Results of SF face to face meeting 2-22-06

Here are minutes of the meeting today.

Present in person:

Michael Alexandrou

Tom Clarke

Robin Gibson

John Greacen

Christoph Hoashi-Erhardt

Michael Robinson

Christopher Smith

Present by phone:

Jim Beard

Jim Cabral

Scott Came

Jim Harris

John Messing

Nick Pope

Roger Winters

John and Tom reported on their appearance before CITOC. We will meet with CITOC members tomorrow afternoon to discuss implementation of ECF 3.0 and involving more courts people in the work of the TC.

Tom Clarke reported on the use of the TC’s architectural model by the Global Messaging Standards Committee for broader application within the homeland security and health care domains as well as the justice community. The committee found very helpful the work of the OASIS SOA Reference Model Technical Committee in proposing a consistent nomenclature. The TC will revise the language of the ECF 3.0 specification to reflect that standard language. This will result in a 3.01 release of the specification. Christoph Hoashi-Erhardt offered to make the needed editorial changes.

Tom also reported lengthy discussion of the possibility that our messaging architecture may require modification to accommodate data exchange intermediaries, such as NLETS, RISS, and LEOS. It is not clear yet whether they are, or are not, transparent to an XML exchange.

Rex McElrath reported on the work of the Court Document Subcommittee. The group is refining its use cases and is developing a universal approach to a semantic structure for court documents including court orders.

The TC is not concerned that the OASIS ASIS standard would remove the hyphen from legalxml-courtfiling for document naming purposes.

The TC decided to inform OASIS that it will set in motion the process for converting to the Royalty Free on Limited Terms IPR mode at its December face to face meeting in Las Vegas. We will rely on OASIS to let us know how many of our TC members have membership agreements on file from their organizations.

At the request of John Messing, we agreed to create a Signature Subcommittee, subject to the presentation of a subcommittee charter. John Messing and Nick Pope agreed to co-chair the subcommittee.

Robin Gibson agreed to post the fourth and fifth signature profiles on the website and to include them on the specification cover sheet very soon. Jim Cabral reported that he had asked again that OASIS expand the zip file format for some of the ECF 3.0 artifacts on the website.

The TC reviewed reports from vendors and courts about their plans to implement ECF 3.0. The prospects are very encouraging. Georgia asked if it could make minor changes to the schemas for implementation in Georgia. The members present said that would be consistent with the spirit of the testing process. Georgia will implement forthwith therefore in the Supreme Court and several trial courts. Tom Clarke will call Ron Bowmaster in Nebraska to pursue implementation there. The TC has requested funding from the Member Section Steering Committee to provide paid technical assistance for implementers. We will know in early March whether the request will be funded.

Don Bergeron reported that OASIS is deploying the Subversion software for configuration management. Don suggested that we load ECF 3.0 into Subversion and offered to help with the process. The TC agreed with his proposal and accepted his offer of help. The OASIS public comment process has been tested and works to receive input from implementers who are not part of the TC.

We reviewed progress reports from those responsible for scoping the ECF 3.0 enhancement efforts. We added the appellate non-case capabilities to the objectives for ECF 3.1. We will develop a use case for the record on appeal. John Messing suggesting involving Moyeddin Abdulaziz in that effort. Christopher Smith recommended including child support cases as a potential for primary electronic service because non-custodial parents are required to register with the state child support agency.

The members present reviewed the changes that Don Bergeron had proposed to the Executive Summary document. We support inclusion of the structural subheading approach that Don recommended, but prefer Roger’s language to Don’s because it is less technical and less “insider” sounding. Tom Clarke and Christopher Smith offered to help Roger develop a stronger introduction that makes the case first for electronic filing and then for the use of ECF 3.0 in implementing it.

On Thursday, the TC will recommence at 9:00 am and will take up Jim Harris’s summary document for court domain reviewers of ECF 3.0, Tom Carlson’s definition spreadsheet, and the issue of how we can make TC membership more attractive for CITOC members and court domain experts.

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

legalxml-courtfiling message