What vendors want: Other factors that influence vendors when considering responding to a request for services

Read this if your organization is planning on upgrading or replacing an enterprise technology system.

It can be challenging and stressful to plan for technology initiatives, especially those that involve and impact every area of your organization. Common initiatives include software upgrades or replacements for:

• Financial management, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems
• Asset management systems
• Electronic health records (EHR) systems
• Permitting and inspections systems

Though the number of considerations when planning enterprise technology projects can be daunting, the greatest mistake you can make is not planning at all. By addressing just a few key areas, you can avoid some of the most common pitfalls, such as exceeding budget and schedule targets, experiencing scope creep, and losing buy-in among stakeholders. Here are some tips to help you navigate your next project:

Identify your IT project roles and resources

While most organizations understand the importance of identifying project stakeholder groups, it is often an afterthought. Defining these roles at the outset of your project helps you accurately estimate the work effort.

Your stakeholder groups may include:

• An executive sponsor
• A steering committee
• A project manager
• Functional leads
• A technical team

Once you’ve established the necessary roles, you can begin reviewing your organization’s resources to determine the people who will be available to fill them. Planning for resource availability will help you avoid delays, minimize impact to regular business processes, and reduce the likelihood of burnout. But this plan won’t remain static—you can expect to make updates throughout the project.

Establish clear goals and objectives to keep your technology project on track

It’s important that an enterprise technology project has established goals and objectives statements. These statements will help inform decision-making, provide benchmarks for progress, and measure your project’s success. They can then be referenced when key stakeholders have differing perspectives on the direction to take with a pending decision. For example, if the objective of your project is to reduce paper-based processes, you may plan for additional computer workstations and focus technical resources on provisioning them. You’ll also be able to measure your success in the reduction of paper-based tasks.

Estimate your IT project budget accurately

Project funding is hardly ever overlooked, but can be complex with project budgets that are either underestimated or estimated without sufficient rationale to withstand approval processes and subsequent budget analysis. You may find that breaking down estimates to a lower level of detail helps address these challenges. Most technology projects incur costs in three key areas:

• Vendor cost: This could include both one-time software implementation costs as well as recurring costs for maintenance and ongoing support.
• Infrastructure cost: Consider the cost of any investments needed to support your project, such as data center hardware, networking components, or computing devices.
• Supplemental resource cost: Don’t forget to include the cost of any additional resources needed for their specialized knowledge or to simply backfill project staff. This could include contracted resources or the additional cost of existing resources (i.e., overtime).

A good technology project budget also includes a contingency amount. This amount will depend on your organization’s standards, the relative level of confidence in your estimates, and the relative risk.

Anticipate the need for change management

Depending on the project, staff in many areas of your organization will be impacted by some level of change during a technology implementation. External stakeholders, such as vendors and the public, may also be affected. You can effectively manage this change by proactively identifying areas of likely change resistance and creating strategies to address them.

In any technology implementation, you will encounter change resistance you did not predict. Having strategies in place will help you react quickly and effectively. Some proven change management strategies include communicating throughout your project, involving stakeholders to get their buy-in, and helping ensure management has the right amount of information to share with their employees.

Maintain focus and stay flexible as you manage your IT project

Even with the most thought-out planning, unforeseen events and external factors may impact your technology project. Establish mechanisms to regularly and proactively monitor project status so that you can address material risks and issues before their impact to the project grows. Reacting to these items as they arise requires key project stakeholders to be flexible. Key stakeholders must recognize that new information does not necessarily mean previous decisions were made in error, and that it is better to adapt than to stick to the initial direction.

Whether you’re implementing an ERP, an EHR, or enterprise human resources or asset management systems, any enterprise technology project is a massive undertaking, involving significant investment and a coordinated effort with individuals across multiple areas of an organization. Common mistakes can be costly, but having a structured approach to your planning can help avoid pitfalls. Our experienced, objective advisors have worked with public and private organizations across the country to oversee large enterprise projects from inception to successful completion.

Contact our software consulting team with any questions.

People are naturally resistant to change. Employees facing organizational change that will impact day-to-day operations are no exception, and they can feel threatened or fearful of what that change will bring. Even more challenging are multiyear initiatives where the project’s completion is years away.

How can your agency or organization help employees prepare for change—and stay motivated for an outcome—many years in the making?

Start With the Individual

Organizational change requires individual change. For the change to be successful and lasting, an agency should apply organizational change management strategies that help lead people to your desired outcome.

With any new project or initiative, people need to understand why the project is happening before they support it. Communicate the reasons for the change—and the benefit to the employee (what’s in it for them)—so each individual is more inclined to actively support the project. Clearly communicating the why at the onset of the project can help employees feel vested in, and part of, the change. As Socrates said, “The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but building the new.” A clear vision can inspire each employee’s desire for the “new” to succeed.

Shift to Individual Goals

It’s a challenge to maintain your employees’ motivation for an organizational change occurring over the long haul. Below are some suggestions on how to sustain interest and enthusiasm for multi-year projects:

1. Break the project down into smaller, specific milestones. Short-term goals highlight important deadlines and create tangible progress points to reach and celebrate. The master project schedule should be an integration of the organizational change management plan and the project management plan so any resource constraints you identify in the project management plan also become an input when identifying change management resources and activity levels. This integration also highlights the importance of key organizational change management milestones and activities in an effort to ensure they are on a parallel tack as traditional project tasks.
2. Effectively communicate status updates and successes. In large, agency-wide projects, there are often a variety of stakeholders, each with different communication expectations and needs. The methods, content, and frequency of communication will vary accordingly. Develop a communications strategy as part of your organizational change management plan, to identify who will be responsible to send communications, when and how they will be sent, key messages of the communications, and what feedback mechanisms are in place to continue the conversation after initial delivery. For example, the project team needs a different level of detail than the legislature, or the public. Making the content relevant to each stakeholder group is important because it gives each group what they need to know so they don’t drown in a flood of unneeded information.
3. Create buy-in by involving employees. A feeling of ownership naturally results from participation in a project, which helps increase enthusiasm. Often the time to do this is when discussing changes to business processes. Once you determine the mandatory features of the future state, (e.g., financial controls, legal requirements, legislative mandates) consider including stakeholder feedback on decisions more focused on preference. It is important for stakeholders to see their suggestions accepted and implemented, or if not implemented, that there was at least a structured process for thoughtfully considering their feedback, and a business case for why their suggestions didn’t make it into the project.
4. Conduct lessons learned assessments after each major milestone. The purpose of conducting lessons learned activities is to capture what worked and what didn’t. Using surveys or other feedback systems, such as debrief meetings, allows stakeholders to voice their thoughts or concerns. By soliciting feedback after each milestone, leadership can quickly adapt to challenges, address any misunderstandings or concerns, and capitalize on successes.
5. Reinforce how the project meets the goals of the agency or organization. Maintaining enthusiasm and support for a long-term goal takes a constant reminder of the overall organizational goals. It is important for senior leadership to communicate the impact of the project on the agency or organization and to stakeholders and keep the project at the forefront of people’s minds. Project goals may change during the duration of the project, but the project sponsor should continue to be active and visible in communicating the goals and leading the project.

Change is difficult—change that is years in the making is even more challenging. Applying a structured organizational change management process and using these tips can help keep employees energized and help ensure you reach the desired project goals.

While new software applications help you speed up processes and operations, deciding which ones will work best for your organization can quickly evolve into analysis paralysis, as there are so many considerations.

Case in point: Software as a Service (SaaS) model
The benefits of the SaaS model, in which a vendor remotely hosts an organization’s applications, are fairly well known: your organization doesn’t have to shell out for costly hardware, the vendor tackles upgrades, backups, data recovery, and security, and you have more time and money to focus on your business goals.

There are multiple factors to look at when determining whether a SaaS solution is right for you. We’ve compiled a list of the top three SaaS considerations:

1. Infrastructure and capacity
Your organization should consider your own people, processes, and tools when determining whether SaaS makes sense. While an on-site solution may require purchasing new technologies, hiring new staff, and realigning current roles and responsibilities to maintain the system, maintaining a SaaS solution may also require infrastructure updates, such as increased bandwidth to sufficiently connect to the vendor's hosting site.

Needless to say, it’s one thing to maintain a solution; it’s an entirely different thing to keep it secure. An on-site hosting solution requires constant security upgrades, internal audits, and a backup system—all of which takes time and money. A SaaS model requires trust in your vendor to provide security. Make sure your potential vendor uses the latest security measures and standards to keep your critical business data safe and secure.

2. Expense
When you purchase major assets—for example, hardware to host its applications—it incurs capital expenses. Conversely, when you spend money on day-to-day operations (SaaS subscriptions), it incurs operating expenses.

You should weigh the pros and cons of each type of expense when considering a SaaS model. On-site upfront capital expenses for hosting hardware are generally high, and expenses can spike overtime when you update the technology, which can be difficult to predict. And don’t forget about ongoing costs for maintenance, software upgrades, and security patches.

In the SaaS model, you spread out operating costs over time and can predict costs because you are paying via subscription—which generally includes costs for maintenance, software upgrades, and security patches. However, remember you can depreciate capital expenses over time, whereas the deductibility of operating expenses are generally for the year you use them.

3. Vendor viability
Finally, you need to conduct due diligence and vet SaaS vendors before closing the deal. Because SaaS vendors assume the responsibility for vital processes, such as data recovery and security, you need to make sure the potential vendor is financially stable and has a sustainable business model. To help ensure you receive the best possible service, select a vendor considered a leader in its market sector. Prepare a viable exit strategy beforehand so you can migrate your business processes and data easily in case you have any issues with the SaaS provider.

You must read—and understand—the fine print. This is especially important when it comes to the vendor’s policies toward data ownership and future migrations to other service providers, should that become necessary. In other words: Make sure you have final say and control over your data.

Every organization has different aspects of their situation to consider when making a SaaS determination. Want to learn more? It’s a snap! Contact the authors: Clark Lathrum and Matthew Tremblay. 

Private-sector pundits love to drone on about drones! Also known as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs), drones are dramatically altering processes and increasing opportunities in the for-profit world. There is no doubt that these changes and resulting benefits are helping to increase drone usage; in March 2017, technology news website Recode reported that since December 2015 almost 800,000 drones had been registered with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Yet private businesses don’t operate all 800,000. Various government organizations have seen the value of UASs—especially local government agencies—and are using them. Public safety departments are using UASs to reduce risk and increase situational awareness during hostage negotiations, SWAT operations, search and rescue, firefighting, accident investigations, hazardous material situations, and disaster surveillance. Many use drones to quickly (and inexpensively) document projects, survey land, and create maps. As officials in places such as Appleton, Wisconsin know, the possibilities of drone usage by local governments are endless.

Still, drone technology remains relatively new, and navigating the regulatory environment can be difficult. As a result, establishing a local government UAS program is time-consuming and full of obstacles. Local officials have many questions, including:

• How can we establish drone programs that meet regulatory requirements?

• How do we inform and educate constituents about drone programs?

• What is the typical budget for a local government drone program?

• How can we determine if we can operate as civil users under FAA Part 107, or as public aircraft operators?

• What are general best practices for local government drone use?

Daunting, certainly, but help is here. We have assisted local governments for over two decades, and have developed a comprehensive drone program that we can tailor to meet individual agency needs. We can assist in establishing requirements, develop a concept of operations, write policy, conduct FAA filings, and, if desired, provide training for public aircraft operators.

A further benefit to local governments: BerryDunn is not affiliated with any drone manufacturer, and does not sell hardware or software. Our independence allows us to conduct a truly objective analysis and provide drone program recommendations that are in your best interest.

Most of us have been (or should have been) instructed to avoid using clichés in our writing. These overstated phrases and expressions add little value, and often only increase sentence length. We should also avoid clichés in our thinking, for what we think can often influence how we act.

Consider, for example, “death by committee.” This cliché has greatly — and negatively — skewed views on the benefits of committees in managing projects. Sure, sometimes committee members have difficulty agreeing with one another, which can lead to delays and other issues. In most cases, though, an individual can’t possibly oversee all aspects of a project, or represent all interests in an organization. Committees are vital for project success — and arguably the most important project committee is the steering committee.

What Exactly is a Steering Committee?
It is a group of high-level stakeholders that provides strategic direction for a project, and supports the project manager. Ideally, the group increases the chances for project success by closely aligning project goals to organizational goals. However, it is important to point out that the group’s top priority is project success.

The committee should represent the different departments and agencies affected by the project, but remain relatively small in size, chaired by someone who is not an executive sponsor of the project (in order to avoid conflicts of interest). While the project manager should serve on the steering committee, they should not participate in decision-making; the project manager’s role is to update members on the project’s progress, areas of concern, current issues, and options for addressing these issues.

Overall, the main responsibilities of a steering committee include:

1. Approving the Project Charter
2. Resolving conflicts between stakeholder groups
3. Monitoring project progress against the project management plan
4. Fostering positive communicating about the project within the organization
5. Addressing external threats and issues emerging outside of the project that could impact it
6. Reviewing and approving changes made to the project resource plan, scope, schedules, cost estimates, etc.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Utilizing a Steering Committee?
A group of executive stakeholders providing strategic direction should benefit any project. Because steering committee members are organizational decision-makers, they have the access and credibility to address tough issues that can put the project at a risk, and have the best opportunities to negotiate positive outcomes. In addition, steering committees can engage executive management, and make sure the project meshes with executive management’s vision, mission, and long-range strategic plan. Steering committees can empower project managers, and ensure that all departments and agencies are on the same page in regards to project status, goals, and expectations. In a 2009 article in Project Management Journal, authors Thomas G. Lechler and Martin Cohen concluded that steering committees are important to implementing and maintaining project management standards on an operational level — not only do steering committees directly support project success, they are instrumental in deriving value from an organization's investments in its project management system.

A steering committee is only as effective as it’s allowed to be. A poorly structured steering committee that lacks formal authority, clear roles, and clear responsibilities can impede the success of a project by being slow to respond to project issues. A proactive project manager can help the organization avoid this major pitfall by helping develop project documents, such as the governance document or project plan that clearly define the steering committee structure, roles, responsibilities and authority.

Steer Toward Success!
Steering committees can benefit your organization and its major projects. Yet understanding the roles and responsibilities — and pros and cons — is only a preliminary step in creating a steering committee. Need some advice on how to organize a steering committee? Want to learn more about steering committee best practices? Together, we can steer your project toward success.

As more state and local government workers enter retirement, state and local agencies are becoming more dependent on millennial workers — the largest and most educated generation of workers in American history. But there is a serious gap between supply and demand.

As noted in a 2016 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics titled 
Household Data Annual Averages 15, only 25.6% of current
government workers are between the ages of 18 and 35.

This trend isn’t necessarily shocking; many millennials choose higher-paying jobs in the private sector over lower-paying jobs in the public sector, especially when the days of a lifelong government career, and generous pensions, are dwindling. But it is a serious labor problem for government agencies — one that requires creative solutions. To entice these new workers, state and local governments need to adopt new recruiting and retaining methods.

Recruiting Methods

While money matters to millennials, they also want to live a life of adventure, try new things, embrace trailblazing technology, pursue meaningful goals, and gain a sense of both personal and civic accomplishment. In short, these new workers have values that differ from previous generations. You can help entice them by:

• Highlighting your state and local agency’s mission and greater purpose. Many millennials want to affect change and find careers consistent with their values. Include information in your job descriptions about the positive environmental and social impact your agency makes.

• Updating your technology. Millennials have grown up with technology (literally at their fingertips), can adapt to change as no other generation before them, and often strive to remain on the “cutting edge.” By updating your agency’s technology, you will not only improve your organization and benefit the public you serve, but also have a better chance of recruiting the best and brightest millennials.

• Providing them with a work-life balance. Life outside of work is just as important to millennials as their careers. They don’t plan to wait for retirement to finally pursue their interests, so providing them with a level of flexibility is key to recruitment. Consider offering flexible workdays, remote working capabilities, extended parental leave, sabbatical opportunities, and “mental health days.” The more flexibility state and local agencies provide, the more incentive there is for millennials.

Retaining Methods

Recruiting millennials for government jobs is challenging enough, and retaining them can prove even harder, as job hopping is standard practice for many members of this generation. Nevertheless, there are certain methods your agency can adopt to prevent millennial turnover. We suggest:

• Investing in employee development and training. Training and creating opportunities for promotion and career advancement are motivating incentives to millennials. Professional development excites millennials and investing in them will pay off for the agency — and the employees will be more engaged and likely to stay.

• Showing employees they are valued. Recognition is the biggest motivator besides money — millennials want acknowledgement for the good work that they do. Communicate achievements and provide awards to recipients in front of their peers. This not only gives them credit, but also motivates others. Continuing to communicate to your employees how their work supports their values reminds them they made the right decision in joining the public sector in the first place.

Make Your Move

Millennials are worthy of your attention! To compete with the private sector — to recruit and retain them — your government agency has to take an innovative approach to capitalize on this ever-growing demographic. If your state or local agency needs help refreshing your technology, reviewing current policies and procedures, or taking a fresh look at your processes, contact BerryDunn. We would love to talk about your commitment to your future!

You may also be interested in: CFOs for Hire; How to Attract and Retain Workers in a Seller's Market

A year ago, CMS released the Medicaid Enterprise Certification Toolkit (MECT) 2.1: a new Medicaid Management Information Systems (MMIS) Certification approach that aligns milestone reviews with the systems development life cycle (SDLC) to provide feedback at key points throughout design, development, and implementation (DDI).

The MECT (recently updated to version 2.2) incorporates lessons learned from pilot certifications in several states, including the successful West Virginia pilot that BerryDunn supported. MECT updates have a direct impact on E&E systems—an impact that may increase in the near future. Here is what you need to know:         

Then: Initial Release

In February 2017, CMS introduced six Eligibility & Enrollment (E&E) checklists. Five were leveraged from the MECT, while the sixth checklist contained unique E&E system functionality criteria and provided a new E&E SDLC that—like the MECT—depicted three milestone reviews and increased the Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) vendor’s involvement in the checklists completion process.

Now: Getting Started

Completing the E&E checklists will help states ensure the integrity of their E&E systems and help CMS guide future funding. This exercise is no easy task, particularly when a project is already in progress. Completion of the E&E checklists involves many stakeholders, including:

• The state (likely more than one agency)
• CMS
• IV&V
• Project Management Office (PMO)
• System vendor(s)

As with any new processes, there are challenges with E&E checklists completion. Some early challenges include:

• Completing the E&E checklists with limited state project resources
• Determining applicable criteria for E&E systems, especially for checklists shared with the MMIS
• Identifying and collecting evidence for iterative projects where criteria may not fall cleanly into one milestone review phase
• Completing the E&E checklists with limited state project resources
• Working with the system vendor(s) to produce evidence

What’s Next?

Additionally, working with system vendors may prove tricky for projects that already have contracts with E&E vendors, as E&E systems are not currently subject to certification (unlike the MMIS). This may lead to instances where E&E vendors are not contractually obligated to provide the evidence that would best satisfy CMS criteria. To handle this and other challenges, states should communicate risks and issues to CMS and work together to resolve or mitigate them.

As CMS partners with states to implement the E&E checklists, some questions are expected to be asked. For example, how much information can be leveraged from the MECT, and how much of the checklists completion process must be E&E-specific? Might certification be required in the near future for E&E systems?

While there will be more to learn and challenges to overcome, the first states completing the E&E checklists have an opportunity to lead the way on working with CMS to successfully build and implement E&E systems that benefit all stakeholders.

On July 31, 2017, CMS released the MECT 2.2 as an update to the MECT 2.1.1. As the recent changes continue to be analyzed, what will the impact be to current and future MMIS and E&E projects?

Check back here at BerryDunn Briefings in the coming weeks and we will help you sort it out.

We all know them. In fact, you might be one of them — people who worry the words “go live” will lead to job loss (theirs). This feeling is not entirely irrational. When an organization is ready to go live from an existing legacy system to a new enterprise system, stress levels rise and doubts emerge: What can go wrong? How much time will be lost? Are we really ready for this?

We’re here to help. Here is a list of go-live essentials to help you mitigate stress and assess your readiness. While not all-encompassing, it’s a good place to start. Here’s what you need:

1. A detailed project plan which specifies all of the implementation tasks
   A project plan is one of the most important parts of an implementation. A detailed plan that identifies all of the implementation tasks along with an assigned resource for each task is critical to success. The implementation vendor and the organization should develop this plan together to get buy-in from both teams.

2. A completed system configuration
   New system configuration is one of the most time-consuming aspects of a technology implementation. If you don’t complete the implementation in a timely manner, it will impact your go-live date. Configure the new system based upon the best practices of the system — not how the existing system was — for timely implementation.

3. External system interface identification
   While replacement of some external systems may be a goal of an implementation, there may be situations where external systems are not replaced or the organization has to send and/or receive data from external organizations. And while new systems have advanced interface technology capabilities, the external systems may not share these capabilities. Therefore it is imperative that you identify external system interfaces to avoid gaps in functionality.

4. Testing, testing, testing
   End-to-end testing or User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is often overlooked. It involves completing testing scenarios for each module to ensure appropriate system configuration. While the timing of UAT may vary, allow adequate time to identify solutions to issues that may result from UAT.

5. Data conversion validation
   When you begin using a new system, it’s best to ensure you’re working with clean, up-to-date data. Identify data conversion tasks in the project plan and include multiple data conversion passes. You must also determine if the existing data is actually worth converting. When you complete the data conversion, check for accuracy.

6. End user training
   You must train all end users to ensure proper utilization across the organization. Don’t underestimate the amount of time needed for end user training. It is also important to provide a feedback mechanism for end users to determine if the training was successful.

7. A go-live cutover plan
   The overall project plan may indicate go-live as an activity. List specific activities to complete as part of go-live. You can build these tasks into the project plan or maintain them as a separate checklist to promote a smooth transition.

8. Support structure
   Establish an internal support structure when preparing for go-live to help address issues that may arise. Most organizations take time to configure and test the system and provide training to end users prior to go-live. Questions will arise as part of this process — establish a process to track and address these questions.

Technology implementations can significantly impact your organization, and it’s common for stress levels to rise during the go-live process. But with the right assessment and preparation, you can lessen their impact and reduce staff stress. Our experienced, objective advisors work with public and private sector organizations across the country to oversee large enterprise projects from inception to successful completion. Please reach out to us to learn more about preparing for your next big project.

Electronic accessibility in every aspect of modern life has increased ten-fold, but government — and courts in particular — has been slow to follow.

History Lesson
The idea that criminal court proceedings are accessible by the public is a pillar of our justice system, rooted in the First Amendment. This public right to unrestricted access in criminal and civil court proceedings has been interpreted by many states to extend to court documents and court records (as long as not otherwise protected).

Traditionally, public access to court proceedings and records has been limited to those taking place in the courthouse, between the hours of 8:00 am and 4:00 pm. In most every other aspect of our lives, we have 24/7 access to everything from live streaming of our home security systems, to ordering our groceries or dinner from our mobile devices — while traveling at 30,000 feet! Government — and courts in particular — has been slow to follow in the rush to 24/7 electronic accessibility.

Part of the rationale behind the hesitation to jump on the electronic bandwagon, are the ethical issues surrounding unlimited electronic public access. So while the First Amendment provides for public access to information, conversely the Fourteenth Amendment interprets the definition of “liberty” to include a right to privacy. Deciding between these two semmingly contradictory rights becomes a challenge for courts when determining what form of electronic access is appropriate for court documents.

The pros
Unlimited electronic access to publicly available documents:

• Serve a variety of public interests while eliminating the need to travel to the courthouse to research and copy documents.
• Acts both as a deterrent to violating laws and as protection to those whose rights have been violated.
• Tends to instill fairness, transparency, and equality of court proceedings.
• Protects the community and allows the media to report on matters of public interest in a more convenient, timely, and streamlined manner.

The cons
While there are compelling reasons to provide electronic public access, they don’t take into account the potential for it to be used inappropriately. Risks include:

• Increased chance of identity theft, leading to loss of property, finances, and credit
• Exposure to sensitive information that may be harmful to all those involved
• Negative impact on privacy
• Deter public interest lawsuits for fear of overexposure
• Mistakes or abuse of legal process can have far-reaching implications on individuals

What can states do?
Allowing unlimited remote electronic access to court documents could compromise the privacy rights and concerns of individuals and increase the risk of harm to those participating in court proceedings. This issue demands the full attention of the courts nationwide, but not with an “all-or-nothing” approach.

Many states struggle with striking this balance. To mitigate some of the potentially damning effects, states have taken different approaches. The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) has brought attention to the issues on several occasions. In 2002, the NCSC and the State Justice Institute funded the project, “Developing a Model Written Policy Governing Access to Court Records” and more recently the NCSC has published the “Privacy/Public Access to Court Records Resource Guide”.

Some states have redacted confidential information from electronic documents and some have limited what information or categories are available on the internet, only posting some combination of the following:

• Appellate decisions
• Final judgments, orders, and decrees
• Basic information of the litigant or party to the case
• Calendars and case docket lists

Our recommendation
States must agree upon the amount of access they will provide electronically. To tackle this, each state should:

• Consider forming an access committee(s) to determine what guidelines are needed to balance the free access rights of the public with the privacy rights of individuals
• Policy decisions should be publicly posted to the judiciary, legislators, and the public at large; and
• Should be regularly revisited to ensure an appropriate balance is continually achieved

Interested in learning how your state can address this or similar issues? Reach out to BerryDunn's justice and public safety experts and we can discuss the particular issue facing your state and the best practices for approaching it.