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.

Welcome to the Decatur County Recorder!

Today we welcome Denise Ziegler and her fine staff from the Decatur County Recorder's office to the family of Recorders who have made their information available on-line without using any public funding.  Both the index and images for Recorded Documents filed after 1993 are available through this service.

In addition, the Doxpop Property Watch service is now available for Decatur County at no cost. This service allows landowners to set a "watch" for any documents filed referencing their property, thus providing an early warning and deterrent for fraudulent filings that might be the first steps for identity theft.

The Recorder's office joins the Decatur County Clerk in making public records available via Doxpop. Court records from Decatur County are available for cases filed after 1997 are available.

December court updates released for Odyssey counties, Welcome to the Rush County Recorder!

The December update to court data sent from the State's Odyssey case management system has been released. During this release cycle, we focused on releasing the information quickly rather than adding new enhancements. Throughout the remainder of this month, we'll be working on enhancements that will be released with the January update.

Also of note: Today we welcome the Rush County Recorder to the Doxpop network! Rush County is the 20th Indiana Recorder to make documents available on-line via Doxpop, with an index reaching back to August 1997 and images available for documents recorded beginning in December 1998.

Thanks to Sally Neidenthal and her staff for becoming our 20th Recorded Documents partner!

Welcome Rush County Recorder!

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

The index to documents filed in August 1997 or later and images of documents filed in December 1998 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 Sally Niedenthal at the Recorder's Office, (765) 932-2388, or Nick Fankhauser at Doxpop, LLC; (765) 373-9245; nickf@doxpop.com.

New courts added to the data flowing from Odyssey

The November update to court data sent from the State's Odyssey case management system includes several new courts. However, most are for counties already on-line, and are provided to fill in the gaps because of the more complete coverage of civil case types detailed in our last blog post.

The additional courts added in existing counties are:

• Allen County Superior Court 2 (Current probate cases.)
• Allen County Superior Court 3 (Current probate cases.)
• Allen County Superior Court 9 (Current probate cases.)
• Madison County Court (Historical cases only- this court is no longer active.)

In addition, Tipton City Court has been added and is completely new to us this month. The Tipton City Court primarily handles citations with a few misdemeanor cases each week.

Updates and improvements to data in 35 counties.

On November 26th, Doxpop updated the court information for counties and municipalities using the State's Odyssey case management system, replacing information current on October 1st with information current on November 1st. (See this previous post for a list of affected counties.)

Doxpop has been working with programmers at the State to get more complete and current information for these counties. Although the process of getting better data is slower than expected, we're making progress and hope to release the December 1 update on a faster schedule and with even better information. In the meantime, you'll be happy to know that the recently posted information is significantly more complete.

Here are the improvements you'll find in the most recent release:

• Better address information. In the October release, City, State and  Zip Code information was missing from about 60% of the records. We are now confident that if the court has this information for a party, Doxpop has it also.
• Judge information. The Odyssey system associates judges with events rather than cases. This means that no judge is assigned at the case level, but with the November release, any minute for an event involving a judge will name the judge as the "Judicial Officer" at the end of that minute entry.
• Better party information. In the October release, only the plaintiff and defendant were shown for each case. Many other parties may be involved in other case roles, and with the November release, all parties are now shown.
• All public case types are now available. The October release was missing Family cases (DR & RS), Probate cases (EM, ES, EU, GU, TR and CBCW) and public Miscellaneous Criminal cases (MC.) The November update includes all of these case types, and we now believe that all public cases are fully represented in the Doxpop database for these counties. (Note that *some* miscellaneous criminal cases are individually excluded because they are designated as confidential by the courts, even though the case type is generally not excluded.)
• Additional Courts. In the coming days, we'll be announcing the addition of information for several new courts. Details on the new courts will be in our next blog post.

What New Courts Have Joined Doxpop?

Here is a list of all Courts that have joined the Doxpop network since adding Odyssey Court Case information:

• Alexandria City Court (Madison County)
• Allen County Criminal, Citation and Probate (Now current!)
• Benton County Courts
• Bicknell City Court (Knox County)
• Blackford County Courts
• Bunker Hill Town Court (Miami County)
• Carmel City Court (Hamilton County)
• Carroll County Courts
• Cass County Courts
• Clark County Courts
• DeKalb County Courts
• Floyd County Courts
• Gas City City Court (Grant County)
• Greene County Courts
• Greenwood City Court (Johnson County)
• Hamilton County Courts (Now current!)
• Harrison County Courts
• Hendricks County Courts
• Huntington County Courts
• Jasper County Courts
• Knox City Court (Starke County)
• Madison County Courts
• Marion County Infractions and Ordinance Violations only
• Marion County - Center Township
• Marion County - Franklin Township
• Marion County - Lawrence Township
• Marion County - Perry Township
• Marion County - Warren Township
• Marion County - Washington Township
• Marion County - Wayne Township
• Monroe County Courts
• New Haven City Court (Allen County)
• Owen County Courts
• Parke County Courts
• Plainfield Town Court (Hendricks County)
• Posey County Courts
• Roanoke Town Court (Huntington County)
• Rush County Courts
• Scott County Courts
• Shelby County (Now current!)
• St. Joseph Infractions and Ordinance Violations only
• Steuben County Courts
• Terre Haute City Court (Vigo County)
• Tipton County Courts
• Union County Circuit Court
• Warren County Courts
• Washington County Courts