Information added to Vanderburgh Government Links

Thanks to Tami Johnson at Rudolph, Fine, Porter & Johnnson for providing 6 new resource links in the Vanderburgh section of our Indiana local information directory! This directory is slowly but surely becoming a comprehensive resource with the help of our informed friends.

What Doxpop gives back to Indiana and the local communities we serve.

Doxpop is grateful to the many counties thatallow us to provide public access to their information. Local court and recorder information is valuable, and it has always been important to us to provide good value to each community in return for the trust they place in us.

Here's a quick introduction to how we give something back to our state and the communities we serve:

First, it is important to note that we take no money from local government for making public information available via the web. For each county we work with, Doxpop bore the substantial cost of developing the software used to transmit public information to our system. No tax funding was used, no public grant money used, and no additional court filing fees were levied to fund Doxpop. The entire investment was funded solely by the owners of Doxpop in order to provide an immediate, no-risk solution for each county. Contrast this to the hundreds of thousands charged to implement public access systems in other counties, and you'll understand why Doxpop has long been a great solution for local government.

In addition to bearing all development costs, Doxpop initially paid 5% of our gross court-related revenues back to each county we worked with. We made these payments for our first four years, and would still be making these payments to all counties today if it weren't for the intervention of the Indiana Division of State Court Administration. In 2006, the Division added an administrative rule that had the effect of requiring that Doxpop must, at its own expense, undergo an extensive audit if we continued to provide payments to counties based on a percentage of our revenue. The minimum annual cost for such an audit would run to over $35,000.00. We don't make enough money to bear that additional regulatory expense.

In response to this rule change, Doxpop offered each county two options: (1) begin receiving a flat fee so that no audit is required; or (2) receive free services from Doxpop with a value exceeding the previous 5% payments. Most counties opted to go with the free services, and as a result, Prosecutors, Public Defenders and County Law Enforcement were added to the list of county offices receiving free access to information from all counties. Judges, Clerks, Probation, Community Corrections and CASA/GAL volunteers had always had free accounts.

In recent years, responding to funding cuts in many state offices, Doxpop has also begun providing free accounts for many state offices who have asked us to help them. Among these are the Indiana Division of State Court Administration (bit of irony there...), the Indiana Department of Child Services and the Indiana State Police.

Doxpop also provides very basic access to all web users at no cost, including the ability to find any public case, and a free court calendar, so people can confirm when they need to be in court.

In total, roughly half of Doxpop's services are provided at no cost to the over 5,000 users in state and county government offices who pay nothing for our services. Contrast this to systems claiming to offer free access to government users when the supporting systems are actually paid for using public funding. Which definition of "free" feels more honest to you?

On the other side of the coin, we must make a living, so someone has to pay. In our case, it's the commercial users of Doxpop. Instead of being funded by taxes, we're funded by the fees we charge commercial users such as attorneys and background check firms--fair fees that they pay voluntarily.

So that's the basic policy choice that many counties made when they chose Doxpop: If most consumers of the information are commercial users, there's no need to charge all taxpayers for information services that effectively subsidize a small group of businesses. On the other side, by helping us keep our costs low, local government ensures that businesses using Doxpop will get a good deal as well. The roughly 5,000 happy paying users of our system make it evident that this arrangement suits them also.

Giving back to the communities we work with and the state we live in has always been an important part of how we operate. We're owned and operated entirely by folks who are proud to live and work in Indiana. When you call Doxpop, you'll be talking to a Hoosier (please excuse the accent!)

Union County Office Directory Link Added

We have just added a link for directory of government offices in Union County to our Finding Indiana County Info Online page.

Martin County and Hancock County office directories added.

We have just added links to on-line directories to county offices for Hancock and Martin Counties to our Finding Indiana County Info Online page.

Shelby Courts cease sending updates to Doxpop.

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

Shelby County has migrated to the Odyssey case management system that is provided by the Indiana State Court Administration. Although Doxpop has permission to receive information from all courts in Indiana, we have been advised by the Indiana Division of State Court Administration that Courts using the Odyssey system are not capable of providing bulk exports to those requesting access to public records. Therefore, Doxpop will not be updating case information for Shelby Courts after 4/25/2011.

To ease the transition, Doxpop will maintain the Shelby Court records on our system in their current form until the end of 2011, but we have posted an advisement to seek more current information at the top of each case record.

Doxpop continues to seek access to public records in bulk from counties using the Odyssey system, and hope that everyone will join us in asking that the State Court Administration enhance their recently procured system to provide services such as bulk access that have been available on older systems for more than a decade. In the meantime, you can access case information and very basic services for the Shelby Courts at http://mycase.in.gov.

Access to real-time index and image information from the Shelby County Recorder's office continues to be available and is unaffected by this change.

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

Directory of Indiana local government information now available.

Last week on this blog, we introduced a comprehensive and growing set of links to local government information in Indiana. You can find it by following the link in the right sidebar of this blog.

This is a community effort- We invite all of you to pass along any links we've missed or let us know of corrections.

Thanks to Tina Gunter in the title division at Doyle Legal, who jumped in right away to add several important links to information from Marion County!

Ripley County Improves Court Case Access!

The Ripley County courts have posted their records on-line via Doxpop since 2007. We are excited to announce that Ripley has upgraded their local computer system, resulting in a more reliable and faster connection to Doxpop.

This change brings the following advantages to Doxpop subscribers using Ripley County Court Data:

1. Updates every 10 minutes, 24x7. Doxpop gives you everything you will find on the courthouse computer, but without the trek through the snow!
2. Immediate notifications on watched cases. When the clerk's office enters a return of service, you can know within minutes and without a phone call.
3. Timely and accurate scheduling information. When the court schedules a new hearing, it will appear on your Doxpop calendar within minutes, and you will receive an email notification.
4. Better access to financial information. Payments made in the clerk's office are reflected immediately in Doxpop.
5. Tax Warrants on-line. If you need Indiana DOR tax warrant information for Ripley county residents and businesses, you can now access it 24x7 on Doxpop.

Lawrence County Records Now Online

Doxpop is pleased to announce the addition of the Lawrence County Courts as the newest local government information providers in the Doxpop community. With the addition of Lawrence County, Doxpop now provides access to Court informatino in 50 Indiana Counties.

The court information available for Lawrence County includes all court cases filed beginning in January of 1988.

Lawrence and the many other counties working with Doxpop help serve the public interest by making information available via the web at no cost to the county. Doxpop provides a range of tools designed to facilitate timely and efficient communication between county agencies and those who use county data.

Doxpop has been providing public access to Indiana court records since 2002 and Indiana recorded documents since 2005. Lawrence County is the 50th court system to join the Doxpop network, which currently provides access to over 11.7 million court case records and over 4.4 million recorded documents.

Doxpop submits 798-page request for access to public information from Indiana Courts

On Friday, January 9, 2009, Doxpop shipped off its 798-page 2009 AR-9(F) request (pdf) for access to non-confidential case information in Indiana. Doxpop works with county clerks and judges to publish information about court cases on the Internet as permitted by Trial Rule 77(K) (html). Bulk access to court case information is governed by Administrative Rule 9(F) (html) and certain administrative authority under the rule is granted to the Division of State Court Administration, Lilia Judson, Executive Director.

In addition to a cover letter and a few pages of information specific to our request, the Division requires that we attach: 1) orders of consent from judges in each county from which we receive information, 2) copies of contracts with each county from which we receive information, and 3) copies of contracts with anyone to whom we provide bulk data. With about 50 counties participating in the Doxpop network, and 5 other organizations that receive bulk data via Doxpop, the paperwork adds up quickly.

But wait, there's more. There's another 4000 pages to submit before January 31. Each county that utilizes Doxpop to publish information on the Internet under TR-77(K) must also submit its own paperwork to the Division. This includes: 1) orders of consent from the judges in the county, 2) a copy of the contract with the county, and 3) detailed information about the Doxpop service and its user agreements. This adds up to about 80 pages per county. To facilitate the process, Doxpop prepares this paperwork for submission by the clerk.

It's worth noting that the consent orders and contracts in each TR-77(K) request are identical to the ones submitted by Doxpop in its AR-9(F) request. And the information about the Doxpop services is identical in each TR-77(K) request. All of this needs to be completed between January 1 and January 31: new consent orders from the judges, new AR-9(F) request from Doxpop, approval by the Division of Doxpop's request, and new TR-77(K) requests by each clerk. All of this at a busy time of year, especially for judges and clerks who just took office.

As you can see from the cover letter, Doxpop has some concerns about how the Division has chosen to interpret the rules. I'll say more about that in upcoming blog entries. For now I'll suggest that the current process is poorly designed, at best, or designed to frustrate clerks, judges, and counties who have not switched to the state-provided case management system, at worst. In the letter sent to clerks last year (pdf), the second paragraph seems to imply the latter.

Of course we comply with the process prescribed by the Division, but surely there's a better way.

Ray