19th Judicial Circuit

Administrative Office

Judicial Information Services Division

The mission of the Judicial Information Services (JIS) Division is to provide the highest technology-based services in the most cost-effective manner in support of the Court’s mission as it applies to the case processing and management, probation and detention services, and judge and staff learning use of technology. The foundation of the division’s services is to establish systems, processes, and solutions based on best practices and industry standards.

JIS consists of a judicial information systems director, one principal judicial technology specialist, and five judicial information specialists, a part-time help desk and two part-time administrative support staff. The division, which reports directly to the executive director, acts both independently and as liaisons for the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit with other Lake County departments, state agencies including, the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, other state departments, and other court technology partners and vendors.

The Judicial Information Services division is organized in the following areas of support and services:

• Administration, User Support and Services
• Application Support Management and Development
• Hardware Support
• Project Development and Program Support

JIS provides 24/7 Help Desk support for any technical support such as workstations, telephones, Telecommunication Devices for the Deaf (TDD), printers, facsimile machines, copiers, and LAN/WAN/Mainframe network security and application support. JIS performs work in researching, evaluating, implementing, maintaining, and training in the various software and hardware systems at the user level. In total, JIS is responsible for 363 workstations, 19 laptop computers, 40 network printers, numerous stand-alone printers, and various multimedia devices to include twelve plasma screens, six LCD screens, three 3M Digital Wall Displays, five permanently installed multi-media presentation podiums, six multi-media mobile presentation podiums and audio/video technology distributed in twelve courtrooms and four training rooms. JIS services and supports the following divisions and personnel:

• Judicial Operations—judges, court reporters, administrative staff, the compliance unit, the jury commission, the law library, Kids’ Korner, and the arbitration unit;
• Core Support Services staff—judicial human resources, judicial budget and finance, judicial research, and legal research services;
• the three branch traffic courts—Mundelein, Park City, and the North Branch Court in Round Lake Beach;
• Psychological Services and all Adult Probation units—including Pretrial Services; and
• the Depke Juvenile Justice Complex in Vernon Hills—two juvenile courtrooms, probation and detention services, and the FACE-IT juvenile program.

In addition, JIS supports the stand-alone local area network for the FACE-IT program and the detention computer lab for a total of 28 computers, a file server, and two network printers. JIS staff are assigned to both adult probation services and the juvenile complex for immediate local computer and application support. The JIS help desk is located at the Lake County Courthouse to provide telephone support to all staff.

JIS started, implemented, assisted with, or completed numerous projects for various court divisions during 2008.

• The traditional pen and paper form used in creating pretrial bond report was replaced with a digital pen and a formatted form. Pretrial Bond officers use this technology to interview their clients. The information gathered based on the interview gets downloaded to the computer. All handwritten data within the form is captured and stored in a digital format. The information in each field gets converted to a readable, editable form within the application and stored in a backend database. The final bond report is generated and printed in a clear readable report. The data in the backend is reused to connect to other databases or reused within the Pretrial bond reporting for print on demand.
• Completed document imaging for Pretrial Services Unit of closed files from 2004 through 2006. This provided the unit more work space and promoted efficiency for case look ups.
• Expanded the wireless internet access at the main courthouse that was originally installed only at the Jury Assembly room for jurors. This provided access to the public, attorneys, law library patrons and other visitors of the court.
• Implementation of the integrated justice initiative, which will impact adult probation and pretrial services, juvenile probation and detention services, and the compliance unit;
• Redesign the public facing website using SharePoint services as a content management tool;
• Project tracking and monitoring using the ManagePro as a tool to monitor the Court’s Strategic plan;
• Development of business intelligent forms using Adobe LiveCycle technology;
• Expand the use of digital pen technology to reduce redundancy in data entry and promote efficiency;
• Re-design and integrate all intranet portals into one home page using SharePoint Services. This is in response to the most recent employee survey to better serve and improve communications to all Court personnel including judges.
• Continue to update the judges’ bench books when necessary;
• Development of a process workflow using the existing technology to enhance the service and support to the organization.
• Technological support and development plan for COOP planning for the Courts.