Concepts

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Program Facts and Assumptions
Conceptual Model
An Instance of the Concept

Program Facts and Assumptions

In defining its approach to facilitating electronic filing (e-filing), the CEFTS program contends with the following facts and assumptions.

Assumptions Regarding California Courts

Assumptions Regarding California Filers

Assumptions Regarding Electronic Filing Service Providers (EFSPs)

Assumptions Regarding California's E-Filing Environment

Conceptual Model

An early product of the CEFTS program was a conceptual model describing the role, entities, and components that would make up the foundation of uniform statewide e-filing. Participants at the first CEFTS conference (Sacramento, May 19, 2000) adopted the model. It continues to serve as a useful basis for understanding various aspects of e-filing.

The components of this model are:

• Filers. Attorneys, law firms, self-represented litigants, state and county agencies, and anyone else who has cause to file documents with (or receive documents from) a court.
• EFSPs. Business entities that provide e-filing services and support to their customers (filers). They provide the means for filers to submit documents to courts, electronically forward those filings to courts, and direct responses from courts back to the respective filers. We assume many providers will develop applications for e-filing, given the advent of open standards and a level playing field with universal electronic access to courts. Providers will offer a range of services and products designed to attract specific segments of the market, including large and small law firms, solo practitioners, self-represented litigants, and anyone else who wishes to file court documents.
  
  Note: The role of an EFSP is equivalent to that of the "electronic filing provider" mentioned in the proposed California Rules of Court for electronic filing and service (rules 2050-2060).
• Electronic Filing Manager (EFM). A software application that accepts XML from an EFSP, parses it, passes data to the CMS, saves documents if the CMS is not itself equipped to do so, and returns XML-formatted CMS-generated data to the EFSP (e.g., court-assigned case number, filing date/time, and hearing date). To the extent that the XML is standardized statewide, any CMS would need only one instance of the EFM application to handle submissions from any EFSP. Further, any EFSP should be able to interact with any standards-compliant EFM and, therefore, all EFSPs should be able to interact with any court CMS interfaced to an EFM application.
• CMS. Courts use these applications to track and manage caseloads (document management systems or capabilities are included in this component and are not shown separately in diagrams). We accept as a given a heterogeneous CMS environment. In California there are 58 counties, each with at least one (and typically more) CMS, and with no two configured alike. So that EFMs can be readily connected to CMSs, case management systems will need to support an Application Program Interface (API) designed to "talk with" EFM applications. Design of an API specification is presently underway, and development of API instances is a job for CMS vendors or court software developers or their contractors. It is also possible that, over time, various vendors will embed the EFM function in their CMS products.

An Instance of the Concept

When applied to the real world, the conceptual model produces a result similar to that depicted below.

In defining technical standards for electronic filings, we are establishing the basis for a competitive, market-oriented environment that ultimately will enable any EFSP to exchange filings with any court. The diagram depicts an instance of the concept for two courts and two EFSPs.

• Filers interact with the courts via EFSPs (courts can act as EFSPs). They are either parties to a case, in which instance they may access all documents and information allowed by the court, or they are not parties and document/information access may be limited. Also note that law firms and those with some variety of computerized practice management system will want to receive information about their filings from courts in XML.
• EFSPs have customers to whom they provide support and probably applications, collect court fees, and forward fees and filings to courts. They also provide information about cases that their customers want (and are entitled) to see.
• Courts accept filings from any EFSP (with which they have agreements) via a single application (the EFM) interfaced to their CMS. Courts could conceivably act as EFSPs, but they should implement using the same model.
• Court Filing XML Envelope is a standardized XML structure inside of which a court form or document is packaged and conveyed to a court's EFM.
• CMS API is based on a specification defining how EFM applications talk to case management systems. The specification addresses one of the principle obstacles to courts realizing benefits from e-filing - the cost and effort of integration.
• Exchange Point is a repository and services registry.
• Court Policy XML tells the EFM and EFSPs the preferences of a court with respect to electronic filing.
• Request/Response (R/R) XML tells the EFM and EFSPs the normative (standardized) and customized queries the court supports, as well as who is entitled to the information.
• CMS Data Configuration (CDC) XML gives the EFM and EFSPs detailed information about the filing transactions and data the CMS can handle.
• Public access is shown here as a matter of clarification. It is not a component of e-filing and is not to be confused with the flow of data back to filers (which is handled by Request/Response XML and the EFM transaction set). It provides general purpose, unprivileged information for those who are not parties to cases subject to California's rules of court for privacy and access.

The model is applicable to all types of filings: civil, criminal, domestic, juvenile, traffic citations, or any other case type. For cases typically involving government entities as a party, district attorneys or public defenders (for example) can use EFSPs, or their CMSs can talk directly to a court's EFM using the Court Filing specification. Once a court has implemented a compliant EFM application, it is theoretically capable of processing e-filings for any case type supported by its CMS by simply configuring its Court Policy XML, request/Response XML, and CDC XML files.