Official Transmission of Minutes from the OASIS Legal XML Member Section Court Filing Technical Committee Secretary

["Dr. Laurence Leff" <D-Leff@wiu.edu>]

The chairperson has asked to set a deadline for responses or corrections 
to these minutes (April 17th and April 18th) as well as those for the 
teleconference of March 11th.

They will represent official decisions of the Technical Committee unless 
someone objects before then.

                Minutes Meeting of April 17th and April 18th
                             in Atlanta, Georgia
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
April 17th and 13:00 to 14:00 on April 18th.  They also cover the Face-To-Face 
held for two full days on April 17th and April 18th, 2003

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
Greg Arnold
Don Bergeron
Jim Cabral
Shane Durham
Rolly Chambers
Robin Gibson
John Greacen
Allen Jensen
Catherine Krause
Dr. Laurence Leff
Diane Lewis
Rex McElrath
Mary McQueen
Robert O'Brien
Dallas Powell
John Ruegg
Tony Rutkowski
Roger Winters

1. Introductory discussion

John Greacen started the meeting and reviewed the agenda.  There was a
discussion of the responsibilities of the Technical Committee's
representative to the Legal XML Steering Committee.  We also reviewed
the history of the Legal XML Steering Committee going back to the old
Legal XML organization.

The National Center for State Courts has registered our Court Filing 1.1 
standard on the Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs standards
registry web site.

He noted that the following documents have been approved by the Joint Technology
Committee as proposed standards for comment experimental use:
Court Document 1.1, Court Filing 1.0, Court Filing 1.1, Query and Response 1.1

The Technical Committee has not recommended any of these for Recommended 
satus as the interoperability tests are not complete.

2) Subcommittee Reports (Electronic Filing Process Models and Layered
   Interoperability)

Mr. Shane Durham gave the report for The Electronic Filing Process Models
subcommittee.  

They prepared a draft matrix format for describing an electronic filing system.

The goal is to obtain systems descriptions from many courts nad vendors with
operating efiling systems to ensure that the 
Technical Committee understands the requirements of existing systems before
developing Court Filing Blue.

(TC) The survey will include a table that was shared among those present,
intro material and a Visio diagram.

Mr. Dallas Powell gave the Interoperability Committee report.  
He described a template that defines "points of intersection."  
An example intersection was batch upload.  The template identifies
what is needed to make the interface points interoperable.
For instance, there need to be agreements concerning the XML schema used
(including extensions), credit cards supported, document format,
authentication methodology, and message protocol.

A group may later come up with an API based upon this.

It might describe how technologies such as ebXML, http, or SOAP might be
used to implement the standard.  (The ebXML report might include how
Collaboration Protocol Agreements  and Collaboration Protocol Profiles
might be used.)  John Ruegg agreed to draft a model description of the 
requirements for standardized use of ebXML to serve as an example of how
this template could be used.


Mr. Powell reported on extensions made in Utah and outlined a 
lifecycle for a court filing starting with the attorney,  and continuing
with the Electronic Filing Service Provider, Electronic Filing
Manager and Court electronic Document Management System.  Every submission
gets four status updates and finally a legal XML envelope.  This contains
a printable document.
 
He also discussed issues of using XML signatures and "lock"ing information
inside the envelope.

Some vendors are making some modifications in the standard in order to
resolve practical problems in implementation.  Mr. Powell listed the
modifications made for the Utah project.  The group discussed whether
the modifications made by the Utah project were backward compatible.
There were also concerns about the credibility loss with the court
community and Joint Technology Committee if a new standard came out
with changes that were not compatible with previous versions of the
standards.

Also, many expressed concern that Court Filing Blue come out soon and
concern whether there would be enough resources to do both Court
Filing 1.2 and Court Blue.

(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))

(The phrase "Court Filing Blue" is a code name for the next major 
implementation of the Court Filing standard.  This code name was selected
in December at the Las Vegas Face-to-Face.)

(TC)  The Technical Committee decided not to expend further work on the
1.x version of the Court Filing Stnadard.  Instead, it will publish all 
reports received on implementatations of the standard, identifying
deficiencies and modifications made to overcome them.  To be included in these 
reports will be documents from Court Link, Tybera, and the schema developed
by MTG (with explanatory comments developed by Jim Cabral.)

The Technical Committe heard reports from vendors that courts are
demanding assurances from them that their systems "comply with" Court
Filing 1.1.  The TC decided to  draft a statement provided they
document the differences and submit a report to the Technical
Committee.  (Mr. Greacen will propose the exact wording and try to
avoid the word "compliant.")

3. JXDDS

Ms. Gibson discussed meetings of the Justice XML Data Dictionary Schema
Task Force (JXDDS) sponsored by the Georgia Tech Research Institute
(GTRI).  They are now in a 60 day "pre-release" comment period.  
They are soliciting for pilots which will get federally-funded support from 
JXDDS to try to implement the 3.0 product following modfications resulting
from the comment round.

Discussion included:
1) usability
2) the level in the hierarchy at which various concepts and their corresponding
   XML was placed
3) whether an "attorney" should be considered a "judicial officer"
4) whether the technical committee should only look at those pieces 
   relevant to court filing.  It was noted that the technical committee
   also has a court document standard and is a source of expertise on
   the "intersection" of XML and courts

The people at the face-to-face committed to review this document from various
points of view.  The Technical Committee also thanked Rex McElrath,
Robin Gibson, Ed Papps and Greg Arnold for their work in representing the
Technical Committee and the court community in JXDDS.

Ms. Gibson will act as a relay for comments from this Technical Committee
and wishes to get them by May 19th.   Of course, interested members can
submit directly to the feedback page at it.ojp.gov

Mr. Annold is attempting to obtain a simplified presentation of the objects and
associated elements to faciliate review of the data dictionary ans schema.

4. OXCI 

(TC) There was a report regarding the Open-source XML Court Interface (OXCI)
from Mr. Cabral.  He reviewed the various technical decisions outlined
in the proposed appendix to the Request For Proposal.  The document is at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-courtfiling/200303/msg00018.html
 
The Technical Committee agreed that the draft Court Filing schema that 
Mr. Cabral prepared would be considered a comment on Court Filing 1.1 and not 
as a strawman for Court Filing Blue.

5. Governance Issues

(TC) During the Thursday teleconference, there were two nominations for
the Technical Committee's representative to the Legal XML Steering
committee: Mr. John Aerts and Roger Winters.  There were no new
nominations on the teleconference.   Voting was to close with the
Friday teleconference; members would be able to vote by electronic mail
by posting to the mailing list.

On Friday, there were four votes from the list via electronic mail, 
several on the phone, and ten from the members physically present at
the face-to-face.   The final vote was fifteen for Mr. Winters, one
abstention, and four for Mr. Aerts.  Both Mr. Aerts and Mr. Winters
were thanked for being willing to serve.  It was noted that there might
be other openings on the steering committee for which Mr. Aerts could
run (either from Integrated Justice TC or as an at-large member.)

6. Court Document standard.

Mr. Chambers gave a report on efforts to update the Court Document standard
for use with Schema and the above-described JXDDS data dictionary.

The discussion included:

1) the treatment of a document with several attachments.  
Both Court Document and Court Filing provide for attachments.  Is there any
basis on which to decide which attachments will be included within Court 
Document and which will be submitted as additonal documents within Court
Filing.

E. G., Assume there was an XML document obeying the Court Document standard 
with two attachments.  Assume
it becomes one of the documents as part of a court filing envelope.  Would
that court filing have three BLOB's attached or only one BLOB. 
2) Does a signature apply to the attachments?   Relatedly, does a signature
exist for the purposes of non-repudiation using a digital "hash?"
Or, does it have legal significance as attesting to the verisimilitude of
the document?
3) the difference between "Certificate of Service" and "Return of Service"
A suggestion was made that a certificate of service be created as a document separate from the paper to which it applied.
4) Printer fidelity with XML.  The XML from a court document prepared
with the Court Document standard is displayed with a browser.  
With current browser technology, XML documents with style sheets display
differently with different browsers.  

Many were concerned that this creates a serious barrier to judge and attorney 
acceptance of XML documents.
Would the attorney accept a situation where the
attorney would see the presentation as the court would see it and have the
opportunity to approve same before officially filing their document?

It was noted that there are fewer concerns with printer fidelity with
PDF files.

5) whether it would still be appropriate to continue having Court Filing
and Court Document as separate entities.

6) It was also noted that the Court Document standard may be very suitable
for the transmission of information that would be considered "form-based."

The Court Document standard will be on the agenda for the face-to-face
meeting in Washington D. C. in July.

7. Upcoming meetings

Upcoming conference calls include

Tuesday May 6th, June 3rd, August 5th, September 9th, October 7th.

The next face-to-face will be on Friday and Saturday, July 18th and 19th
in Washington DC, pending confirmation with the hosts.

The face-to-face will be in Las Vegas for December 11th and December 12th, 
pending scheduling with the hosts.

There will also be two one-hour conference calls for each of the upcoming
face-to-face meetings.