Summer 2006
TECHNOLOGY
New Search Engine
For Court System
WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF YOU COULD SEARCH
the Unified Court System’s public Web site as easily
and efficiently as you could Google?
Well, now you can.
As of April 21, the New York State Unified
Court System began using Google as its official
search appliance for www.nycourts.gov. The
Google Search Appliance represents state-of-the-art
technology and is an integrated hardware and
software product designed to give businesses and
the government the power and efficiency of a
Google search.
The appliance makes the sea of data published
on our servers instantly available (except court decisions
and appearance dates) from a single familiar
search box. Employees and the public can now
search over 100,000 documents using the most
advanced search features available, such as foreign
language queries (the appliance supports over 100
languages) and search results sorted by date.
Court decisions and court dates are provided
through links on the e-courts Web page at
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us.
E-Scheduling for Court Interpreters
SCHEDULING COURT INTERPRETER
services across the state just got easier.
Sandra Bryan, Coordinator of Court
Interpreting Services, says a new computer
system that allows court personnel to electronically
schedule court interpreters
across the state will be fully operational
this summer.
A pilot program has been operational
this past year in the 7th Judicial District,
New York City Civil Court and Queens
Supreme Court.
Court personnel who schedule interpreters
will have access to the program via
a password. Once the system is accessed,
administrators will make selections from
several pull-down screens or areas where
information is entered, including the court,
county, court part, primary language,
index/docket number, case type, appearance
date, start time and end time. Once
information is submitted, a list of available
interpreters is displayed, prioritized to first
provide names of court-employed interpreters,
then per diem interpreters and lastly
translation businesses and agencies.
The system also lets officials know if a
court interpreter has been tardy or missed
scheduled sessions altogether. The program
shows how many times an interpreter has
been scheduled in a given court, in case an
administrator wants to spread the workload.
Since the system is in “real time,” it
allows more than one employee to schedule
for a particular court and alerts officials
if an interpreter for a particular language
has already been scheduled for their court
on a given date. A decision can then be
made as to whether to schedule more than
one interpreter.
The program also provides useful
information to court officials on a daily
basis about interpreting services in other
courts. It displays the names and languages
of interpreters actively engaged in
neighboring courts on a particular day,
which is helpful for last minute needs
and requests.
Fiber Ring Technology: The Backbone of Court Communications
TEN YEARS AGO, ONLY 13 OF THE 62 COUNTIES
in the Unified Court System (UCS) could access
centralized case information on the mainframe.
There was no technological infrastructure to
support any statewide initiatives, such as an
e-mail system. Most employees didn’t even
have computer terminals.
Today, CourtNet, a state-of-the-art network,
connects over 250 court buildings statewide.
“The goal of CourtNet is to connect everyone in
the court system statewide into a high-speed
reliable network for court operations,” said
Sheng Guo, Chief Technology Officer of the
UCS Division of Technology.
The CourtNet backbone is comprised of
545 miles of dedicated fiber connecting
courthouses in New York City and seven counties
(Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Albany,
Rensselaer, Schenectady and Saratoga), in
addition to leased high-speed connections in
five major cities (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse,
Binghamton and Poughkeepsie). The backbone
was engineered to achieve maximum
redundancy and availability. For example, if
a fiber cut occurs in the optical ring, traffic
will be automatically rerouted over the
reverse direction.
The optical backbone provides the UCS
with unprecedented network reliability and
performance. In the past, a T1 line (a fiber
optic or copper line) at 1.5 million bits per second
was considered a high-speed connection.
In contrast, a typical fiber connection today
can transmit a billion bits per second. That
means a two-hour movie could be transmitted
in 1.2 minutes using the new optical network,
compared with 13 hours to transmit the same
information using a T1 line. The end result is
the court system has the ability to provide case-management
applications and phone, e-mail
and video services to court users statewide,
using a fast, reliable connection.
CourtNet enables the deployment of many
innovative court solutions, including UCMS
(Universal Case Management System, a single,
standardized statewide computer application
for all courts); videoconferencing; VoIP (Voice-Over Internet Protocol, merging computer and
phone technologies to give courts a more
adaptable phone system); distance learning;
video streaming (playing video upon arrival
without downloading); security surveillance;
and Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) Internet access
for the public.
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