Doxpop - Tools for Attorneys and Public Information Researchers: January 2013

Monday, January 21, 2013

A caring community steps forward to collect a $5,000 matching donation for Pro Bono from Doxpop.

For several years, Wayne County and the City of Richmond have enjoyed the benefit of having a local Pro Bono office with regular walk-in hours and a calm, understanding staff ready to help people in need. This office was funded in part by the Robert Maley Pro Bono Foundation, and in part by IOLTA funds directed from the Indiana Pro Bono Commission.

Then in 2012, the Indiana Pro Bono Commission reduced the number of Pro Bono districts in Indiana from 14 to 12. This redistricting process resulted in Wayne County and the City of Richmond becoming a part of "District J", which has one office... In Lawrenceburg. (Yep... 60 miles away.) It's a nice office with helpful people, but that's a long distance for someone in Richmond who needs more than a telephone interview.

Fortunately, our local legal community has stepped up to the challenge, and the Whitewater Valley Pro Bono Commission now provides most of the funding that used to come from the State with local donations.  However, every year, it's a challenge for them to fully fund the office.

This year, Doxpop decided to do our part by making a matching donation challenge to our community. Doxpop offered to match any individual donations to the Whitewater Valley Pro Bono Commission up to a total of $5,000. We're proud to say that in less than a month, 28 of our our neighbors stepped forward with enough individual donations to claim the entire $5,000 in matching funds. We're mighty proud of those neighbors!

Doxpop also provides free service to any of Indiana's 12 district Pro Bono coordinators and their staff, and has been providing free service to the excellent staff of Indiana Legal Services since 2006. If you are a volunteer or paid staff member of any of these organizations, and are not already taking advantage of this service, please give us a call at 866-369-7671 so we can support the good work that you do.

Tax warrant updates for JTAC counties will be restored soon.

Doxpop expects to restore updates to tax warrants for counties using the JTAC system within the next two weeks.

In mid-December, the folks at JTAC notified us that they would no longer be sending tax warrants through the previously established data feed, effective immediately. While negotiating an alternative data feed, we have kept the previously supplied tax warrants in our database. However, we caution users that because no updates are arriving, we cannot indicate when the debt has been satisfied on these warrants.

An alternate data feed has now been proposed, and we are in the process of integrating the new data into our system. It will take a couple of weeks to do this with the proper care. Thanks for your patience while we work through this unanticipated interruption!

When the first updates occur, we'll announce it on this blog. Stay tuned.


Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Updates to Tax Warrants no longer available in counties using the JTAC/Odyssey case management system.

On 1/1/13, JTAC stopped sending updates to Doxpop for Tax Warrants filed in the counties using the Odyssey case management system.

We're currently working with the folks at JTAC to restore this data feed, but in the meantime, please be aware that we are not receiving new warrants or satisfaction information for existing warrants from these counties.

As soon as we have a target date for restoring Tax Warrant data, we'll post further information on this blog. We understand that this is important information for many of you.

Counties using other case management systems are not affected by this change.

The affected JTAC/Odyssey counties are:
  1. Benton
  2. Blackford
  3. Carroll
  4. Cass
  5. Clark
  6. DeKalb
  7. Floyd
  8. Grant
  9. Greene
  10. Hamilton
  11. Harrison
  12. Hendricks
  13. Henry
  14. Huntington
  15. Jackson
  16. Jasper
  17. Jennings
  18. Knox
  19. LaPorte
  20. Madison
  21. Monroe
  22. Owen
  23. Parke
  24. Posey
  25. Scott
  26. Shelby
  27. Steuben
  28. Tipton
  29. Union
  30. Warren
  31. Washington