NCSC Finds URL's eFiling Solution to be State-of-the-Art and Conformant with ECF Standards

Sept. 4, 2012 - PRLog -- DENVER, Colorado (September 4, 2012) – URL Integration, an IT solutions company providing criminal and civil solutions and systems integration services to courts, justice, and public safety agencies, is pleased to release final findings of a two-part assessment that examines URL's small claims eFiling solution. Conducted by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), an independent court improvement and research organization, the reports offers both observations and recommendations on three related eFiling topics – design concepts, system features, and conformance with Electronic Court Filing (ECF) national standards. The purpose of each assessment was twofold; first, identify how URL’s eFiling solution matches up to other solutions available on the market today, and second, validate URL’s eFiling solution meets conformance with OASIS LegalXML ECF 4.x technical standards and specifications.

Recognizing the growing need to implement technology in order to improve court filing business practices, the preliminary assessment report issued by the NCSC in January 2012 (eFiling Assessment Phase 1, Small Claims Report) characterized the differences in eFiling maturity levels among products in the marketplace. The report validated URL’s eFiling solution to be state-of-the-art and the most mature eFiling level, promoting a template-based and forms-agnostic system. The report also highlighted the NCSC’s evaluation of screen designs and its strong support of several design concepts that one cannot traditionally find in other eFiling systems, including the use of appropriate workflow methods and exposed services.

In the final report issued by the NCSC in July 2012 (eFiling Assessment Phase 2, Small Claims Report), a further technical evaluation was conducted on URL’s eFiling solution. The NCSC’s findings and observations recognized URL’s eFiling solution to be robust, functionally-rich, and a complete end-to-end eFiling solution – from submission of filings to backend system integration. The NCSC assessed and highlighted specific ground-breaking features, including:
-     Ability for attorneys to manage proxies (i.e., paralegals and law clerks) and approve submissions on behalf of a proxy.
-     Flexibility of offering a migration path away from a basic upload approach to a more advanced data-driven approach, where the content on the documents are structured and reusable rather than inoperative and static.
-     Ability to minimize manual clerk review by effectively applying controls and court policies to ensure completeness of filings before submission.
-     Ability for litigants to efficiently self-schedule hearings within the URL eFiling interface, rather than accomplishing this task as a separate process outside of eFiling.

The NCSC also conducted a detailed technical assessment of the solution’s conformance with OASIS LegalXML Electronic Court Filing (ECF) 4.x technical standards and specifications. The NCSC noted URL’s diligence in clearly designing the eFiling solution’s technical architecture and major logical components that align with not just one, but all four of the ECF Major Design Elements – Filing Assembly, Filing Review, Case Record, and Legal Service. In the report, the NCSC also confirms that URL’s eFiling Solution has met conformance with the all of the required operations and message constructs specified in the ECF standards. As a result, the NCSC favors URL’s eFiling solution to be readily integrated with any court case management system (CMS) and document management system (DMS), or can be implemented as a stand-alone.

“Both reports reflect our ongoing dedication and mission to continue to promote and advance interoperability efforts by leveraging national and industry standards, applying emerging technologies, and staying ahead of the curve,” says David Usery, URL’s President and CEO. “We have long recognized the industry’s need to advance and adopt technology in order to improve cross-agency collaboration and business performance. We purposely designed our eFiling solution to do just that.”

For more information on "eFiling Assessment, Phase 1 and Phase2 , Small Claims Report for URL Integration” by Thomas Clarke, Project Director and Vice President of Research and Technology, Jim Harris, Project Consultant, and Daniel J. Hall, Vice President of Court Consulting, interested parties can visit http://www.urlintegration.com/?page_id=2275 to download a complimentary copy of both reports on URL Integration’s website.  

ABOUT URL INTEGRATION
URL Integration is an award-winning IT solutions company specializing in the planning and implementation of complex, information exchange projects for courts, justice, and public safety agencies. We set ourselves apart from our competition by leveraging and implementing emerging technologies, industry best practices, proven methodologies, and national standards. Our goal is to improve cross-agency collaboration and business performance by establishing real-time and automated information exchanges. To learn more about URL, visit www.urlintegration.com.