Allen County Converts to New Case Management System

Important Note: This county's data was restored to the Doxpop system in November, 2011. Read the details here: http://blog.doxpop.com/2011/11/long-odyssey-doxpops-4-year-quest-pays.html

The courts of Allen County, Indiana, are in the midst of a major conversion from an electronic case management system that they have used for many years to a new one being distributed by the Indiana Supreme Court, and called Odyssey. This change is affecting the availability of Allen County cases on the Doxpop online access service.

With regard to criminal and citation cases:

1. New criminal and citation cases (infraction, ordinance violation, misdemeanor, and felony) filed in the Allen County courts will not be accessible on Doxpop.
2. Criminal and citation cases included in the Doxpop database before September 7, 2010 will continue to be available on Doxpop for approximately one week until the migration of those cases to the Odyssey system is complete.
3. Those cases mentioned in #2 will NOT receive any new entries or updates from the Allen County courts.
4. Eventually all historical cases will also be converted to the new case management system.
5. As soon as the conversion of all cases to the new system is complete, Doxpop will remove those cases from our database and they will no longer be accessible on Doxpop.
6. Allen County criminal and citation cases can be sought at the state web site for online access, http://mycase.in.gov.
7. Until we remove Allen County criminal and citation cases from Doxpop altogether, it might be wise for searchers to provide a double layer of security by searching both Doxpop and mycase.in.gov for case information to prevent something “slipping through the cracks”.

With regard to civil cases:

1. Doxpop continues to display all disposed and open civil cases for Allen County. We also continue to show all newly-filed cases and updates to existing cases, with updates occurring daily.
2. At some future point, Allen County will move these cases, also, to the Odyssey system. At that point Doxpop will cease to display them on line. We will provide clear notice about that next step in this conversion as soon as we know dates and details.


Additional Background and Explanation

Doxpop has enjoyed a very positive relationship with the Allen County courts and Clerk of Circuit Court for several years. Under the rules of the Indiana Supreme Court the local courts and clerk could elect to publish all criminal, civil, and citation cases on line via the Internet for remote access. The decision to provide this convenience service in partnership with Doxpop was the prerogative of the local officials, with the approval of the administrative division of the Indiana Supreme Court.

Court case information is sent to Doxpop through secure, automated, and regular updates from our partner courts. Doxpop retains an exact image of the case information sent to our servers by partner courts, an image that we never edit, abridge or change in any way.

Allen County has chosen to adopt and install a new case management system named Odyssey, which has been developed using public funds and is being distributed to Indiana courts by the Judicial Automation and Technology Committee (JTAC) of the Indiana Supreme Court. The Doxpop team has known for some time that Allen County was engaged in this process, although there has been prolonged uncertainty about when the actual transfer of case data to the new system would occur. Doxpop received notice of the effective date of the data transfer only when it was actually in process.

The Indiana Supreme Court takes the position that cases filed and maintained on the Odyssey system are no longer under the discretionary control of the local courts and clerk with regard to public access under the applicable Trial Rule 77(k) and Administrative Rule 9. Decisions about online publication of court case records now, consequently, are entirely within the purview of the Indiana Supreme Court.

Doxpop filed a request with the Court three years ago to receive records from the Odyssey system so that we could continue to provide advanced access, search, and management tools for our customers who use court records in Odyssey counties. The Court has not chosen yet to grant Doxpop access to the data.


Important Note: This county's data was restored to the Doxpop system in November, 2011. Read the details here: http://blog.doxpop.com/2011/11/long-odyssey-doxpops-4-year-quest-pays.html