SUCCESS STORY
Alberta Justiceand Solicitor GeneralIndustry• Government, criminal justiceSolutions• OpenText™ Content Suite Platform• OpenText™ Connected Workspaces

Services

Alberta Justice and Solicitor Generalrehabilitate criminal case management
Canadian provincial justice system replaces paper-based systems
with Criminal e-File powered by OpenText Content Suite Platform• OpenText Optimize Managed Services

Partner support• Sierra Systems

Results
Saved time and money withstreamlined, automatic e-filing
Reduced time to dispose cases
Increased evidentiary
file availability for caseefficiency and bail decisions“Tremendous efficiencies
are being gained with
OpenText Content Suite
Platform and we’ve seena huge reduction inadministrative overheadin the Crown office.”
Tim Owens

Project Lead
Alberta Justice and Solicitor GeneralAlberta Justice and Solicitor General rehabilitate criminal case management

Alberta Justice and Solicitor General manages legal andcorrectional systems and law enforcement for the province ofAlberta and its millions of citizens.
Supporting an effective and innovative justice organization demands
reliable and secure access to information. Evidence for court cases
ranges from paper-based police reports and witness statements tomultimedia material including photos, video and audio. Alberta Justiceand Solicitor General experienced content challenges during theprocess of sharing evidence with legal teams working on the defense,
especially with paper-based disclosure.
Occasionally, defense counsel would claim they did not receive files.
“In the paper-based system of disclosure, the Crown really couldn’t
refute the allegations,” explained Tim Owens, prior prosecutor andproject lead for Alberta Justice and Solicitor General. “Even withsigned acceptance, recipients could claim a page was missing. As
a result, disclosure issues were costly and courts were awarding
damages against the Crown.”
Other proceedings were also delayed by outdated methods, including
bail hearings. Arrested individuals maintain the legal right to a bailhearing within 24 hours of arrest. Previously, bail packages from law
enforcement to the Crown, justices of the peace and duty counsel
would be delayed by ad-hoc emailing and data entry from handwritten forms.
While users recognized the benefit of electronic filing for all material,disparate systems were soon overextended. “We needed to find asolution with the purpose to manage content,” Owens said.

ECM capture: Criminal e-File
In 2009, Alberta Justice and Solicitor General conducted anevaluation on Enterprise Content Management (ECM) options andselected OpenText™ Content Suite Platform as the ministry system.
The deployment of Content Suite Platform continued to evolve andnow supports the Criminal e-File program in the Edmonton Crown
office, the Calgary Crown office and an ongoing rollout to regional
Crown offices within the province. The solution supports theintake, management and disclosure of electronic documents tothe Alberta Crown Prosecution Service (ACPS), provincial courts,
police departments and defense counsel. Criminal e-File and anelectronic disclosure portal are moving the justice system towards
paperless efficiency.
Implementing a comprehensive solution across several groups
requires flexibility and integration, especially for departments
tied to strict regulations and reticent to adopt new technology.
Municipal law enforcement delivers digital disclosure material: anaverage of 326 documents (up to 1,635) per day with an average
daily size of 6.5 GB (up to 151 GB). OpenText partner, Sierra Systems,
developed utilities to retrieve material, reorganize it into a consumableform and load the data into Content Suite Platform. The platform
currently handles more than 300,000 active cases and more than two
million documents across two million folders.

ECM distribution: e-Disclosure portal
Criminal case information is now available electronically 24/7 and the650 Crown and 850 defense counsel users in the province can findand access it with a docket number. Defense lawyers obtain files
through a disclosure request page (DRP), an online portal hosted in“OpenText technology
assisted us greatly
in achieving our goal
to make the clients’onboarding processseamless and effectivefrom a digital pointof view.”
Gerrard Lennox

Manager of software engineering
Capitec

Alberta Justice and Solicitor General rehabilitate criminal case management

the Alberta Justice and Solicitor General secure data center enabledwith two-factor authentication for added security.
Alberta Justice and Solicitor General leverages the ability tocreate workspaces and processes that organize case information
in a standard folder structure in Content Suite Platform, which isorganized by docket number and includes sections for documents,media and more.

ECM transformation: OpenText flexibility
Paperless case management transformed the Alberta justice system.
Comprehensive, flexible integration with existing systems paved theway to real results for all participants.

Crown office“Tremendous efficiencies are being gained with OpenText Content
Suite Platform and we’ve seen a huge reduction in administrative
overhead in the Crown office,” noted Owens.
Legal professionals focus on casework, not paperwork. “I know fromexperience, one of the most significant improvements is in qualityof life for prosecutors. They don’t have to be at the office to getwork done; they can access files during court downtime. That canbe an enormous advantage and efficiency gainer,” Owens said.
With workflow and process automation, audit trails and reliable record
retention, Content Suite Platform provides proof of disclosure
distribution to avoid costly penalties. More importantly, the ECM
solution improves access to content which encourages collaborationand supports efficient case management. Also, as the first official
electronic records repository in Alberta, the office is on the cuttingedge of automated archival and disposal.

Law enforcement agencies
Criminal e-File streamlines the transfer of prosecution packages
from law enforcement to the Crown prosecutors. The costs andtime required for managing and tracking DVDs and paper is greatlyreduced. Cases can also move along more quickly as evidence isuploaded at regular intervals.
Law enforcement personnel rely on Criminal e-File to deliver bailpackages. With OpenText, all evidentiary files are now available 24/7 andintegrated with other Crown and police systems to provide a seamless,exhaustive view of the accused. For hearings that run 16 hours per day,
6 am to midnight, having ready access to police files is critical.

Defense counsel
With the system powered by Content Suite Platform, defense
counsel can skip trips to the prosecutor’s office or courier services,eliminating associated delays, courier costs and paper storage.
Instead, they gain an increased opportunity to focus on facts andfeatures of each case.
In total, Alberta Justice and Solicitor General leverages the immediacy
and flexibility of OpenText Enterprise Content Management in its
mission for a fair and safe Alberta.

About Sierra Systems
Sierra Systems, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, isa top-tier IT services and management consulting firm offering afull range of advisory services, systems integration and managed
application services.

About OpenText
OpenText, The Information Company,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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