Preparing and Optimizing Your Municipal Court for the Cloud
November 06, 2024 by Marlin Jones
Your municipal court wants to move to a cloud-based case management system to future-proof your court’s workflow, but how do you prepare staff for this change? What activities do you need to run to ensure a successful transition? What processes need to be evaluated? How can you optimize outcomes? What does collaboration look like between partners and stakeholders?
I partner with court administrators across the country about considerations and best practices for change management in the cloud, and their learnings are what can help shape the success of future rollouts in other courts. Let’s get into how to prepare and optimize your transition to the cloud, featuring three successful court administrators who are partnering with us to pioneer change in their municipal court.
Considerations for municipal courts before transitioning to a cloud-based platform
Preparation is paramount. From processes to staff training, considering every touchpoint during a new cloud technology implementation project helps court leaders reap the most return. Danille Trujillo, court administrator at Littleton Municipal Court, Colorado, and Sonya Cates, court administrator with the City of Alvin, Texas, both point out the need to be incredibly critical of current operations, highlighting several key considerations.
As a first step, Trujillo recommends identifying “the things you can get rid of today versus what you want to carry over and bring with you [into your new system].” She and her team started with data and paper, emphasizing the need for “really clean data” and “transitioning from being paper-heavy to being paper-on-demand, where we only print when absolutely necessary. Thinking about what you can get rid of and what to keep will make [the transition] easier for you,” says Trujillo.
Not only is clean data a milestone to a successful transition, so is data retention. Cates shares similar sentiments to Trujillo, adding that “if records have met the retention requirement, purge it out. There’s no reason to have old data that’s not necessary in the new environment. [Purging] also makes the flip and pulling of the data a lot smoother because you don’t have to pull as much.”
Another large conversation within the shift to cloud technology is where IT fits in. Will they have enough work in their day now that they don’t have an onsite server to maintain, or worst-case scenario, will they be on the hunt for a new job? For Jessica Stephens, court administrator at Little Elm Municipal Court, Texas, it was quite the opposite. “Not only did my IT department not lose anyone, but they actually hired one more person. IT has not gone anywhere — we keep them quite busy with other projects,” says Stephens. From internet troubleshooting to helping with initiatives like going paperless to deploying new phone systems or email networks, there is ample opportunity for IT to grow their skills and be involved in new ways. Their job description might change (for the better), but identifying these potential concerns upfront and easing IT staff into the new normal with solutions will help win over stakeholders.
Speaking of job descriptions, consider getting IT staff involved in the actual transition. We’ve worked with courts who appointed someone from IT as an implementation project manager, software administrator to assist during go-live, and then frontline support after delivery. Bringing them into the fold demonstrates the value they bring to the justice experience.
Municipal court best practices in preparation for moving to the cloud
Sometimes overlooked in technology transitions are the best practices for sustainable workflow success.
Going headfirst with goals in mind, Stephens opens with “knowing what you want the program to do for you. We identified the efficiencies we were looking for [in the new system], so that they would be top of mind during training. One of the first things we did was build macros around what we wanted to do. The end result created a lot of efficiencies in our court.”
Trujillo builds on this focused mindset with the idea of continuous improvement: “When we went live, we had an idea of what we were doing. And then that first year, we took the time to map out every single process and then test it. Our processes are in a living document that we continuously update. As we continue to grow, we ask ourselves, could it be even better? How do we create even more efficiencies for ourselves?”
Cates also shares insight on adaptability. No matter how much you prepare, “you need to have a backup plan in place so you can always conduct business.” If nothing else, “prepare your staff and be patient.”
Continued excellence in the cloud
Though this is just the beginning of what these municipal courts are achieving, their success is a true testament to continued excellence. Embracing both the positive and hard conversations when it comes to change, they’ve leaned on trust for an enhanced justice experience. It’s this dedication, with a critical lens on preparing and optimizing their experience in the cloud, that sets them apart.