Judicial department briefs Joint Technology Committee on case management, digital court and data-center requests

The Joint Technology Committee heard on-the-record presentations from Judicial Department technology and budget staff on three related IT projects: a replacement case management system, a dedicated digital-court platform to counter coordinated virtual disruptions, and a planned data‑center refresh.

The committee was told the case management project is already eight months into discovery and that the department has documented processes and data sources needed to solicit competitive vendor bids. “Our current system is 27 plus years old,” said Jason Bergbauer, acting director of IT for Judicial, and officials described documenting roughly 560 business processes and identifying more than 42 separate data sources that the new system must reconcile.

Why it matters: committee members framed the discussion as a project-level recommendation rather than a vote on a single line-item because the Joint Budget Committee (JBC) has approved parts of the funding package differently than originally requested. The JBC approved a cash-fund appropriation but deferred the general-fund portion pending this committee’s guidance, and Judiciary staff asked the committee to endorse the overall project so the department can proceed with procurement and vendor selection.

Case management system: progress and funding Judicial staff said they contracted Accenture for an “information governance” discovery that has standardized processes across courts and probation offices and reduced the work a future vendor would need to discover. Bergbauer said the discovery work is about three months from completion; the next steps are a procurement-ready request for proposals, change‑management planning and vendor selection.

Budget figures discussed changed during the hearing. Early materials referenced a larger, earlier estimate; department officials said updated requests total about $3.1 million from cash funds and $4.0 million from the general fund for the case management request as presented to this committee. Robin Smart, budget director for courts and probation, told the committee the cash fund “does not have sufficient revenue to cover the full cost of everything,” and that the department spread the project over more years to protect cash‑fund solvency while minimizing annual general‑fund asks.

Committee members pressed on priorities and phasing. Some senators asked whether portions of the project could be staged to reduce near‑term cost; Bergbauer and other staff said breaking the case-management roll‑out into partial implementations would force staff to operate multiple systems simultaneously, increasing disruption and training burdens.

Digital court solution and disruptors Bergbauer described an urgent need for a courtroom‑specific virtual platform because the department has seen “coordinated attacks on our virtual proceedings” since July of last year, with intruders “displaying violent videos, ***********, racist language” and repeating attacks dozens of times per day. He said conventional meeting platforms such as WebEx were chosen quickly during the pandemic but lack the court‑specific controls the department now needs.

Judicial staff said the FY25 emergency funding included smaller supplements to begin procuring a digital court product. The department summarized past requests as an emergency supplemental of $200,000, a subsequent supplemental of about $541,000, and a FY26 request for roughly $3.0 million, with an ongoing annual cost in the neighborhood of $4.0 million for software subscriptions and support. Bergbauer and procurement staff said they have received roughly eight vendor responses in the request‑for‑proposal process and are seeking vendors focused on court features (participant controls, rapid expulsion, transcription, captioning and translation) rather than general meeting platforms.

Data‑center refresh (deferred) The department said it operates two judicial data centers that host network and server equipment supporting the current case‑management ecosystem and other applications. Equipment lifecycles are roughly five to seven years, and the department described some components as approaching end of life. Bergbauer said some on‑prem infrastructure will likely be required for the foreseeable future because legacy systems and state‑wide networking needs do not port immediately to a cloud‑only model.

To preserve cash‑fund resources for the more urgent digital‑court needs, department staff said they removed the data‑center refresh from the FY26 requests and plan to return with that request in a future budget cycle.

Committee follow-up and next steps Legislative Council staff said it will circulate an updated memo with clarified figures and an up‑to‑date Schedule 9 showing cash‑fund projections; Samantha Falco, Legislative Council staff, said she would provide the updated information to the committee within days. Committee members said they will take formal action at the next meeting, scheduled for next week, after receiving the updated materials.

Ending: the committee left the record open for updated budget schedules and additional questions; staff said they plan a comeback discussion with the Joint Budget Committee on the general‑fund portion after the committee issues its recommendation.