In addition to assisting courts in handling cases more efficiently by making all case files available on computers, the District Clerk’s Digital Courts Project will help alleviate the storage crisis caused by an ever-increasing number in case files combined with a limited storage space already used to its limit.
This photo, in which more than 18,000 cases are displayed, shows only a portion of 1999 family files. The rest of 1999 family cases, along with other years’ family and civil cases, are stored in the basement of the George Allen Courts Building, as well as in several off-site facilities.
“We are at a critical stage in records management,” says Dallas County District Clerk Gary Fitzsimmons. “To serve our customers, we must be able to locate and reproduce records with greater speed.”
“The Digital Courts Project, which has been introduced now in District Family, Civil and Criminal Courts, is absolutely vital to this County’s ability to store and retrieve records, as well as manage the enormous case loads of our courts,” continues Mr. Fitzsimmons.
He adds that his office has a number of clerks whose sole function is to scan past records to make them available on-line so the paper files can be eliminated. The imaging section of the Records department has been working for several years and is making progress as quickly as possible with the equipment and staff available to it.
Assisting in the broad effort to become paperless eventually, the District Clerk has also been promoting the use of e-filing, or the electronic submission of original petitions and other documents in civil cases.
“We have been working with the legal community, the courts and our records and filing staff using technology to serve our community more effectively,” concludes Mr. Fitzsimmons. “I think this photograph speaks volumes about our goal and the resources it will take to achieve it.”
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