Welcome Putnam County Recorder!

The Putnam County Recorder is pleased to announce two new services for providing access to Putnam County's Recorded documents through the web. 

The index to documents filed in January 1992 or later and images of documents filed in January 1993 or later are now available on-line at http://www.doxpop.com. Basic information about the documents is available at no cost. Detailed information and documents images are available as a fee-based service. 

In addition, The Recorder's Office now offers a free property watch service to our community. Any person may sign up at http://watch.doxpop.com to set a watch on his or her property and name. Participants are notified via email any time a document is filed that references the watched property or name.  

Both of these services have been provided without any use of public funding (no use of tax money.) The access provided by these services is in addition to the public access already provided at the courthouse. 

For additional information, contact Opal Sutherlin at  the Recorder's Office, (765) 653-5613 or Nick Fankhauser at Doxpop, LLC; (765) 373-9245; nickf@doxpop.com.

 

Announcing the Whitewater Valley Pro Bono Commission Matching Grant

Doxpop, LLC supports the work of The Whitewater Valley Pro Bono Commission in Wayne County and is encouraging others to join them in supporting this worthy cause. The Pro Bono office provides low cost access to legal advice in non-criminal matters for those in our community who may not be able to afford to pay the full costs of hiring an attorney. The Pro Bono office is raising funds between now and December 31, 2012, and Doxpop is matching them, dollar for dollar, up to $1,000 per donor, maximum of $5,000. The local Pro Bono office lost funding due to reorganization at state level (nearest is now in Lawrenceburg), and this is an important need in our community. Contact the Whitewater Valley Pro Bono Commission to donate.

http://www.whitewatervalleyprobono.org/pleasedonate.html

Welcome Newton County Courts!

Katie Grant, Newton County Clerk, is pleased to announce two new services for the public:

 

People wishing to pay their fines for traffic citations or other infractions may go to http://payment.doxpop.com, find the infraction, and pay in a matter of minutes. The total payment, including the online transaction fee, is calculated and displayed prior to the completion of the transaction. The fines are sent to the clerk and the payer notified via email when the payment is accepted, usually within 10 minutes.

 

People wishing to access public court cases on-line may access the information at http://www.doxpop.com. This web site is designed primarily to serve attorneys and other professionals who use court information with fee-based services, but it also provides low-volume access to the general public at no cost. Doxpop currently provides on-line access to court information in 83 Indiana counties, and fine payment services for 25 Indiana counties.

 

Both of these services are provided by the clerk's office in cooperation with Doxpop without any use of public funding or tax money.

Grant County moves to Odyssey, but don't worry! -The information and features you're used to are still available on Doxpop

Grant County has recently made the switch to JTAC's Odyssey System for management of court cases. Over the next couple days, you may notice some oddities on Doxpop while this transition takes place. The most important thing to remember is that all Grant County court information is still available and current on Doxpop, along with current court information from 82 other Indiana Counties.

How does this  change affect Doxpop customers in Grant County?

In the long run, there will be no significant change. However during the next week, you may notice a few rough edges as we merge data:

• When you use Doxpop's personal calendar feature, you will see two colors for Grant County on your calendar. Every event will be available, but the older cases will have a different color from the newer cases. When we complete the merge process, these will go back to being a single color.
• When you look at Grant County's Details Page, you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
• If you use any of our email alert services, you may receive extra notifications during the transition period.
• When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for some cases. This is because while we are loading the information from Odyssey, we will also be maintaining the old data until the operation is complete to ensure you don't miss anything. When you see two case entries, please look at both to ensure you have the most current information.

• The only lasting change in available information is the financial information. The Indiana Division of State Court Administration has informed us that the clerks using the Odyssey system prefer that financial information not be made public. The Clerks in the other 48 counties we serve have decided that this is useful information that the public should have access to, so we're puzzled that only Clerks using Odyssey have decided not to share this information. If you think financial transactions are an important part of the public record, please ask the clerks you work with to contact the Division about making it available through Doxpop.

How does Doxpop provide access to Odyssey Data?

During our last transition for an Odyssey county, one user commented that they thought Doxpop might be "stealing" Odyssey data from the State. Nothing could be further from the truth. Doxpop pays the Division of State Court Administration more than $13,000 per month for access to this "public" information. Doxpop then aggregates the information into our database to provide you with integrated access to 83 Indiana counties in a single, powerful research site. This is a lot of work for us, and because we receive no public funding, an expensive effort, but we think the results are worth it.


The Grant County transition will not take long and everything will be back to normal within a week.

If you have any questions regarding this transition, please call our toll free number at 866-369-7671.

The new Judicial Service Report is here, and it says Hoosiers are acting smarter.

I admit I'm a bit of a geek, but I pore over the statistics portion of The Judicial Service Report every year when it is released.

With the rare exception of adoptions, court cases are never filed because someone did something smart. So I think of the Judicial Service Report as a report card telling us how many folks in Indiana did something they regret last year.

The good news is that there continues to be an overall decrease in cases, continuing the downward trend since 2008, when the number of cases filed in Indiana peaked at just over 2 million. With 1,680,412 cases filed in 2011, that is a 16% decrease in the "bad decisions index" over a 4 year period.

Less is better when it comes to need for government, so this is also excellent news from a civic perspective. It means that there is apparently less need for a service that adds to the cost of living in Indiana.

Unfortunately, the decrease does not include "serious" criminal cases. Misdemeanors are down a bit, but felonies are up. That tells us that in the realm of very poor decisions, nothing has changed, And roughly the same number of  people are losing a chunk of their lives followed by becoming less employable due to criminal actions.

The most significant decreases have been in infractions (speeding tickets & such) and ordinance violations (parking ticket collections), with an 8% decrease since 2008.
This infraction number is significant and good for two reasons-

• What seems to be less enforcement may be of concern from a public safety perspective, but the statistics on traffic safety indicate that we're safer on the road now than we were in 2008, so patrol officers must be doing a pretty good job of preventing the most unsafe situations, and they aren't tying up the courts and fining motorists to do it. This seems like a clear win for Hoosiers.
• From a fiscal perspective, these are the "money making" cases. By that, I mean the defendant usually ends up paying more than $100 without using any public resources to fight the case, so these cases funnel money in the public coffers without any additional need of services rendered for the agencies that collect the fees. 100,000 fewer infractions represents a reduction of ten million dollars in fine and fee revenue. Although a few budget officers are upset, this also seems like a win for the typical citizen.

I have read reports that some people are crediting diversion programs for the decrease in infractions and misdemeanors, but that explanation doesn't work, because the statistics in this report represent cases filed. Diversion only occurs after filing has already occurred, and will show up later in a higher rate of dismissals.

Two very positive statistics are found in the civil section:

• Mortgage foreclosures are down, with a 33% decrease over the 4 year period beginning in 2008, with the biggest drop of 27% occurring from 2010 to 2011. 
• Civil Collections are down 30% and Small Claims are down 14% since 2008.

These may simply be a sign of less happening in the economy generally, but I take it as a positive sign that fewer people are being taken to court for their debt.

An "A" for this report card? I think so.

Parke County Recorder Joins Doxpop

The Parke County Recorder is pleased to announce two new services for providing access to Parke County's Recorded documents through the web. 

The index to documents filed in March 1996 or later and images of documents filed in December 2006 or later are now available on-line at http://www.doxpop.com. Basic information about the documents is available at no cost. Detailed information and documents images are available as a fee-based service. 

In addition, The Recorder's Office now offers a free property watch service to our community. Any person may sign up at http://watch.doxpop.com to set a watch on his or her property and name. Participants are notified via email any time a document is filed that references the watched property or name.  

Both of these services have been provided without any use of public funding (no use of tax money.) The access provided by these services is in addition to the public access already provided at the courthouse.

For additional information, contact Mary Jo Harkrider at  the Recorder's Office, 765-569-3419 or Nick Fankhauser at Doxpop, LLC; (765) 373-9245; nickf@doxpop.com.

Elkhart transition complete. All counties current.

It's done!

Doxpop has completed our work to shift the data feed for Elkhart County court data from the CSI Case Management System to the JTAC/Odyssey case management system. Thanks for your patience during this transition! All Odyssey Counties, including Elkhart are now up to date on Doxpop.

As a Doxpop user, you will see no changes in the way Elkhart's court information is presented on our system as a result of this transition, and all Doxpop services for Elkhart Courts will function in exactly the same manner.

Information temporarily out of date in counties using Odyssey

Doxpop is currently in the process of wrapping up the migration of Elkhart County court data on our system. However, the final step of this process is taking longer than expected. While this step is completing, our information for all counties where the Odyssey Case Management System is in use will be out of date.

During this day (Monday, 9/10), please carefully check the "Information current as of" date in the upper left hand corner of the details page when you are looking at the details for each case. For most counties, there is no problem, but if you are looking at a county using the JTAC/Odyssey system, the data may be old.

In addition, very recently scheduled hearing dates may not appear on court calendars during this update process.

We are currently applying updates, and are roughly halfway through the process. We expect that all counties will be current again as of tomorrow morning.

Apologies for this bump in the road! We had not anticipated this last step running past the weekend, and we will be changing our process to avoid this during the addition of other counties in the future.

Counties using the JTAC/Odyssey system and affected by this problem are:

•  Allen
•  Benton
•  Blackford
•  Carroll
•  Cass
•  Clark
•  De Kalb
•  Elkhart
•  Floyd
•  Greene
•  Hamilton
•  Harrison
•  Hendricks
•  Henry
•  Huntington
•  Jackson
•  Jasper
•  Jennings
•  La Porte
•  Madison
•  Marion
•  Monroe
•  Owen
•  Parke
•  Porter
•  Posey
•  Rush
•  Scott
•  Shelby
•  St. Joseph
•  Steuben
•  Tipton
•  Union
•  Warren
•  Washington

All other counties are unaffected.

Elkhart moves to the Odyssey System - How this affects Doxpop users

Over Labor Day weekend, the county courts in Elkhart will be moving their data to JTAC's Odyssey System.

Although we're not fans of this move, it will not significantly affect Doxpop users because Doxpop now buys access to a real-time feed of court data from the Odyssey system. Our customers' access to Elkhart's court information will not be interrupted during this transition.

A few of the services we provide will look odd during the transition, because there will be a short period when both the old data and the new data are available. In particular:

• If you use the personal calendar feature, you will see two colors for Elkhart County on your calendar. Every event will be available, but the older cases will have a different color from the newer cases. When we complete the merge process, these will go back to being a single color.
• When you look at our "County Details Page", you will find two entries for each court until the merge is complete.
• If you use any of our "watch" services to keep an eye on cases or people of interest, you may receive extra notifications during the transition period.
• When you are doing searches, you will find two entries for some cases. This is because while we are loading the information from Odyssey, we will also be maintaining the old data until the operation is complete to ensure you don't miss anything. When you see two case entries, please look at both to ensure you have the most current information.

Don't worry! this transition won't take long, and after a few days we'll be back to normal.

It's Done! Real-Time updates are now available for counties using the JTAC/Odyssey case management system.

Although Doxpop serves many people who are seeking historical information, our main focus is on helping our many users in the legal community know about changes to court cases within minutes of the time they occur.

With the recent completion of our real-time update system for counties using the Odyssey case managment system, Doxpop now provides information that is updated within 10 minutes or less for cases in nearly all of the 82 Indiana Counties that we provide access for.

The only remaining courts with slower update cycles are a few municipal courts and some case types in Allen County that are updated on a daily cycle.


What this means for you is that all of Doxpop's features designed for attorneys now work in all of our counties. For instance, you can:

1. Have all of your hearings appear on your smartphone calendar, and automatically stay in sync via a continuous iCal feed.
2. Set up notifications so you'll know right away when a new minute entry is added to a case you are following.
3. Most importantly, you'll know that you always have access to current information.

The background on this exciting development is that for many years Doxpop has been providing real-time access to case information for the roughly 50 counties using the CSI case management system. We introduced this system in 2002 for Monroe County. Like Doxpop, CSI is based in Indiana, and it was great to work with other Hoosiers to provide cutting-edge technology for the legal community in our own state.

Then in 2007 a few counties started using the "Odyssey" case management system, which is run by the State Court's Judicial technology and Automation Commission (JTAC). When this occurred Doxpop immediately requested a data feed from the State. However, it was not until 2012 that JTAC was able to provide a data feed suitable for real-time updates. In the meantime, about 30 counties started using the Odyssey system.

Now Doxpop is able to combine real-time data feeds from these two largest case management systems along with data from several smaller vendors to provide our users with current information to cases in 82 Indiana counties.

This has been a lengthy and expensive process for Doxpop, but we think you'll agree that the value it adds for our users has been worth the effort.

If you have any questions about the great real-time notification features we've designed for attorneys and other legal professionals, give our support staff a call at 866-369-7671. They're always eager to help you get more value from the service we provide.

We're correcting a problem with Real-Time updates for JTAC/Odyssey Counties.

We've run into a problem with missing minute entries for some cases in the 30 JTAC/Odyssey counties.

The problem was easy to fix, but requires reloading the data so we're now a little more than a week behind schedule, but very close to having it done!

In the meantime, please be aware that although all cases are on the system for JTAC/Odyssey counties, and the vast majority are just fine, a few are missing their minute entries. The counties using the CSI, CourtView, and Keystone case management systems are unaffected by this problem.

Hang in there! We're almost done, and expect to wrap-up the addition of these counties to the real-time feed this weekend.

Real-time update process for Odyssey/JTAC counties underway- expect higher notification volumes for a few days.

Great news! We are currently applying the updates to bring the updates for Odyssey/JTAC courts current. When this process is complete, we'll be completely synched with the courts in these counties, and updates will be applied in "real-time" so that you are always seeing current information.

While we are "rolling forward" the updates from July 1, those of you who take advantage of our notifications service may receive an unusually high volume of notifications for changes to cases or the addition of new hearings on your calendar.

When the systems are completely synched up. the volume of notifications will settle down to the normal level. Although this initial additional volume may be a bit inconvenient, we decided that, on balance, it would be better to notify you of all changes in July as a way to "jump start" the notification services and help everyone become aware of this important change.

Good news, better news, and excellent news!

Good: Over the weekend, we posted our monthly update for counties using the Odyssey Case Management System run by the State's Judicial Technology and Automation Committee. Information for those courts is now current through July 1.

Better: Included in this update was LaPorte County, which has recently converted to the Odyssey system. We've been struggling to get good information from the older case management system in LaPorte for some time, so in this case, migrating to Odyssey was a positive move, and we can now provide you with cleaner and more complete data for LaPorte.

The most excellent news is that we are about one week away from being able to provide real-time updates for counties using the Odyssey system. For about half a year now, we've provided a monthly updates for these counties. That's not near the standard of service we set for the first 50 counties that partnered with Doxpop, but we figured it was still valuable information, so we've provided the monthly updates while working toward a better solution.

Next Monday, we expect to turn on real-time updates for the Odyssey counties, which means:

1. Every time you look at a case, you'll be viewing current information.
2. You can set an alert on a case, person, or custom search and receive immediate updates via eMail as changes occur.
3. You'll receive hearing schedule notifications in real-time.
4. You'll be able to view calendars for your cases or court calendars on-line.
5. You'll be able to set up an iCal feed to ensure that whenever the local court schedules a hearing for one of your cases, it immediately appears on your personal calendar- either on your desktop, or on your mobile device.

Two New Indiana County Recorders Join Doxpop!

Doxpop is happy to announce the addition of two Indiana County Recorders to our growing database of information partners.

Fountain County Recorder, Wanda Taylor, is pleased to announce two new services for providing access to Fountain County's Recorded documents through the web.

The index to documents filed in May 1994 or later and images of documents filed in January 2003 or later are now available on-line at http://www.doxpop.com. Basic information about the documents is available at no cost. Detailed information and document images are available as a fee-based service.

In addition, Fountain County now offers a free property watch service. Any person may sign up at http://watch.doxpop.com to set a watch on his or her property and name. Participants are notified via email any time a document is filed that references the watched property or name.

Morgan County Recorder, Pam Kivett, is also pleased to announce that Doxpop is now available for providing access to Morgan County Recorded documents. The index to documents in Morgan County begin in May 1994. Images of documents are also available beginning in May 2004. 

As always, these services are provided without any use of public funding (no use of tax money.) The access provided by these services is in addition to the public access already provided at the courthouse.

For additional information, contact Waynda Taylor at the Fountain County Recorder's Office, 765-793-2431, Pam Kivett at the Morgan County Recorder's Office, 765-342-1077, or Nick Fankhauser at Doxpop, LLC; 765-373-9245; nickf@doxpop.com

LaPorte in transition- Much improved data is on the way!

LaPorte County has just completed their transition from an older case management system to the "Odyssey" system. This means that very soon, we'll be able to provide more timely notifications and cleaner data for the courts in LaPorte County. Updates will be "real-time" instead of nightly, and minute entries will be more complete.

However... there will be an interruption as we kickstart the process, and if you're depending on Doxpop for timely information from LaPorte, you need to know the details. Here's the planned schedule:

• Late next week, we'll replace the existing LaPorte information with a complete "dump" of clean information extracted on July 1st, so information will be current as of July 1, but will not updated for a few days after that load.
• In the following week, we'll begin the "real time" updates, so LaPorte information will be both current and complete from that point forward.

After the real-time updates are going, notifications will become much more timely, minute entries will be complete, and the court calendar will  become a more useful tool. We are looking forward to knowing that our patient customers will at long last be able to receive a level of value in LaPorte that we've long been able to deliver for other counties.

The CCS is back, with our apologies.

A couple of weeks ago, we thought we were improving and simplifying our system by replacing the old CCS link with the printable version of the case details. Boy were we wrong! Apparently the less detailed and simpler view is valuable to many folks, so the CCS is back.

Thanks to everyone who quickly gave us feedback about this. We do our best to make the Doxpop system better with each release, but when an "improvement" really isn't, we're willing to respond quickly.

The CCS link is available on both the search results list and in the upper right corner of case detail pages.

Please keep the feedback coming, and know that we appreciate you.

Change is in the air! A new feature arrives, an old friend moves...

This weekend we released a couple of changes this weekend that moved an old feature, and added a new one.

First, your old friend, the printable CCS, has moved:

In the past, when you wanted the details of a case, you could either click on the case number, or on a link labelled "CCS" just to the right of the case number in the search results screen. The CCS view was a simpler layout, intended for printing the details rather than viewing them. We have eliminated this link, and now you should click on the case number any time you want case details. If you need a print version, click on the "Printable View" link in the upper right corner, and you'll get a simpler layout designed for printing.

Second, we're trying out a new type of search: 

On the "advanced search" screen, you'll find a link that invites you to try our new "Judgment Search". The Judgment Search is intended to help you find cases where a decision has been made against the defendant. This could be for something as simple as a speeding ticket or as complex as civil litigation resulting in a lien. 

The Judgment Search is a work in progress, so we're putting it out there without any guarantees and inviting you to use it in addition to your regular searching. Then give us your feedback so we can fine tune it. During this test period, you may do as many Judgment Searches as you want for free.

To appear on this screen, a case must match the name you enter for the defendant and also meet one of three criteria:

1. The case may have been designated as one having a judgment or a satisfaction of judgment by the clerk. This is done either by entering an explicit judgment date, or by setting a flag indicating that a "Hard Copy" or "Document" containing Judgment has been filed in the permanent record. Many clerks always mark cases in this manner whenever they place a case in their Judgment Docket Book. For the clerks who use this approach, it provides a very complete record of judgments for their particular county.
2. The case may have an "accounting entry", meaning that the clerk has been ordered by the court to collect some fee from the defendant for this case. In counties that do not make a judgment docket entry, this is a good method of being sure that a judgment has been entered against the defendant for this case, but may not provide a complete list of all cases where a judgment exists.
3. The case may have a minute entry containing the key word "judgment" (or the alternate spelling "judgement".) This is also a good indication for the particular case identified, but, like the accounting entries, may not identify all cases for the county in question.

We're currently in the process of surveying all of the clerks we work with to learn which counties use the most complete method of flagging all cases where a judgment occurs, and for these counties, when that method was first used. When we have this information, we'll post it in a table. In the meantime, take a look and let us know what you think. It doesn't cost a thing to try it out, and your thoughts will help us make it better.

Welcome Jay County Recorder!

The Jay County Recorder is pleased to announce two new services for providing access to Jay County recorded documents through the web.

The index to documents and images of documents filed in 1997 or later are now available on-line at http://www.doxpop.com. Basic information about the documents is available at no cost. Detailed information and document images are available as a fee-based service.

In addition, The Recorder's Office now offers a free property watch service to our community. Any person may sign up at http://watch.doxpop.com to set a watch on his or her property and name. Participants are notified via email any time a document is filed that references the watched property or name.

Both of these services have been provided without any use of public funding (no use of tax money.) The access provided by these services is in addition to the public access already provided at the courthouse.

For additional information, contact Bev Myers at the Recorder's Office, (260) 726-6940 or Nick Fankhauser at Doxpop, LLC; (765) 373-9245; nickf@doxpop.com.

Kosciusko County Now Offering Unlimited Image Viewing for Recorded Documents

Doxpop customers needing to view a large number of recorded documents will be pleased to learn that unlimited viewing is now available in Kosciusko County. Kosciusko County is the third Indiana county to participate in this service. Wayne County and Dearborn County are also currently participating in the unlimited viewing feature.

For a reasonable monthly fee, Doxpop customers can add this service to their existing subscription to view an unlimited number of full-size document images filed in the Kosciusko County Recorder's office.  Documents such as mortgages, deeds, and liens are available for your viewing pleasure.

To view a demonstration of how to add this service to your subscription, make sure to watch our demonstration video on our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/doxpop, or just watch the video below.

Odyssey Court Records Now Current Through May 1

Over the weekend, Doxpop completed its latest information update for Indiana Counties using Odyssey's case management system. Court record information for Odyssey counties now contain all information filed up to May 1, 2012.

We continue to work with the state in providing our customers with real-time updates to Odyssey information. Keep an eye on our blog as more information regarding the status of this project becomes available.

April information posted from the State's Odyssey system, Good news and Bad...

The monthly update for counties using the Odyssey Case Management System run by the State's Judicial Technology and Automation Committee has been posted.

However, please note that the information is incomplete for the last few days of April. The posted information is complete through midnight (end of day) on April 24th. (You may see some entries after April 24th, but please don't depend on these being complete.)


The reason is that the folks at the State extract the information in two separate batches which we merge to update our system, and they did these two extracts several days apart this month. Since the first one occurred on the 24th, we can't guarantee complete information after that date. They are sending us a second file in a few days to patch this up and make the information complete through May 1st. They have also agreed to alter their process slightly to prevent this problem in the future.

On the good news side, we are currently receiving "real time" updates from the State's Odyssey system, and are working to fully test and integrate this data feed into our system so you won't have to worry about how current the information is in the future. The initial assessment from our programmers on this feed is that the folks at the State have done their job well, and it's just a matter of time (and hard work) before we'll be able to pass the information along directly to our users.

Doxpop at the 2012 Mira Awards

Doxpop is honored to be selected by TechPoint as a 2012 Mira Award finalist. The Mira Awards recognize the top contributors among those involved in Indiana's technology industry, and can be considered Indiana's technology "Oscars". Doxpop is nominated in the category of "IT Services Excellence & Innovation". This is a brand new category being introduced to this year's Mira Award's ceremony, and Doxpop is very excited to be included among the finalists in this first-time category.

Winners will be announced on May 12 at a black-tie gala event at the JW Marriott in Indianapolis. Celebrity chef Quang T. Dinh will be presenting his culinary skills for the special occasion. To learn more about the Mira Awards and this year's nominees, please visit http://www.techpoint.org/finalists-2012.

Welcome Jefferson County Courts!

Karen Mannix, Jefferson County Clerk, is pleased to announce two new services for the public:

People wishing to pay their fines for traffic citations or other infractions may go to http://payment.doxpop.com, find the infraction, and pay in a matter of minutes. The total payment, including the online transaction fee, is calculated and displayed prior to the completion of the transaction. The fines are sent to the clerk and the payer notified via email when the payment is accepted, usually within 10 minutes.

People wishing to access public court cases on-line may access the information at http://www.doxpop.com. This web site is designed primarily to serve attorneys and other professionals who use court information with fee-based services, but it also provides low-volume access to the general public at no cost. Doxpop currently provides on-line access to court information in 78 Indiana counties, and fine payment services for 23 Indiana counties.

Currently, citations and civil cases are available via the Doxpop Public Access system. Criminal cases will become available in late spring. After the criminal cases have been added, a public demonstration and training session will be held.

Both of these services are provided by the clerk's office in cooperation with Doxpop without any use of public funding or tax money.

March of Progress? Monthly Odyssey updates and progress toward real-time data.

Doxpop just completed the March update of information from Indiana Counties using the Odyssey system. We usually process updates in about three days, but this particular update took a bit longer because the format of the data changed this month. That's bad because it slowed us down a little, but good because the changes are corrections that JTAC has included this month to take care of problems we previously reported. Most notably, disposition status information.

The ability to provide real-time updates to Odyssey records for Doxpop users is still at least one month off, but remains our top priority.

That's the short version. For details, read on:

You'll all recall that in September 2011, the Supreme Court of Indiana publicly committed to making a real-time messaging interface to the Odyssey system available on January 1, 2012 via the services of JTAC (the Judicial Technology and Automation Committee.) In response to this public commitment, Doxpop made a corresponding commitment to our customers to connect to this interface pass the data on to them through our system. Since September, Doxpop has provided funding in the form of well over $100,000 in payments to JTAC. We have also invested countless hours from our programming staff to building our side of this interface and providing prompt, helpful feedback to JTAC programmers as they do their work.

We're confident that Doxpop will recover our significant investment, which depends primarily on the good faith of JTAC in following through on their commitment. However, the path has been a bit rough so far.

We have, since November 2011, been able to obtain monthly updates from JTAC. However, in a recent eMail, the analysts working on the real-time messaging interface from the Odyssey system told us that the program they were working on (which was apparently similar to the Doxpop API) could not sustain the performance levels required to maintain a real-time data feed.

Doxpop is confident that JTAC can achieve the necessary performance level because Doxpop maintains a similar system in the form of our API, which contains roughly twice the number of cases found in JTAC's system and exceeds the performance requirements for a real-time interface.

During peak usage periods, the Doxpop API has served 1.4 million record requests from our customers in 13 hours (about 1800/minute.) By our calculations, to maintain their promised real-time feed, JTAC's system will have to service 900 requests per minute. Thanks to the efforts of our skilled programming staff, Doxpop's service runs on a meager $5,000 worth of hardware. With their resources, we are confident that JTAC will be able to easily match our performance.

So... What's next, and how long will it take?

We've been told that JTAC is now taking a new approach that they hope will provide the required performance levels very soon. Our programmers are currently working with their staff, and report some  progress. We are very disappointed that 2 months after this service was promised, we still haven't seen anything like a production quality interface... but we are hopeful and we're providing the best feedback we can every day to the programmers working on the JTAC side of the project.

I suppose this blog post is our gentle public feedback to the management of JTAC: Please follow through on this project as quickly as you can! Our small business is depending on you to keep your commitments. if we can provide a similar system with fewer resources, your staff and resources are certainly up to the task.

Miami County, Indiana Joins Doxpop Fine Payment

Doxpop is pleased to announce the newest county to join the Fine Payment network, Miami County, Indiana. Licensed drivers and others with traffic citations filed in Miami County and other Indiana Counties now have the convenience of paying these fines on-line with their credit or debit card. This service eliminates the need of making a special trip to the county courthouse to pay your fines.

The Miami County Courthouse in Peru, Indiana handle citations filed in Peru and other Miami County towns such as Amboy, Bunker Hill, Converse, Denver, Macy, and Mexico.  Major highways in Miami County include US Routes 24 and 31, as well as State Roads 16, 18, 19, 124, and 218.

Doxpop Fine Payment can be accessed online at http://payment.doxpop.com. Make sure to check out our website to see what we can offer you today.

Howard County, Indiana Joins Doxpop Fine Payment

The Howard County Clerk of Courts, Kim Wilson, is pleased to announce that traffic fines may now be easily paid online.

When ticketed drivers are ready to pay fines, they may go online to http://payment.doxpop.com and quickly search for a traffic infraction by name or ticket number, then pay the fine using a debit or credit card. The total payment, including an online transaction fee, is calculated and displayed prior to the completion of the transaction. The fines are sent to the clerk immediately and the payer is notified via email when the payment is accepted, usually within 15 minutes.

This service, like all Doxpop services, is provided without any use of public funding or tax money. Use of Doxpop Fine Payment is available to anyone.

Update on progress toward a real-time interface to Odyssey courts

Many folks have been contacting us to learn whether we have a better update cycle for the Indiana courts using the Odyssey system yet. Here's some background and an update:

In November 2011, we announced that we had started receiving monthly data feeds for Indiana Counties using the Odyssey case management system. We released this information to our users with the caveat that the monthly update cycle makes this court information much less useful than the information we receive from the CSI and  Courtview systems with a ten minute update cycle. Still, good historical records have significant value, and our mission is to increase the value we provide to our users at every opportunity.

We also announced with great hope that the Indiana Supreme Court had ordered that a near-real-time messaging system be made available on January 1. This would allow Doxpop to transition quickly from the monthly update cycle to updating information for Odyssey courts in the same timely fashion that we've been updating information from other courts since 2002.

January 1st has passed, and although we've been provided with a set of interface specifications for what appears to be a workable system, the database behind this system contains only a small subset of the cases filed in Odyssey courts. What we're seeing is encouraging, and there's no doubt that the programmers working for the Supreme Court are making an effort to complete their work, but at this point, a production-quality data feed is not available.

So when will it be ready? The short answer is that we don't know. Doxpop has begun development of an interface based on the specifications and data that are available, but clearly we can't call ours done until the State completes their work. Watch this blog for updates, and we'll let you know right away when progress occurs!

In the meantime, we'll still be providing monthly updates for the Odyssey Courts during the first week of each month.