General Overview
Maricopa County Superior Court provides free Internet access to its 20 million-record court docket. Maricopa County serves a population of more than three million. The docket contains the docket entries on all cases from 1987 forward. The system is online in real-time, meaning that if information is entered within the court system, the public has almost immediate access. 

Court Records System Overview
The court’s case management system dates back to the early 1980's and is hosted on a Bull DPS9000 mainframe, programmed in COBAL. Instead of making a hefty investment to replace the entire software and hardware system, Maricopa County decided to develop an interface to the mainframe system and provide public access through the Internet. 
 

Court Case Filings	1998 Reported Filings
Civil	34,621
Criminal	24,708
Juvenile	56,349

Electronic Public Access Methods
Information is provided in real-time to the public using public terminals located in the court or remote via the Internet. The public accessing the court system via the Internet must have an Internet browser with JAVA capabilities. JAVA is a high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems that provides additional programming capabilities for the Internet. 

Available Information
The web browser interface allows the public to locate a case by case number or by the name of one of the parties. Civil, Criminal, Traffic, Tax, Probate, Family and Domestic Relations case information is online. The case history provides information from the court docket as to when the case was filed, actions taken in the case, judge assigned, hearing dates schedules, etc.

Subscribers & Fees
The system is available through the Internet; the court does not require a subscription or fee for its use. Approximately 8000 “hits” are recorded on an average day of court business. 

Development & Maintenance Costs
The development of the Web interface took approximately four months from conception to the first working pilot. Since the interface to the court record system is real-time access, additional development by Maricopa County Court IS staff provides the user with enhanced capabilities, such as case history and additional query reports. The publicized cost to develop the Internet interface is stated as $10,000. Additional financial and human resources were also required to complete the project and transfer the knowledge learned from the project to the Maricopa County Court IS staff, including software tools and additional applications required to develop and maintain the system.

Court & EPA Staffing
There are approximately 2,800 employees of the Maricopa County Court System, fifty of which are technical personnel handling the Court systems. Support for the EPA, including help desk functions, is handled as part of the Judicial Information Services Technical Department. The court also has a Public Information Officer, who handles media and public inquiries and posts the high profile case list to the court’s web site daily.