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Kansas Judicial Branch says statewide case-management rollout improved access, added online portals
Summary
Judicial Branch officials told the Legislature’s Committee on Government Efficiency that a centralized case-management system and a set of public portals have standardized court processes across Kansas, expanded online services for protection orders and marriage licenses, and helped the branch recover from a 2023 cybersecurity attack.
Marissa Bayless, special counsel to Chief Justice Marla Lugert, told the House Committee on Government Efficiency that the judicial branch has finished bringing every county court onto a centralized case management system (CCMS) and that the change has delivered new public-facing services and operational controls.
“The implementation of our centralized case management system or what we kind of call CCMS, which has transformed our operations, from the appellate level down,” Bayless said. She told the committee the rollout began in 2014, accelerated in 2019, and the last district court (Johnson County) went live in November 2024.
Bayless said the CCMS standardized business processes across 105 counties, reduced local variance in recordkeeping, and allowed the branch to build an integrated set of public portals. The branch now operates a Kansas District Court Public Access Portal, a central payment center, EFlex for attorney e-filing, a marriage-license portal, and the Kansas Protection Order Portal (KS POP), she said. “We were very proud to be one of the, first initial states to develop something like this,” Bayless said of the protection-order portal.
Why it matters: the branch told the committee the statewide system improves compliance with statutory and rule-based requirements, gives judges and court administrators a single place to see cases and records, and expands remote access so the public, attorneys and private companies can locate records online. Bayless said the judicial branch now can code new statutory duties – she cited Senate Bill 204 as an example that the CCMS enforces automatically – instead of relying on individual counties to change local systems.
Key details: Bayless said the judicial branch represents roughly 1% of the state budget and that about 90% of its spending is for salaries; the branch employs more than 2,000 people statewide and maintains courthouses in every county. She reported a FY2024 caseload with roughly 03/4000 cases filed (transcript figure as presented) and said traffic matters remain the largest volume category (about 138,000 cases in FY24). On protection orders, she provided concrete portal usage statistics: 15,200 protection order filings in FY24, 8,700 (about 57%) filed via the online portal, and 2,300 petitions seeking protection for children; 41 submissions occurred outside business hours.
Operational impacts and limitations: Bayless described efficiencies such as “work share,” a practice that lets clerks in lower-volume counties process filings for higher-volume courts during backlogs; she said work share was critical after the branch’s October 2023 cybersecurity incident forced courts temporarily to accept paper filings. She also acknowledged user frustration during rollouts and said the branch maintains an e-court committee, biweekly clerk chats and continued post-rollout support to address problems.
Digital access and limits: Bayless explained that public access is governed by statute and Supreme Court Rule 22; some case types and documents remain confidential even when a case exists in the portal. She said appellate records, digital evidence and digital-evidence pilots are underway and that upgrades to the public portal’s search and usability are planned.
What’s next: the branch is exploring improved e-filing for self-represented litigants, jury-management and digital-evidence platforms, speech-to-text pilots to supplement court reporters, and an opt-in hearing-reminder text service. Bayless also flagged continued cybersecurity needs; the branch moved many services to the CCMS after a 2023 attack and has since hardened security measures.
Ending: committee members asked follow-up questions about funding shifts away from fines and fees to the State General Fund and about cross-jurisdictional issues for probation supervision. Bayless said most case fines and docket fees now go to the general fund but that some specific fees (for instance, attorney registration) remain in-house.
