Older information is still available on the site and the clerk’s internal database is being updated with new cases. The issue, Deniston said, is that the internal database unexpectedly stopped replicating itself to the public database.
“The process just stopped working with no warnings,” she said. The system was not showing any errors, so Deniston didn’t become aware of the problem until early October.
A solution has been identified and Deniston said Tuesday the worst case scenario would be another two weeks to implement it. Within the next three months, a completely new case management system will be rolled out, she added.
The county commissioners approved a five-year contract in June with The Amicus Group to design a new system, which will eventually be used by the offices of the clerk, public defender, prosecutor and sheriff, Deniston said.
“The new stuff will be much nicer, easier to use,” she said.
The clerk’s office will pay a total of $593,000 over the five years out of its computer maintenance fund, according to the contract. The other county departments will contribute an additional $180,000 during that period for access to the system.
In the meantime, the public defender’s office, private attorneys and anyone else wishing to get information about new docket entries has had to call a deputy clerk or go in person to the clerk’s office on North Limestone Street.
“It slows things down considerably,” said Jim Marshall, director of the county public defender’s office. “All 10 of the employees in this office use, or did use, that website on a daily basis.”
Clark County Bar Association President Michael Catanzaro sent a memo to all members Oct. 28 saying he’d been assured by Clerk of Courts Ron Vincent that the issue was being addressed.
“It’s not a serious problem,” Catanzaro said. “If you want to get the information you can get it.”
Vincent said via email that this is the first time since the website’s launch in 1995 that there has been a problem with it.
“We are working to get it back up and running for another 20 years,” the email said.
But the lengthy delay is causing increased work for staff and represents a waste of the taxpayer money, which is supposed to be used to maintain the computer system, according to local attorney Dan Harkins.
“It’s costing the taxpayers a little more money,” he said.
The most recent state audit of the county shows that the clerk’s office brought in nearly $96,000 in revenues from filing fees last year and only spent $77,000 of it.
“(The Clerk of Courts) has plenty of financial resources to maintain that website,” Harkins said.
Some have criticized the clerk’s office, even when the website is working properly, as being slow to adopt new technology in use in many Ohio counties.
“We really need to update our technology,” County Prosecutor Andy Wilson said. “We should be able to do online filing.”
Many other courts use e-filing and some local courts — including Montgomery and Franklin counties and the Clark County Municipal Court — allow users to view images of documents online.
Common Pleas Court documents have been scanned into the internal system for several years now, Deniston said, and the new system will allow for PDF documents to be made public if the clerk decides to allow it.
The main deterrent, Deniston said, has been the need to redact social security numbers and other sensitive information from the documents before scanning them.
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