APPENDIX 2 - ELECTRONIC PUBLIC ACCESS 

PROGRAM
Appendix 2.1

GENERAL STATEMENT AND INFORMATION

The Electronic Public Access (EPA) program provides electronic public access to court information in accordance with federal

statutes, judiciary policies, and user needs. The internet-based Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) service 

provides courts, litigants, and the public access to court dockets, case reports, and the more than one billion documents filed with 

the courts through the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system. PACER is a portal to CM/ECF, making both 

systems integral to effective public access. In fiscal year (FY) 2023 alone, PACER processed slightly over 538 million requests for 

case information.

Currently, there are more than 4.4 million PACER user accounts; approximately 14 percent of all user accounts were active in 

FY 2023. In addition to court staff, users include: members of the bar; city, state, and federal employees; private companies; nonprofit organizations; academic researchers; members of the media; and the general public. During FY 2023, the judiciary’s PACER 

Service Center established 343,312 new PACER accounts and responded to more than 266,000 telephone and email inquiries. 

Pursuant to statute, the EPA program is funded through user fees set by the Judicial Conference of the United States. Fees are 

deposited in a special account in the U.S. Treasury and are then used exclusively to fund the cost of the judiciary’s EPA program. 

The components of this program are listed in Table A-2.1 on page A-2.9 and include activities such as operations of the PACER 

Service Center; electronic bankruptcy noticing; the telecommunications, replication, archiving, development, and maintenance costs 

associated with the current CM/ECF systems and PACER services; as well as costs associated with the ongoing modernization of 

CM/ECF and PACER.

The judiciary continues to improve electronic public access to its records, with new initiatives to broaden public access, including:

• Conducting quarterly PACER User Assessments. The judiciary continues to solicit public feedback through quarterly 

PACER user assessments. The quarterly PACER assessments capture user feedback more frequently on enhancements and 

areas ripe for improvement. The results of the surveys are being used to prioritize and inform improvements to public access 

services. 

• Improving Search Functionality. To address one of the primary issues identified through the 2021 PACER User 
Appendix 2.2

Assessment, the AO has undertaken a project, more fully described below in the Case Management/Electronic Case Files 

Modernization section, to greatly improve search functionality in PACER. The goal of this project is to provide a modern, 

intuitive, user-friendly search interface, allowing the public user to easily search across the federal judiciary for near realtime court data, documents, and docket entries. The AO has solicited offers from vendors for this effort and anticipates 

making an award in FY 2024. This functionality will be transferrable to the modernized CM/ECF system in development. 

• Increasing Free Access to Court Records. To make court documents free for more users, the Judicial Conference approved 

an increase in the quarterly waiver threshold from $15.00 to $30.00, effective January 1, 2020. No fee is owed for electronic 

access to court data or audio files via PACER until an account holder accrues charges of more than $30.00 in a quarterly 

billing cycle. Since the increase of the quarterly waiver threshold, there has been a steady increase in the number of users 

benefiting from free access to court records (i.e., 3 percent increase from last fiscal year). In FY 2023, approximately 84 

percent of active PACER users accessed court records for free as a result of the fee waiver. Additionally, at its March 2022 

session, the Judicial Conference endorsed making all searches free of charge for all non-commercial users of any future new 

modernized case management, electronic filing, and public access systems implemented by the judiciary. That change will 

be implemented with the release of the new PACER interface to be developed by the Unified Search project and will go into 

effect as it is rolled out to the courts.

• Facilitating an Electronic Public Access Public User Group. In 2020, the AO established the first EPA Public User Group 

to collect advice and provide feedback on ways to improve PACER and related public access services. The group is 

composed of 12 non-judiciary members who represent the legal sector, media, academia, government agencies, and other 

entities that regularly use PACER. The EPA Public User Group conducted two teleconferences in FY 2022, concluding the 

membership term of the inaugural Group. The Group made numerous recommendations for improving public access 

services, many of which were implemented including the following:

o Implemented enhanced Case Title and Party Name fields in the PACER Case Locator, allowing the public to search 

using one character in combination with a wildcard character. 

o Resolved issues with viewing PDFs on iPads (for District CM/ECF) in NextGen CM/ECF Release 1.7 in Fall 2021. 

o Added “coverage dates” available by court to the PACER Case Locator, providing the date range of cases that users 

can find when searching each court’s CM/ECF database. 

o Released a Pro Se User page on PACER.gov, making it easier for the public to understand how to access and use 
Appendix 2.3

PACER.

o Encouraged increased court use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds in CM/ECF through outreach to help 

courts overcome obstacles with, and raise awareness of the public access benefits of, using RSS feeds more fully.

These benefits include providing timely notifications about court filings to keep public subscribers apprised of case 

activity in various jurisdictions of interest.

In October 2022, the AO reconstituted the EPA Public User Group with 12 new members to serve a 2-year term, ending in 

2024. This particular Group’s first meeting was held in November 2022 via teleconference. The AO is engaging these 

members in the development of requirements for the new PACER unified search functionality, referenced above and discussed 

more fully in the next section, and to examine additional ways to improve public access services.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2025

Case Management/Electronic Case Files Modernization

CM/ECF, first introduced in early 2001, revolutionized the way federal courts and the bar manage cases and documents. Far more 

than just a repository of documents, CM/ECF is the program that manages the operations of the federal courts. It manages documents, 

deadlines, hearing schedules, and trials. It handles the docketing for every federal court, and it processes transactions at every step 

along the way in the progression of a case, from collecting filing fees, to determining deadlines for motions, to sharing vital 

information among litigants, judges, and court staff.

In 2014, the judiciary began implementation of its first effort to update and improve CM/ECF through the Next Generation (NextGen) 

CM/ECF project. The first NextGen release was implemented in the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals in the fall of 

2014. All courts of appeals, district, bankruptcy, and national courts are currently operating on NextGen CM/ECF.

While significant improvements were made to CM/ECF over the past decade through the development and implementation of 

NextGen CM/ECF, the judiciary is committed to modernizing the system for the future. In 2021, the judiciary partnered with 18F, a 

government consultancy in the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service, to assess the status of CM/ECF 

and to develop a path forward for modernizing the system. The purpose of the assessment was to conduct user-centric research, 

identify user pain points, recommend improvements, and provide a roadmap for the judiciary to move forward. The partnership began 
Appendix 2.4

with an initial path analysis phase (Phase One) and continued with an Experiment and Iterate phase (part of Phase Two).

In Phase One, 18F interviewed more than 100 participants in appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts across the country, including 

judges, court unit executives, court operational and IT staffs, and AO leadership and staff. 18F found that the current CM/ECF system 

is outdated, unsustainable, and requires replacement, and recommended that the judiciary build a modern case management system 

that will serve the judiciary’s needs and enhance public access to electronic court case records.

In Phase Two, 18F sought to gain a deeper understanding of CM/ECF user needs and to refine its recommendations for how the 

judiciary can move forward. 18F spoke with numerous judiciary and public stakeholders. It also explored potential first steps toward 

modernizing CM/ECF data architecture, aligning CM/ECF database schemas, and prototyping development, deployment, and 

operations workflows. The AO formed a cross-functional and cross-departmental team that has been working with 18F to assess how 

to incorporate security and operational concerns earlier in the software development process. An initial report on this Phase Two 

work was shared with the judiciary in October 2021.

During the latter half of its Phase Two work, 18F developed specific recommendations to the judiciary so that it can better position 

itself to engage in more modern software development, acquisition, and maintenance practices. The final report on this work was 

delivered to the judiciary in March 2022.

The judiciary agrees with 18F’s assessment and recommendations, most notably a recommendation to replace the existing CM/ECF 

with a new, modernized cloud based system. While 18F recommended developing the new CM/ECF system from the ground up 

through open-source software, the AO believed it was also important to explore commercial off the shelf (COTS) products. 

Incorporating COTS products may allow the judiciary to implement a new case management and electronic case filing system much 

more quickly than if it built one from scratch. The AO engaged the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to conduct this market 

research and analysis. COTS products could help accelerate a portion of the CM/ECF product by meeting many of the judiciary’s 

needs, and the rest can be customized, resulting in the final system that is a hybrid of a COTS product and custom solution.

The AO completed market research by gathering feedback from multiple sources, including user representatives, and the team shared 

the results of their findings in December 2022. The judiciary has considered all the reports produced by the market research effort and 

used them to inform our decisions about products and approach for developing a more modern and user-friendly case management,

electronic filing and public access system.
Appendix 2.5

Along with the NCSC engagement, the AO decided to pursue a unified search solution to replace the current PACER search feature. 

In March 2022, the AO released a Request for Information (RFI) on the GSA’s Contract Opportunities site (at SAM.gov) seeking 

input from the industry about COTS solutions that provide modern Google-type search capability and can be used to build the modern 

unified search solution. The industry responded positively to the RFI, and over 20 companies provided responses. In FY 2023, the 

AO solicited offers from vendors for the unified search solution and anticipates making an award in FY 2024. At a later stage, the 

unified search product will be incorporated into the modern case management product.

In order to reduce the risks to the case management modernization effort, the AO is currently preparing for the proof of 

concept/prototype phase during which the product development team will develop working software that will help identify important 

considerations and test proposed approaches. This will allow a panel of users to evaluate a set of features/solutions for the product 

from both business and technical perspectives and inform key decisions to reduce the risks associated with, for example,

architecture/design, configurability of events (e.g., Dictionary replacement), Application Program Interfaces (APIs), performance, 

scalability, etc. before making investments in specific technical solutions.

One of the key 18F recommendations is to engage with “hands-on-keyboard” users to guide decisions about the design and function of 

the modernized case management system. More than 175 volunteer User Representatives (URs) drawn from various federal court 

types, sizes, and locations have been recruited so far. Some of these URs played key roles in the market research, Unified Search, and 

proof of concept activities described above. Many more are currently engaged in a comprehensive analysis of all the complex case 

management tasks that they routinely perform in their courts. Additionally, the members of the Public User Group are engaged in 

refining requirements for new features and enhancements to be provide by new PACER interface and will continue to be actively 

engaged as we progress through the Unified Search project. This “User-Centered Design” will be a critical part of ensuring the 

effectiveness and adoption of the new system.

The CM/ECF modernization effort is currently being funded by EPA revenue, consistent with the judiciary’s historical approach to 

CM/ECF-related costs. Total project costs and schedules are still being determined, but, at this time, the judiciary expects that fee 

revenue will continue to fund the modernization effort in future fiscal years. The judiciary will apprise the Congress if a different 

funding approach is needed to adequately support CM/ECF modernization at a later date. 
Appendix 2.6

Legislation Impacting PACER and the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) System

The 117th Congress reintroduced legislation to eliminate PACER fees while requiring a complete overhaul of the judiciary’s backbone 

case management and electronic filing system. The “Open Courts Act of 2021,” S. 2614 and H.R. 5844, directed the AO to 

consolidate CM/ECF into one unified system and, no later than three years after enactment, make all documents accessed through 

PACER available free of charge.

The Judicial Conference of the United States opposes legislation that would eliminate the judiciary’s statutory authority to charge user 

fees for access to the PACER system without providing a workable alternative funding mechanism to finance the programs funded by 

the current fees and for any related new requirements in the legislation.

The bill authorized the Judicial Conference to create a new schedule of filing fees to pay for the costs of establishing, operating, and 

maintaining the new consolidated court records system and for costs related to implementing the legislation. However, the judiciary 

opposes measures that shift the costs of providing access to PACER to litigants filing cases in federal courts, unduly hindering access 

to justice. Additionally, other proposed funding mechanisms in the bill were novel and untested, making it difficult to accurately 

estimate revenue and determine if they would be sufficient to build the new system, integrate it with the current system to keep court 

operations running while it is being built, and sustain the new system into the future.

Although the Open Courts Act was not enacted during the 117th Congress, the judiciary expects that it (or similar legislation) will be 

pursued again in the 118th Congress. The judiciary is concerned that implementation of the Open Courts Act or similar legislation 

would create a substantial budget shortfall for the branch. It imposes significant and unknown costs that are funded by untested, 

inconsistent, or unreliable new revenue streams (or, in the case of current EPA services that are related to, but separate from, the 

CM/ECF system itself, there are no available funding streams provided at all). For any cost that isn’t covered by the available funding

mechanisms in the bill, the judiciary will have to seek additional appropriations to implement the legislation. This would force the 

public access program, including the critically important case management and filing system, into direct competition for appropriated 

funds allocated for other core judiciary operations. In an environment of constrained resources, this could lead to devastating

reductions in basic court services and the loss of necessary court staff. 

The judiciary shares Congress’ bipartisan interest in a modern, effective, fair, and successfully funded system and is committed to 

improving its systems for filing, storing, managing, and making available to the public all relevant court records. The judiciary, 
Appendix 2.7

through its effort to modernize CM/ECF and PACER (described beginning on page 2.3 above), will also consider alternative funding 

mechanisms to reduce fees for many users, consistent with the branch’s longstanding commitment to providing the widest possible 

access to electronic records at free or minimal cost. 

Obligation of Funds from Electronic Public Access Receipts

EPA receipts (i.e., PACER fees) fund operations, maintenance, and improvements in EPA programs. Access to case information 

via PACER remains at $0.10 per page and the cost to access a single document (regardless of length) is capped at $3, the equivalent 

of 30 pages. Revenue is projected to total approximately $142 million in both FY 2024 and FY 2025. The FY 2024 revenue is 

supplemented by $149.4 million in carryforward funding from FY 2023, which includes $136.6 million in unencumbered 

carryforward and $12.8 million in encumbered carryforward funding. At this time, obligations are projected to total $251.2 million 

in FY 2024 and $187.2 million in FY 2025. 

The obligation of EPA program receipts has been impacted in recent fiscal years by a ruling of the District Court for the District of 

Columbia in NVLSP, et al. v. U.S. In its 2018 ruling, the court upheld the judiciary’s use of EPA program funds for the vast majority 

of its public access programs, but determined that some other services, including courtroom technology, eJuror, and the Crime Victims 

Notification System, were impermissible because they lacked a sufficient nexus to information available to the public on the federal 

court’s CM/ECF docketing system. The judiciary filed an interlocutory appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 

which affirmed the District Court’s ruling in August 2020, and remanded the case back to the District Court, where it is still open. On 

October 11, 2022, a court filing in the D.C. District Court provided the details of the proposed settlement in the case, intending to 

resolve the matter. The settlement totals $125 million and is subject to district court approval of the settlement terms. The settlement 

does not impact the judiciary’s FY 2025 budget request or future budget requests,1 and it does not impact the judiciary’s cost estimate 

for implementation of the Open Courts Act, CM/ECF modernization, or other budget initiatives of the EPA program. 

After the D.C. District Court’s original ruling, the judiciary shifted the funding source for the three disallowed categories from the 

EPA program to the Salaries and Expenses (S&E) appropriation, beginning in FY 2018, at a cost of approximately $30 million to the 

1 The costs of the settlement will be paid from the Department of Treasury’s Judgment Fund, not judiciary appropriations.
Appendix 2.8

S&E account.

2

 Consistent with longstanding practice, and as upheld by the District Court, the judiciary will continue to use 

Electronic Public Access funds for the CM/ECF system and electronic bankruptcy noticing among other appropriate and necessary 

expenses.

The planned FY 2024 EPA program requirements and projected resources are shown in Table A-2.1 on page 2.9. In FY 2024, 

requirements increased most in four program funding categories: Public Access Services; CM/ECF Development Operations 

and Maintenance; Modernization of CM/ECF, and Communications Infrastructure, Services and Security. The higher costs are 

due to several factors, including: the incorporation of necessary security updates, tools, and protocols; other changes associated 

with the system’s infrastructure, including cloud hosting; anticipated funding needed for the modernization of CM/ECF and 

PACER; and slippage for requirements not able to be executed in FY 2023, but still required in FY 2024. 

In FY 2025, requirements total approximately $187.2 million. It is projected that $142.8 million will be needed to maintain 

current critical public access services, and an additional $44.4 million will be needed exclusively for the modernization project.

3

The table below provides obligation data by program and financing for FYs 2023, 2024, and 2025.

2 The removal of these activities from the EPA program contributed, in part, to the accumulation of the unusually high unobligated EPA balances referenced on

page 2.9. However, as explained herein, these resources are projected to be depleted by the increase in costs for existing requirements and additional 

requirements for the modernization project. The judiciary will continue to monitor the balance of revenue and requirements in the EPA program and will keep 

the Appropriations Committees apprised of any necessary changes in policy or practice. 3 Due to the agile approach being used for development of the modernized CM/ECF and PACER system, requirement costs for the modernization project will be 

refined as the project progresses. Currently, $44.4 million is estimated for the modernization of CM/ECF and PACER in FY 2025, based on a six-year timeline

for initial development. Once the new modernized system is fully operational, it is estimated that approximately $56.4 million in current annual requirements for 

NextGen CM/ECF will be replaced by the operations and maintenance (O&M) costs of the new system along with other current EPA requirements that will be 

needed to operate and maintain the modern system and services.
Appendix 2.9

Table A-2.1 Utilization and Financing of Electronic Public Access Receipts &

Prior Year Recoveries ($000)

Program Category FY 2023 Actual FY 2024 Plan FY 2025 Request 

Public Access Services1 30,803 56,023 20,536

CM/ECF Development, Operations, and Maintenance 56,497 65,402 53,113

Modernization of CM/ECF 7,125 37,718 44,362

Communications Infrastructure, Services, and Security 56,838 71,897 52,519

Electronic Bankruptcy Noticing 4,910 5,066 5,443

Allotments to the Courts 10,591 15,069 11,214

Prior Year Obligation Adjustments 78 0 0

TOTAL 166,842 251,175 187,187

Unobligated Balance, Start of Year (151,311) (149,434) (42,759)

Estimated Receipts (143,558) (142,000) (142,000)

Prior Year Recoveries and Exchanges (Projected FY24 & FY25) (21,407) (2,500) (2,500)

Unobligated Balance, End of Year2 149,434 42,759 72

1

/ Electronic Public Access revenues are deposited into the Judiciary Information Technology Fund (JITF). See chapter 11 for more information on the JITF.

2

/ The unobligated balance at the end of FY 2023 includes $136.6 million in unencumbered carryforward and $12.8 million in encumbered carryforward 

funding. This $12.8 million in encumbered carryforward (or project slippage) includes $2 million for cloud hosting labor contracts; $500K for hardware 

maintenance and support; $1.6M for software funding for Application Performance Management Software (APMS); $3.2M for hardware and labor contracts; 

$3.3M for security contractor support; $400K for CM/ECF release management testing labor contract; $1.4M CM/ECF testing contractors and $400K for 

contractor support for the court toolbox project.