What is the integration strategy?

The AOC has adopted a NIEM-based, standards approach to integration and data sharing and has conducted design sessions to develop and validate the data exchanges. These sessions included state and local justice partners who participated in producing the exchanges that are available to the courts and their justice partners. Agencies that attended one or more design sessions include the following:

During these design sessions, the use cases (business views of the exchanges) along with triggering events, metadata (such as access permissions), and data elements/schemas were modeled. Then the data/schemas were mapped to the federal NIEM, and the NIEM was used if it covered the requirement. If NIEM did not have the element, then a standard specific to the California AOC was created and packaged as standard NIEM Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD).

The approach is also standards-based using open technology - specifically, Web services that can be invoked by most applications.

About the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM)

This model enables information sharing, focusing on information exchanged among organizations as part of their current or intended business practices. The NIEM exchange development methodology results in a common semantic understanding among participating organizations and data formatted in a semantically consistent manner. NIEM will standardize content, provide tools, and manage processes*.

*U.S. Dept. of Justice, National Information Exchange Model, www.niem.gov.

Integration Schedules

CCMS deployment preparation activities began in the summer of 2010 with the launch of an Early Adopter Readiness and Integration Assessment (CCMS EARIA) focused on three representative courts in San Diego, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo.

Due to unprecedented branch budget reductions, in July of 2011 the Trial Court Budget Working Group recommended a pause for all CCMS activities in order to reduce FY11/12 spending by $56M, which effectively reduces the impact of cuts to other areas of the branch. The AOC is currently evaluating the viability of some alternative proposals, using remaining staff and budget, to continue at a slower pace with Early Adopter implementations. Once any of those proposals are approved this site will be updated appropriately.

The EARIA revealed that many integration partners require approximately two years of work prior to a court cutover to CCMS to fully understand the functionality available from the CCMS exchanges and the level of work required on their systems to implement and integrate. This pre-work includes technical exchange design planning, and budget and project planning, which should begin well in advance of a court's commitment to an implementation date.

Civil CMS (V3) E-Filing Documentation

The following documents are provided for the technical staff of the courts and electronic filing service providers (EFSP) to provide guidelines for the successful implementation of electronic filing in the Civil CMS (CCMS-V3) application. The Civil CMS application uses California's Second Generation E-Filing Specifications (2GEFS).

It is important to note that the California Court Case Management System (CCMS-V4), the statewide case management system designed to support all case types, uses a different standards-based technology for integration, namely Web services, the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), and CCMS XML.

2GEFS-CCMS Specifications and Schema (ZIP)
2GEFS 02 for CCMS V3 Specifications and Schema ZIP file includes the specifications and XML schema for Filing, Policy, Case, and Document Type data plug-ins. These schemas are upgraded from the 2GEFS Version 01 (9/14/2004) to accommodate the California Case Management System (CCMS) Version 3. See the 2GEFS documentation in the .zip file and the 2GEFS-CCMS Implementation Guide for information on how to implement the schemas. Additionally, see the 2GEFS CCMS-V3 01 to 02 Schema Updates document for a detailed list of changes from the 01 to 02 version.

2GEFS CCMS-V3 01 to 02 Schema Updates
2GEFS CCMS-V3 01 to 02 Schema Updates is an update on 2GEFS schema development and documentation.

2GEFS-CCMS Implementation Guide (PDF)
The 2GEFS-CCMS Implementation Guide provides Electronic Filing Service Providers' (EFSPs) technical staff with guidelines for implementing electronic filing to work with the statewide CCMS-V3 system.

CCMS-V3 E-Filing CCTC-EFSP Connectivity Technical Guide (PDF)
The CCMS-V3 E-Filing CCTC-EFSP Connectivity Technical Guide provides instructions and support information to authorized EFSPs for connectivity to the California Courts Technology Center (CCTC) CCMS-V3 Electronic Filing Manager (EFM). The document may also be used as a guideline for connectivity to local implementations of the CCMS EFM in non-CCTC courts.