General Overview
The State of Washington Court System uses a centralized court case management system used by most courts in the state. The Washington state court system serves more than 5,250,000 people.  More than 305 court locations currently use the system.  Twenty municipal courts do not use the system as their primary case management tool. Of these twenty, nineteen are so small they operate only one or two days a week, but do have access to the information on the statewide database.  The only large court not using the Judicial Information System (JIS) has a computer system which uploads data into the statewide database. Access to the database or to the full case management capabilities is available to any court. 

Court Record System Overview
The court record case management system was developed in-house, starting in the mid 1970's using COBAL ADABASE and converted to Natural/COBOL with a DB2 database starting in 1990. The system is housed on an Amdahl Computer MVS platform. The state court system reports approximately twelve million active cases on the database available for electronic public access. The court also reports approximately one million court record transactions take place daily. 

Court Case Filings

Superior Courts (General Jurisdiction)	1998 Reported Filings
Civil	180,030
Criminal	40,807
Juvenile	59,845
District and Municipal Court
Traffic Infractions	794,428
Non-traffic Infractions	25,938
Criminal Misdemeanors	335,360
Civil, DV, Small Claims	149,635

Electronic Public Access Methods
Information is provided to the public electronically by public terminals located in the courts, remote dial-in directly to the courts (via toll-free number and using a terminal emulation software application), or through CourtLink, using the Windows-based software application. Direct access to the State of Washington court system is not available through the Internet.

Available Information
The public has access to more than 12 million court records, but not the same access as the court employees. Security and privacy concerns limit the type and amount of information presented to the public. Basic court record information is available at the public access terminals and the remote dial in system, but these have no advanced inquiries or ad hoc reporting capabilities as does CourtLink.

Subscribers & Fees
There are approximately one thousand paid subscribers to the (direct dial to courts) electronic public access system. Fees are a small initial setup fee with an additional $25 per month flat rate fee, billed to the subscriber. Access to the State of Washington Court Records is also available through CourtLink. CourtLink demographics indicate the vast majority of users are law firms, followed by investigators, tenant/employee screening companies, accounting firms, information services, media, insurance companies, credit bureaus, corporations, government entities, and banks.

Development & Maintenance Costs
The Office of the Administrator of the Courts brought the current court record system online in 1990. Part of the implementation was to provide electronic public access; therefore, the cost to develop the public record access was included in the overall court record system. The court is responsible for providing resources and services to end users, including the public. While the court maintains a help desk function within the Information Systems Division, the help desk offers services to the entire court, including the electronic public access. Development of the interface to the CourtLink system was done at no cost to the court and CourtLink maintains all Help Desk and support functions.

Court & EPA Staffing Information
There are approximately 4,500 employees of the State of Washington Court System. About 2,100 clerks handle case filings, maintain court records, answer inquiries from the counter and the phone about cases for both the general jurisdiction and the limited jurisdiction courts. Because the State of Washington Court System is a statewide system, all local court technical support is handled through the individual county MIS departments. There are six FTEs to staff the electronic public access, but these are included in the state court’s MIS department, handling not only EPA functions, but also other MIS-related functions. A percentage of support calls are for EPA, but staffing is integrated into the department. The flat rate subscription charge is intended to cover all costs associated with providing the access including development, support, hardware and communications expenses. Electronic Public Access through CourtLink requires no additional staffing requirements for the state.