2021 Judicial Conference Program

Remote Hearings As a result of the pandemic, the Judiciary has had to rely heavily on remote participation in judicial proceedings. The committee worked to create many new policies to accommodate this transition, including authorizing the pre-filing of exhibits, working with the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services on a writ list data feed for remote hearings, and creating remote hearing case flags.

Government Agency Access The following agencies were granted remote access to MDEC: • Office of the Public Defender • Frederick County State’s Attorney’s Office Child Support Division

Montgomery County Go-Live The Montgomery County go-live date was rescheduled to allow for needed development, testing, solution validation, and end-user training. This will also allow JIS to complete necessary regression testing in order to upgrade the state on Odyssey Navigator 2018.2. Odyssey 2018.2 Update Odyssey Navigator 2018.1 was put into production in August 2019. Since that time, stabilization of 2018.1 has been a challenge, requiring quite a few critical fixes. Based on these issues, the committee made the decision to push back the Odyssey 2018.2 update. Prince George’s County Development JIS and Tyler Technologies continue to work with Prince George’s County in order to prepare their data for conversion into Odyssey. Baltimore City Go-Live The committee continues to work with Baltimore City and a consultant who is analyzing the court’s financial data for conversion to Odyssey, as well examining functionality of the court’s various case management systems to determine if any gaps exist that need to be addressed to effectively implement MDEC. Forms Translation The committee worked with the Language Access Subcommittee and the Access to Justice department on forms translation, specifically adding informational language to District Court batch notices in the five languages most frequently requested for interpretation services: Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, and Korean. Guide & File The committee continued to work with Access to Justice and the District Court Headquarters on the implementation of the Guide & File System. The plan is to pilot a specified number of interviews utilizing the Family Law Self-Help Centers and the District Court Self-Help Resources Centers, evaluating the pilot, and making any necessary adjustments before opening the interviews to the general public. The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a technical issue with the vendor, stalled implementation plans. Currently, four of the identified 65 interviews are ready for testing in the production environment: • CC-DC-089 – Prepaid Costs Waiver • DC-CV-001 – Complaint/Application and Affidavit in Support of Judgment (Multipurpose version – all options in one interview) • CC-DR-004 – Complaint for Custody • DC-CV-082 – Landlord’s Complaint for Repossession of Rented Property Of these four, only two are ready to go-live: Complaint/Application and Affidavit in Support of Judgment and Prepaid Costs Waiver. The other interviews are still in the review process. The Committee made the decision to proceed with a soft go-live beginning on November 9, 2020, where the two interviews that are ready will be posted online to allow the public to use them. A self-help page was created where individuals can access the interviews and find FAQs for more information. Until e-filing configuration for the interviews is available, once the interview is completed online, the individual will have to print the form. There are built-in surveys that users can answer to provide feedback. Self-help centers will also monitor the use of the

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