Feedback Request/Request to Continue Work of Documents Subcommittee

["Rex McElrath" <mcelratr@gaaoc.us>]

Feedback Request/Request to Continue Work of Documents Subcommittee


Hello,

I've talked with the Chairs of this TC and some of the members about reviving the Documents Subcommittee and am submitting this email to the full TC in request of feedback and as a motion to continue the work of the Documents Subcommittee.

I have been researching the work by Dr. Leff, work done on the Rap Sheet, the current Court Documents specification, and other related work for reference material and believe the existing goals of the Documents Subcommittee are possible for use with the new Information Exchange Packages (IEP's) promoted by GJXDM Guidelines with the XML transform and stylizing technology that is available today.  

The concept of the electronic documents from early on in LegalXML was, as Roger Winters explained it: 

(DTD-a standard XML vocabulary -> Document Capable of Automated Data Processing) + XSL Style Sheet = Human-Readable Document

The updated form of this concept for the subcommittee would be something like:

GJXDM -> Information Exchange Package + XSL Style Sheet and/or XSL Transform and/or XSL Formatting Objects = Human-Readable Document


In a summary statement of why to bring back the work of the Documents Subcommittee, it compliments the current work of the larger committee and of the Justice community in that it takes the Information Exchange Packages built out of XML data and translates the data into a human viewable document.  

Example Reasons for Pursuing Fully XML Based Documents With Human Readable Views in the Documents Subcommittee:

* Create less of a need to verify manually that the data sent in to the case management system is the same as is in the human viewable version

* Allow document management and creation functions to become able to be much more flexible and robust due to the contents of the documents being able to be understood by the machine more than a straight binary (PDF/DOC/etc) file would be

* Facilitation of automated reasoning systems

* For large law firms and executive branch agencies, there is more of a carrot to adopt e-filing as their forms creation process is more simplified and they can improve the intelligence and reuse of their documents easier with the contents marked up with XML



Outline of Plan for Documents Subcommittee:

Objectives:

* Main: Develop a base set of IEP's with human presentable transforms for display.
* Secondary:  If appropriate and open methods are found, or developed, then formulate an updated Court Document Specification that uses schemas and newer formatting technology.


Documents to Start Working With as Examples:

Dr. Leff, of Western Illinois University, and some of his students have produced several court documents with transforms into HTML.  This work is viewable at http://www.wiu.edu/users/mflll/CriminalJusticeZoo.html.

The AOC in Georgia has many Child Support Enforcement related documents that are being diagrammed, mapped to IEP guideline compliant schema, and then mapped to transforms and style sheets to make them usable for data exchange between systems and for human presentation.


Work for the Documents Subcommittee:

The Documents Subcommittee of the OASIS LegalXML Court Filing Technical Committee will be needed for domain expert knowledge of both courts and XML technologies for use in vetting the electronic documents and the methods used to produce the electronic documents.  


Draft Timeline for Documents Subcommittee:

August 5th - Submit information about plans for the Subcommittee to full TC on list serve

August 19th - Submit Example Document Package with schemas, transforms, and style sheets and draft explanation of method used to produce.

August 19th-September 2nd- Comment and Revision Period 

September 9th - Submission of Revised Document Package and a draft of a methodology to reproduce for other documents and refinement and expansion of the functionality of the methods used to create the first document package.

September 9th-September 30th - Comment and Revision Period

September 12th- Submit summary report to main TC list serve

October 14th- Submit revised document package with updated documentation

October 28th - Subcommittee Conference call and vote on whether to move forward with preparing an updated Court Documents Specification or whether more work needs to be done for methodology to create documents.



Thank you for your time in looking over this proposal for reviving the Documents Subcommittee.

Thank you,

Rex McElrath
Judicial Council
Administrative Office of the Courts
244 Washington St. SW, Ste 300
Atlanta, GA  30334
404-657-9218
mcelratr@gaaoc.us



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