In late November or early December, The Indiana Office of Court Technology (IOCT) will be releasing a new version of the E-Filing Manager (EFM) used by E-Filing Service Providers (EFSPs).
That's way too many acronyms packed into one sentence! However, this is important for you, so let's take a moment to unpack them:
An EFSP is the part of the E-Filing system that filers use to submit pleadings to the court. Doxpop is one example of an EFSP, and others can be found on this page: https://www.in.gov/courts/efiling/providers/.
In brief, the role of an EFSP is to guide you through the process of assembling the documents you want to file with a court into an Envelope for submission. In addition to uploading documents, the EFSP also gathers the necessary information to create a case for an initial filing, or add attorneys and provide e-service in subsequent filings.
In our opinion, the technology is important, but the key part of that acronym is "Service Provider". A good EFSP provides services to support your work.
The EFM is the system that the EFSP hands your Envelope off to after we've made sure it meets all of the requirements for filing. The EFM is the part of the E-Filing system that routes your envelope to the correct court office and then allows the clerk or court staff to review and accept the envelope as a filing. This is the step where a file stamp is applied to the documents and they become available to the court. On the Court side, that means they are now in the Court's Case Management System (CMS), which you may also know as "Odyssey", or in some situations, Quest. Think of the EFM as the central hub and routing agent of the E-Filing system. Every filing goes through this hub.
For about ten years, the Indiana Courts have used an EFM supplied by Tyler Technologies, the same company that provides the Odyssey CMS. As time went on, the IOCT saw opportunities for improvements that better fit the business processes in Indiana Courts. Due to this, the IOCT has been writing their own EFM, and is planning on releasing it in late November or early December.
This is a really big deal for Doxpop, because it means we are having to re-write all of the code that connects our system to the State. We fully intend to do such a great job of that re-write that you don't even notice the switchover. However, because the EFM is so central to everything we do, we're giving you the heads-up about the change well ahead of time. This coding will require time on our end, but there is no reason to expect any interruption in services for our users. Our team is actively working on ongoing issues in addition to this project. Information regarding these issues will be addressed in a blog post in the near future.
We're not perfect, and the IOCT is not perfect, so there may be a few bumps in the road as we make this transition in late November or early December.
We'll follow this post up with a few status reports between now and then, and as the cutover date nears, we'll let you know exactly what to expect.
