Results of SF face to face meeting 2-23-06

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

Here are the minutes from Thursday’s meeting.

 

Present in person:

Michael Alexandrou

Terrie Bousquin

Tom Carlson

Tom Clarke

Robin Gibson

John Greacen

Christoph Hoashi-Erhardt

Michael Robinson

Christopher Smith

 

Present by phone:

Jeff Barlow

Jim Cabral

Jim Harris

Brian Hickman

Dr. Laurence Leff

John Messing

Robert O’Brien

Roger Winters

 

CITOC members joining afternoon session:

 

Chris Andreau

Linda Bowers

Debbie Cook

Alan Crouse

Les Davis

Tom Edwards

Peter Haas

Bob Hanson

Mike Love

Craig McClain

Neil Miller

Abdiel Ortiz

Jim Rebo

Jim Roggero

Bob Roper

Bob Smith

 

The members present reviewed the two documents prepared by Jim Harris and Terrie Bousquin.  We concluded that we are unlikely to get significant feedback from court domain experts independently reviewing the domain model, data element spreadsheet, or schemas.  We are much more likely to get feedback during test implementations of the specification.  Consequently, we decided not to expend further energy on the Practitioner Review Guide.

 

We concluded that there is a valid need for the Summary and Introduction as a high level technical introduction to the specification for IT managers, project managers and programmers.  We ask Jim and Terrie to make the following changes to the document:

 

-                      Remove sections 1 and 2.  Roger, Christopher and Tom should consider reuse of some of section 1 in the summary for court administrators and judges.

-                      Remove material copied from the specification.  This document should describe the purpose of various sections of the specification and provide references or links to it, but should not merely repeat information from the specification.

-                      Insert diagrams describing in graphic form the specification and the architecture.

 

Our objective is to provide a series of documents that provide layers of description and detail, but do not duplicate each other.  There will be four layered documents -- the summary for policy makers, the Executive Summary approved as part of the ECF 3.0 specification, the technical introduction, and the specification itself.

 

We reviewed with Tom Carlson the spreadsheet that he has created setting forth the ECF 3.0 data element definitions together with their GJXDM 3.03 counterparts and NCSC IEPD data element definitions.  He has reviewed 6000 of the 16000 lines on the combined spreadsheet and identified the following types of definitional differences:

 

-                      Differences that merely add contextual specificity to a generally stated GJXDM element.  Tom will do some further analysis to make sure that the inherited characteristics of the GJXDM element are consistent with our usage.  However, these differences merely reflect appropriate use of the GJXDM element for electronic court filing purposes.  No purpose would be served reporting these contextual amplifications to the XSTF.

-                      New elements, or differentiations of GJXDM elements, such as criminal case, civil case, traffic case, probate case, etc. rather than case.  These should be brought to XSTF’s attention, perhaps with a suggestion of a hierarchical structure such as case/courtCase/domesticCourtCase.

-                      Improved definitions, which should be brought to XSTF’s attention.

-                      Definitions that include information about the unit of measure or other descriptive information that is contained in the data type element in GJXDM.  This definitional text should be stripped from the ECF 3.0 definitions but included in text in the ECF 3.0 specification.  This change should be included in the 3.01 release already agreed upon.

 

Tom Carlson believes that he can complete his analysis within a period of weeks so that ECF 3.01 could be released within six weeks to two months.

 

We discussed the next major release of GJXDM.  It will replace relationships currently defined through inclusion within the GJXDM hierarchical structure. These structures, with produce recursion, will be replaced with peer elements and defined relationships between them.  We believe that conversion of ECF 3.0 to the new structure should be relatively straightforward; we should be able to complete the conversion with volunteer labor and do not plan to retain a consultant for this purpose.

 

We discussed John Messing’s concerns about the stability of ECF 3.0.  We made no changes to the plans for ECF 3.01 or ECF 4.0 as a result of that conversation and did not adopt the suggest to postpone implementing ECF 3.0 until the ECF 4.0 change (converting to the next major GJXDM release) is completed.

 

We met with sixteen CITOC members and engaged in a constructive discussion with them for an hour, covering the role, purpose, and structure of the ECFTC, what we request of CITOC (implementation of ECF 3.0 and increased participation in the TC – particularly court domain experts).  Missouri indicated that it intends to implement ECF 3.0.  Mike Love of Florida promised to provide us with the metadata elements defined by the Florida Supreme Court for our review in enhancing ECF 3.0 for appellate filings.  We also offered our assistance to Jim Rebo who will chair the CITOC standards committee.  Bob Roper indicated that CITOC will probably create an efiling interest group.  We applauded that development and offered to establish an ongoing liaison relationship with that group.  Several CITOC members are interested in the development and use of fully marked up court documents – the task of our Court Document Subcommittee.  Another topic raised was extensions for GJXDM for juvenile case data elements; we reported on the extension elements that we had created for delinquency and dependency cases.

 

During the conference telephone call, the TC resolved to submit ECF 3.0 for a 90 day period of public review within OASIS.

 

We also received a report from Brian Hickman concerning primary service of process.  He recommended that the TC postpone any enhancement of ECF 3.0 to include primary service until the ABA committee chaired by John Messing completes proposed rule and statutory amendments authorizing primary service through electronic means and best practices for electronic service in this context.  The TC adopted this recommendation.

 

 

John M. Greacen

Greacen Associates, LLC

HCR 78 Box 23

Regina, New Mexico 87046

505-289-2164

505-289-2163 (fax)

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john@greacen.net