Report 2010-102 Recommendation 9 Responses

Report 2010-102: Administrative Office of the Courts: The Statewide Case Management Project Faces Significant Challenges Due to Poor Project Management (Release Date: February 2011)

Recommendation #9 To: Administrative Office of the Courts

Although the Judicial Council has the legal authority to compel the courts to adopt CCMS, to better foster superior court receptiveness to deploying CCMS, the AOC should work with superior courts to address concerns about hosting data at the California Court Technology Center (Technology Center). Further, the AOC should take steps to ensure that superior courts do not lose productivity or efficiencies by hosting data at the Technology Center.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From August 2014

At the Judicial Council meeting of August 22, 2014 the council approved the Court Technology Governance and Strategic Plan which has the three primary components:

1. Technology Governance and Funding Model

2. Strategic Plan for Technology

3. Tachtical Plan for Technology

Below is the item number of the agenda item and the address at which it can be located.

Item 4 3:20-4:20 p.m.

Judicial Branch Administration: Court Technology Governance and Strategic Plans (Action Required)

- Presentation

- Audiocast (41:57)

http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/jc-20140822-item4.pdf

As previously discussed, at the time of the above being formally adopted by the council the issue would be considered fully implemented.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Fully Implemented

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From January 2014

At yesterdays Judicial Council meeting the council approved the new IT governance, strategy, tactical, and funding proposal. As in all things of this nature, it will go out for public comment before finalization at the June meeting of the council. They have been implemented now and this does correspond to your request to see them formalized and in place for the remaining two issues that are outstanding. The documents are now approved, in place, and formalized. Below is the council summary and the links to the documents.

Technology Governance, Strategy, and Funding: The council reviewed a report and accompanying proposal from its Technology Planning Task Force, which provides a structure, roadmap, and process for managing technology initiatives and increases the transparency and accountability of how funds are managed and allocated for technology projects in the judicial branch. The task force is comprised of judicial officers, court executive officers, court information technology officers, and other stakeholders representing 17 trial courts, the appellate courts, and the public.

The council approved the proposal in concept to be used in support of the budget change proposal process for technology initiatives. The task force will post the proposal for public comment and then re-submit it for final approval at a future council meeting.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Pending

The Administrative Office of the Courts' links did not transmit over with their response. The links are as follows:

http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/jc-20140123-itemI.pdf http://www.courts.ca.gov/3046.htm#acc20898.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2013

The recommendation that the AOC continue to work with the superior courts that have deployed the civil system to ensure it is addressing their concerns in a timely and appropriate manner has been adhered to. The V3 support team continues to hold weekly meetings, attended by court project managers, technical analysts, and operational staff, where court representatives discuss operational issues and prioritize items for next software release. Following established processes, any enhancements and defects exceeding a pre-defined level of effort (LOE) are escalated for approval. In addition to the weekly group meetings, individual court meetings are held each week to provide each court the opportunity to discuss their specific issues specific. To further support the courts, metrics are used to track compliance with service-level agreements, application performance, and reliability. Over the past 12 months there have only been a few severity 1 (critical) issues recorded and only one in the last six months. The CCMS V3 application has been stable.

As a further indication of progress, the V2/V3 maintenance workstream has concluded that the V3 civil system is a significant branch asset that is working well for the courts. The workstream, established by the Technology Committee and represented by staff from superior courts in the counties of Orange, Sacramento, San Diego, Ventura, San Joaquin, and Fresno, acknowledge that V3 supports approximately 25% of all cases across the state and it is stable and the courts consider V3 a viable solution.

The current status ofV3 represents substantial progress in implementing the state auditor recommendations 3.1 b and 3 .lc. - To further demonstrate the commitment and substantial work effort of the Technology Committee and designated workstreams, we have compiled documentation which was sent to the State Auditor in February 2013.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Not Fully Implemented

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2012

The CCTC provides consistent, cost-effective, and secure hosting services, including ongoing maintenance and operational support, data network management, desktop computing and local server support, tape back-up and recovery, help desk services, email services, a dedicated service delivery manager, and a disaster recovery program. In the event of a significant interruption of court services, the Disaster Recovery program ensures that infrastructure and network services, and trial and appellate court applications hosted in the CCTC can be safely and securely backed-up, redirected, and restored.

CCTC services allow the courts to rely on the skills and expertise of their maintenance and support teams to configure and install software and hardware upgrades and address other minor and critical issues. Courts also benefit from enterprise hardware and software license agreements, as well as bulk volume discounts in purchasing. In addition, centralized changes (e.g. hardware and software patches) are much easier and more efficient to install, while the central help desk support provides the courts a single point of contact.

To address the needs of the courts, each program has a delivery manager who works directly with the courts to address day-to-day issues and concerns, as well as extended challenges. Weekly, the delivery manager meets with CCTC staff on behalf of the courts to address any service issues.

Regarding the future, the Judicial Council Technology Committee created the Judicial Branch Technology Initiatives Working Group and developed multiple workstreams to address various technology issues facing the branch. Their goal is to make recommendations to the Judicial Council to specifically address the technology issues. One such workstream is the V/2V3 Maintenance workstream tasked with determining how the courts currently using V2 or V3 will be supported going forward. Another workstream is the Technology Roadmap, tasked with defining the technology vision for the branch. Both workstreams are collaborative efforts led by trial court executives and sponsored by judicial officers. The issue of hosting will be addressed by both workstreams as they address the question of local versus central hosting. At the conclusion of the project, recommendations will be provided to the Judicial Council.

In consideration of current support activities and those planned for the future, we believe the concerns of the courts hosted at the California Courts Technology Center are being addressed to guard against potential loss of productivity and or efficiencies. System reliability and availability at the CCTC has been stable and help desk tickets are being handled expeditiously. Performance is governed contractually through strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and monitoring, including financial consequences to the Technology Center vendor, SAIC, should SLAs ever be missed. The AOC has never had to exercise this contract clause due to missed SLAs.

The Technology Roadmap Workstream is working on the future of judicial branch technology.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Not Fully Implemented

All Recommendations in 2010-102

Agency responses received after June 2013 are posted verbatim.