the Conference call from 15:00 to 17:00
Mountain
Daylight Time on June 20th and the Face-To-Face held for two full days
on
June 20th to June 21st.

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 Teleconference:
Mohyeddin Abdulaziz,
Gregory W. Arnold,
E. Jerome Battle,
Donald Bergeron,
Karl Best,
Terrie Bousquin,
Toby Brown,
Rolly Chambers
Tom Clarke,
Dwight R. Daniels,
Shane Durham,
Robin Gibson,
Charles Gilliam,
John Greacen,
Allen Jensen,
Catherine Krause,
Dr. Laurence Leff,
Diane Lewis,
Mary Campbell McQueen,
John Messing,
Gary Pinder,
Dallas Powell,
Moira O'Leary Rowley,
John Ruegg,
Tom Smith,
Steve Spohn,
Khaleel Thotti,
Roger Winters,
Sean Wood,
Mark S. Yuan

*(TC)* Observers Present:
Nathan Probst,
Benjamin T. Wilson

*(TC)* John Greacen called the official Teleconference to order.

*(TC)* Karl Best introduced OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement
of
Structured Information Standards.

*(TC)* John Greacen asked if he had authority, as chairperson, to excuse
persons
who might have missed the first meeting due to exigent circumstances
including
illness.  Karl Best said that such individuals would now be in observer
status as per OASIS guidelines.

*(TC)* John Greacen confirmed our consensus policy, that all actions at
the
meetings will be confirmed on the list, and that electronic mail votes
are official votes.  The Technical Committee agreed that when the chair
declares
that consensus exists, the OASIS requirements of "2/3 vote  of TC
members,
with no more than 1/4 objecting" will be considered to have been met.
All electronic mailing lists for the Technical Committee will be hosted
by OASIS.  The Technical Committee modified the third special operating
rule
contained in the charter to limit the requirement that electronic mail
discussion take place on OASIS supported list serves to "official" email

discussions.

*(TC)* John Greacen, as chairperson of the Technical Committee, would be

the ombudsman for the purpose of receiving and dealing with comments on
the public comments list for the Electronic Court Filing Technical
Committee.
The chairperson of each subcommittee shall act as ombudsman for the
public comments list for their subcommittee.

*(TC)* The following subcommittees have been merged:
Query and Response and CMS API.  The combined committee will be
responsible
for Court Data Configuration as well.  Ms. Moira Rowley will chair the
combined committee.

*(TC)* The Court Document Subcommittee was formed.  It will be chaired
by
Messrs. John Messing, Mohyeddin Abdulaziz, and Rolly L. Chambers.

*(TC)* The Court Filing Policy Subcommittee was formed.
Don Bergeron will chair this subcommittee.

*(TC)* A Trusted Specification Repository Subcommittee was formed.
This committee will search for an appropriate place to keep our
specification
for legal and archival reasons.  Karl Best of Oasis was also asked to
look into this issue.
He said that other Oasis Technical Committees raised this issue.
Ms. Diane Lewis will chair this subcommittee.

*(TC)* The creation of a Court Forms Subcommittee will wait until the
requirements are done.  These will be authored by John Messing.

*(TC)*
A suggestion was made to set up a separate subcommittee for the Court
Filing
standard.  The Technical Committee chose not to set up a subcommittee
at this time;  it will continue to handle this specification in the
entire
committee.

*(TC)*
The group reviewed its list of deliverables:
1) *(TC)*
The Electronic Court Filing 1.0 specification and the Electronic
Court Filing 1.1 specification and DTD will be posted.  Electronic Court

Filing 1.1 and its DTD have been recommended by the JSD
team for the approval by the National Consortium and the Joint
Technology
Committee for late July 2002.  This specification is frozen, unless it
is
modified by the National Consortium or the Joint Technology Committee
in the course of the approval process.

2) *(TC)*
The Query and Response 1.0 committee will report within two weeks.
It will "put its best efforts" to have a product or a specification.
This supports queries from court users to courts for
case and document information.

3) *(TC)*
The Court Document 1.0 specification and DTD will be completed by
September
2002.   It will be transmitted to the JSD team, the National
Consortium, and the Joint Technology Committee for Consideration
at their December 2002 meeting.

4) *(TC)*
The Case Management System Application Program interface will be
developed by December 2002.  This will specify a standard interface
between court case management information systems and
electronic filing applications using the Electronic Court Filing 1.1
specification.

5) *(TC)*
The Court Filing Policy 1.0 specification and DTD or Schema will be
developed by December 2002.  This will be used to convey local court
policies
and conventions to electronic filing users.

6) *(TC)*
No specific date has been set for the delivery of Electronic Court
Filing 2.0 specification.   This will include the use of schemas,
the Simple Object Application Protocol and possibly ebXML messaging,
changes that may occur in the reconciled criminal justice
XML development and the use of XML Digital Signatures.

Note, the ebXML liaison was separately charged to investigate the use
of the ebXML messaging standard for use in electronic court filing.

7) *(TC)*
A tutorial and diagramming of the relationship between the components
and specifications shall be prepared.

*(TC)*
The committee decided that Oasis Members who are not members of the
Technical Committee shall not subscribe to the Technical Committee List.

*(TC)*
The Committee will move specifications to the
the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
for
adoption as an OASIS standard as a usual course of business.

*(TC)*
Ms. Mary McQueen was nominated as co-Chair by Moira Rowley.
The nomination was second by Roger Winters.  Approved by acclimation.

*(TC)*
Dr. Laurence Leff was elected secretary.

*(TC)*
Ms. Robin Gibson was elected as Web Master.

*(TC)* Mr. Rogers Winters was elected Technical Committee editor.
One of his first duties is to investigate the
suitability of OASIS specification templates for the TC's work.

Editors for specific documents were chosen as follows:

1) *(TC)*
Court Policy XML: Khaleel Thotti

2) *(TC)*
Court Policy XML Requirements: Don Bergeron

3) *(TC)*
Rule Based XML: Laurence L. Leff

4) *(TC)*
CMS-API XML: Shane Durham

5) *(TC)*
Query & Response: Dwight Daniels

6) *(TC)*
Court Document: Mohyeddin Abdulaziz, Rolly Chambers, John Messing

7) *(TC)*
Court Data Configuration XML: Shane Durham

8) *(TC)*
Court Form XML requirements: John Messing

9) *(TC)*
Electronic Court Filing 1.1 and 2.0: Robin Gibson

Liasons to other groups were chosen as follows:
1) *(TC)*
Robin Gibson and John Greacen, United States Department of Justice,
Global
Justice Information Network Advisory Committee, Infrastructure
Standards Working Group XML Data Dictionary Subcommittee
2) *(TC)*
Dr. Laurence Leff, International Association for Artificial Intelligence

and Law
3) *(TC)*
Dr. Laurence Leff, ebXML
4) *(TC)*
Toby Brown, Property Records Industry Joint Task Force
5) *(TC)*
Ms. Diane Lewis, XML.gov.

Ms. Lewis will also investigate other groups, particularly other
OASIS Technical Committees, with
which we should liaison.

*(TC)*
In no event shall this Technical Committee approve any specification,
if the use would involve unauthorized infringements of any third party
rights
known to the technical committee, and such third party has not agreed to

provide these license rights on a perpetual, royalty-free,
non-discriminatory
basis.

*(TC)*
The Technical Committee Adopted the Electronic Court Filing 1.1
specification
as a proposed committee specification for review by members of the
Technical
Committee, recognizing the specification has been frozen for use by
implementers.  Comments submitted will be considered for incorporation
into
future versions of the specification.

*(TC)*
The Technical Committee adopted the Court Document 1.1 specification as
a
proposed committee specification for review by members of the Technical
Committee

*(TC)*
Mr. John Messing presented the proposed Court Document 1.0 Standard.
He agreed to respond on the list to the following points:
1) The relationship between Court Filing and Court Document.
2) The relationship between Court Document and Rap Sheets
and Incident Reports.
3) Expansion of the scope to include data modelling
for legal terms that should be tagged within a document.
(Diane Lewis and John Greacen offered to provide a list of elements that
courts may require
filers to tag in order to be able to redact the data from publicly
available versions of the document.)
4) The use of Court Document 1.0 for Court Forms.  Note that Mr. John
Messing
was charged to prepare a Court Forms requirement specification.
5) The need for a "simplified" subset of Court Document 1.0, nicknamed
"Court Document Light."
6) Coordination with efforts underway in some states to create XML
document specifications and with repositories of such documents, such as
the
property records industry joint task force.
7) Detailed Technical issues as communicated by private letters to the
draft specification authors.
8) Contextual meaning of elements within the specification/consistency
of
elements between Electronic Court Filing 1.1 and Court Document 1.1.
9) Robustness - Are three levels enough?
10) Treatment of attachments and the relationships between attachments
in Electronic Court Filing 1.1 and Court Document 1.1.

Ms. Robin Gibson reported on the status of the work of the XML Data
Dictionary Subcommittee of
the Infrastructure Standards Working Group of the
Global Justice Information Network Advisory Committee of the US
Department of Justice.  Four
groups, including the Legal XML predecessor of the
Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee, have produced a "reconciled
justice data
dictionary" containing over 300 elements.  The Subcommittee
plans to convert that dictionary into an XML schema, to convert to upper
camel case element
names, to expand the scope of the dictionary by
implementing an object oriented approach and including data elements
identified by integrated
justice projects in Minnesota and Los Angeles, and
ultimately to produce an RDF-based dictionary.

Mr. Greg Arnold reported that the Standards for Electronic Filing
Processes
have been circulated for a month for public comment and will be put into

final form by the drafting committee the last week of June for
submission to
the National Consortium and Joint Technology Committee in late July.
The
Joint Technology Committee will circulate them for an additional 60-day
comment period following its July meeting.

Mr. Arnold also reported that the Open XML Court Interface project is
proceeding
to develop an RFP to procure a software product that can serve as a
common middleware for XML-based electronic filing applications.  The
state of
Georgia will procure the middleware and make it available (at a minimum
cost that will support its maintenance and enhancement) to all states,
courts,
and private vendors.  The RFP should be released by the end of this
calendar year.  OXCI is not a project of the Electronic Court Filing
Technical
Committee or of OASIS.  It is an open source software development effort

being undertaken by a group of a dozen interested state court systems.

Mr. Shane Durham reported on the deliberations of the CMS-API
subcommittee.

Appreciations were given to the hosts E. Jerome Brattle and Dan Becker
from the Utah State Courts and Toby Brown of the Utah State Bar.

Ms. Catherine Krause, Ms. Diane Lewis, Mr. Tom Smith and Mr. Dallas
Powell
presented a revised Interoperability Specification.  This will be used
to
determine when standards have had sufficient use and experience in the
real
world before advancement to the OASIS standard level and for
recommendation
to the Joint Technology Committee.  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).  Ms. Krause's subcommittee will incorporate the comments made
during
the meeting into the subcommittee draft and post it to the list for
further
comment and for resolution shortly following the meeting, so that the
definition can be presented to the Joint Technology Committee in late
July.

It was pointed out that at least two courts are almost in the last phase

of implementation and the Georgia Courts Automation Committee has
completed their Interoperability study.

Ms. Diane Lewis discussed the importance of OASIS branding for her work
within the Department of Justice Office of United States Attorneys and
her plans to rapidly deploy and test an XML electronic filing
application
based on the Electronic Court Filing 1.1 specification.  Thus, it
appears that
the Technical Committee will have statements from three members that
they are
using the standard.  This is a requirement for advancing to an OASIS
standard
from a committee specification.

The members present adopted the goal of satisfactory testing of the
Electronic Court Filing 1.1 specification within six months-- by  the
end
of this calendar year.

The committee discussed vendors of court filing software claiming to be
"Legal XML" compliant.  This might negatively impact the Legal XML
"brand."
Mr. Tom Clark will head up a certification committee to review how such
systems could be certified as compliant.  Members of the committee will
include
Shane Durham, John Messing, Dallas Powell, and  Diane Lewis.

Concerns were discussed regarding receiving reports from vendors and
others
about their experiences in implementing the standard.

Mr. Don Bergeron presented a requirements list for Court Policy XML.
Additions were taken from the membership of the meeting--and Mr.
Bergeron
was charged to post a revised version to the list.

Ms. Robin Gibson stated the current requirements for the Electronic
Court Filing 2.0 specification:
1) incorporation of ebXML and/or SOAP
2) use of XML Schema
3) more complete specification of acknowledgement messages
4) incorporation of lessons learned from implementations of Electronic
Court
Filing 1.1
5) incorporation of object-oriented Justice Data Dictionary Schema or
RDF being developed by the XML Data Dictionary Subcommittee

She will formalize these requirements for comment on the list.

Meeting dates were chosen as follows:
1) October 3rd and 4th, 2002, Boston.
Dr. Leff will follow up with Daniel Greenwood
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology regarding meeting location.
2) December 12th and 13th, 2002, Las Vegas,  Dr. Leff will follow up
with
Clark County Court system regarding the meeting location.  He will also
follow up on getting the special rate from the hotel being used by the
National State Courts Electronic Filing Conference.
3) April 2003, Atlanta
4) July 2003, Seattle
5) October 2003, Chicago, St. Louis, or Macomb Illinois. The latter is
the home of Western Illinois University.

Salt Lake City and Orange County, California offered to serve as
alternate
sites should any of these sites fall through.

The Technical Committee will post on its web site the Court Filing 1.1
proposed
Committee Specification, the Court Document proposed Committee
Specification,
the Rule Based XML proposal, and all documents hosted previously
on courtxml.org.  It is anticipated that courtxml.org will be a pointer
to the
Legal XML Court Filing Technical Committee web site.

The cochairs will ask OASIS to create lists for the subcommittees
established
by the Technical Committee.

Mr. John Messing reported on the importance of signatures in the legal
system in general and our work in electronic court filing.  Also, he
reported
on the relationship of our work with the proposed eNotarization group.
He also
demonstrated technology to allow for the digital signature
of documents and verification of that document, allowing production of
"a
certified copy" of any document that might be in a case file.

Mr. Dallas Powell shared how Tyberas' work in court filing changed
when it was made to comply with Legal XML Court Filing specifications.
He also demonstrated his technology, and how it is used in debt
collection cases.

Dr. Laurence L. Leff reported on a pending grant to the National
Institute
of Justice to study Criminal Justice automation and on a pending grant
to the National Science Foundation to teach undergraduates rule-based
processing, XML, Legal XML court filing and court document standards,
civil procedure, and ebXML-based electronic commerce.

--
John M. Greacen
Greacen Associates, LLC.
18 Fairly Road
Santa Fe, NM  87507
505-471-0203