by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
The days of file folders at the Duval County Clerk of Court’s office are numbered as the office has begun preparing customers for a transition to a paperless filing system.
Duval County Clerk of Courts Jim Fuller was the center of attention at The Jacksonville Bar Association’s continuing legal education seminar Wednesday at the Duval County Courthouse Annex.
Fuller spoke to 320 members of the legal community about the ongoing transition to electronic filing, or e-filing, of court documents.
“We are not ordering any file folders for next year,” said Fuller. “With my budget from Tallahassee, I’m having to lay off a bunch of people, and I don’t want to do that.”
The move was estimated to save more than $200,000 in folders alone, not counting the cost of paper, printer supplies and the postage to mail documents.
The transition will also help the Clerk of Courts stop duplicating tasks.
“The last four years, we’ve been double-filing,” said Fuller. “We’ve been scanning in files to the computer and filing paper files preparing for the transition.”
The Florida State Court System has two primary goals for e-filing — to save the state money and to increase the timeliness in the processing of cases. It has been developing the system to achieve those goals for more than five years.
In 2008, the Florida Legislature supported the efforts by mandating a transition to the e-filing of court records and requested the Supreme Court to set standards. It did on July 1, 2009, and one provided that a statewide electronic filing portal – an “e-portal” – would be developed under the direction of the Supreme Court.
According to the Office of the State Courts Administrator: “The electronic filing portal will be a uniform public electronic gateway to be used for the transmission of electronically filed documents from filers to the courts. It will be governed by the courts. The e-portal will provide for e-filing of court documents in all five district courts of appeal and the Florida Supreme Court as well as in all 20 judicial circuits. The electronic filing portal will provide parties with a common entry point for filing and viewing court documents that are electronically filed.”
Counties already participating in the Florida efiling Portal include Bay, Collier, Columbia, Duval, Gulf, Holmes, Lake, Lee, Marion, Miami-Dade, Putnam and Walton. Clay County currently offers e-filing.
Fuller told the group that his staff is handling the transition well.
“Our scanning department is same-day or next-day, depending when it is dropped off,” said Fuller. “As a result of the accessibility provided by the electronic files, the electronic files are way more up-to-date than our paper files.”
Electronic files in the Duval County’s system go back to Jan. 4, 1988, and staff continues to work on moving older files into the system.
The transition will also include a phaseout of Showcase, the public records search engine, which will be replaced with OnCore.
A problem with Showcase discussed at the seminar dealt with the search engine “timing out,” which caused people to start their searches over.
OnCore will still time out for security purposes, but it will save the information that was searched and bring it back up once a person re-enters the password.
There is still plenty of work to be done as the transition progresses, which will include developing a way to show public documents that have confidential information and posting the court schedules electronically.
Fuller is also looking for input about how to make the system better for its customers.
“Our job is to make your job easier. If you find a way to make the system better, let us know,” he said.
Comments can be made by using www.duvalclerk.com/bar. More informational sessions on e-filing will be scheduled.
356-2466