Volume 24, No. 3 December 2013 

E-SJI NEWS SJI NEWS

In this Issue 

First Quarter Grant 

Awards 

1 

National Standards for 

Jury Technology 

2 

SJI Titles Available in 

NCSC eCollection 

3 

 

 

Page 1 

SJI Awards FY 2014 1st Quarter Grants 

Find Exclusive 

SJI Content on 

Facebook and 

Twitter

For more content from the recent SJI Board meeting, important national resource announcements, and partner updates, look 

no further than the SJI Facebook

and Twitter pages. 

The Board met on December 9, 2013, to make decisions on quarterly grant applications and awarded a 

total of 14 grants. 

Four (4) Project Grants were approved, including: 

educational programming for the National Association for Court Management (NACM); a court clerk 

workload assessment for the King County, Washington, District Court; a pretrial and probation services 

assessment for the Missouri courts; and an adult 

guardianship special assistant project for the Maryland Judiciary. Seven (7) Technical Assistance (TA) 

Grants were approved, including: user-friendly electronic guardianship forms, manuals, and guidance 

for the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Orphans’ 

Court; judicial operations restructure project for the 

Douglas County, Nevada, courts; a calendaring and 

docket management assessment for the Washington 

County, Oregon, Circuit Court; judicial workload 

study update for the Montana Supreme Court; New 

Jersey Judiciary build-a-brief application for selfrepresented litigants and attorneys; jury instructional 

online videos for the Connecticut Judiciary; and an 

assessment of the impact of Hurricane Sandy by the 

National Center for State Courts (NCSC). 

Three (3) Curriculum Adaptation & Training (CAT) 

Grants were approved, including: human trafficking 

training by the National Association of Women 

Judges (NAWJ); Arkansas AOC online training 

programs for court security officers; and leadership 

education and training for the Virginia courts. 
E-SJI News Volume 24, No. 3 December 2013

Page 2 

On December 5, 2013, the Conference of 

Chief Justices/National Association for Court 

Management (COSCA/NACM) Joint Technology Committee (JTC) received the first report 

of a Working Group appointed to develop 

national technology standards for jury automation. The JTC Jury Standards Working Group 

is comprised of representatives from JTC, the 

Court Information Technology Officers Consortium (CITOC), the Forum on the Advancement of Court Technology (FACT), and national experts on jury system technology. By 

beginning with a set of jury automation technology requirements that were developed earlier this year for the Fourth Judicial District 

Court in Minnesota, the Working Group had a 

considerable head start on this project The 

Minnesota standards were developed by the 

National Center for State Courts (NCSC) with 

a grant from the State Justice Institute. Minnesota intends to use the technology standards to 

develop an RFP to procure a statewide jury 

automation system. 

For the Minnesota project, the NCSC assembled an advisory committee composed of Minnesota stakeholders and national experts on 

jury system technology. The project was one 

comprehensive court IT environment; and 4) 

helping courts more readily identify opportunities for improved efficiency and/or cost savings through the use of technologies. For the 

Minnesota jury technology standards, project 

staff and Advisory Committee members first 

identified the business capabilities necessary 

to operate a jury system effectively, then 

specified the technology applications, data 

management, and technology infrastructure 

required to support those capabilities. 

Both the Minnesota technology standards and 

the JTC Working Group standards emphasize 

the need for improved technology solutions to 

incorporate effective practices in jury operations; to exchange information more effectively with executive agencies, court case 

management systems, courtrooms, and court 

finance divisions; and to generate management 

reports that conform to standard jury performance measures such as jury yield and juror 

utilization. The Working Group expects to 

submit its recommendations for national jury 

automation standards to the JTC in Spring, 

2014. 

For more information on the resources mentioned in this article, including a cadre of 

On the Road to National Standards for Jury 

Automation Technology 

of the first opportunities that NCSC technology experts had to employ the Court Technology Framework (CTF). The CTF is a tool 

developed by the JTC and designed to provide 

context for existing, and identification of possible new, technology standards initiatives for 

the court community. The goals and objectives of the CTF include: 1) providing an organized view of the increasingly complex 

landscape of court technology solutions; 2) 

promoting alignment of IT initiatives with 

business goals; 3) defining a standard set of 

components and interfaces that make up a 

publications, memorandums, 

and working documents, please 

visit the Joint Technology 

Committee website ( http://

www.ncsc.org/About-us/

Committees/Joint-TechnologyCommittee.aspx ) and the 

Court Technology Framework 

website ( http://www.ncsc.org/

ctfwiki). 
Page 3 

SJI Board of Directors

Chairman 

James R. Hannah 

Chief Justice 

Supreme Court of Arkansas 

Little Rock, AR 

Vice Chairman 

Daniel J. Becker 

State Court Administrator 

Utah AOC 

Salt Lake City, UT 

Secretary 

Gayle A. Nachtigal 

Senior Circuit Court Judge 

Washington County Circuit Court 

Hillsboro, OR 

Treasurer 

Hernan D. Vera 

President & CEO 

Public Counsel Law Center 

Los Angeles, CA 

Chase T. Rogers 

Chief Justice 

Supreme Court of Connecticut 

Hartford, CT 

Jonathan Lippman 

Chief Judge of the State of New York 

New York Court of Appeals 

New York, NY 

David V. Brewer 

Justice 

Oregon Supreme Court 

Salem, OR 

Wilfredo Martinez 

County Judge 

9th Judicial Circuit of Florida 

Orlando, FL 

Marsha J. Rabiteau 

Executive Director 

Legal Policy Strategies Group 

Bloomfield, CT 

John B. Nalbandian 

Partner 

Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP 

Cincinnati, OH 

Isabel Framer 

President 

Language Access Consultants, LLC 

Copley, OH

Jonathan D. Mattiello 

Executive Director 

The State Justice Institute is a federallyfunded, non-profit corporation established by 

federal law in 1984 to improve the quality of 

justice in the state courts. 

E-SJI News Volume 24, No. 3 December 2013 

SJI Titles Available Online 

through NCSC eCollection 

With over 700 titles available electronically, 

the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) 

Library eCollection has always been a repository for the products, final project reports, and 

other cumulative narratives from SJI-funded 

grants. The SJI Grant Guideline requires that 

all grantees coordinate with SJI and the NCSC 

Library to ensure electronic versions of final 

products and reports are delivered to the 

NCSC Library for inclusion in the eCollection. 

Dating reliably back to the early 1990s, the 

NCSC Library eCollection has worked diligently over the past two years to digitize even 

more SJI titles that were previously only available in hard copy, as well as acquire new titles 

when available. During 2013, NCSC librarians and the resource management team added 

159 digitized SJI titles to the eCollection, including 115 SJI titles that were professionally 

scanned and 44 SJI titles that were available 

online through individual court websites. 

For the NCSC, this is a mission-related project 

as it furthers the NCSC Library’s commitment 

to promoting easy access to state court and 

court administration resources. For SJI, this 

ensures that true resource sharing can occur 

between jurisdictions with minimal demand 

placed on a grant recipient post-project, and 

that grant products continue to be available for 

reference and research by future SJI grant applicants. Even today, many of the titles from 

the 1990s and earlier are in demand. For more 

information about the NCSC Library, its eCollection, and e-Newsletters, please visit their 

Publications & Library Portal: http://

www.ncsc.org/Publications-and-Library.aspx.