Gongwer News Service
Two hundred and fifty of 302 courts statewide have been integrated into the Michigan judiciary’s growing case management system since 2021, which court officials said was demonstrable progress on a massive effort to unify trial court data systems.
There is still much work to be done building out the system with some of the larger and more complex circuit courts left on the docket, however, and the project has faced significant data migration challenges since it started five years ago.
The next big challenge might also be one of funding in a renewed era of divided government.
Officials estimated the entire build out would take $150 million. House and Senate appropriators have obliged and since funded the build out over the past few budget cycles, but an ongoing funding request this year for $7.2 million to help maintain the system once it’s fully operational could be the subject of a fight among appropriators with Republicans now controlling the House.
At least one key legislator, House Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Ann Bollin (R-Brighton), expressed some skepticism last month during Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s 2025-26 fiscal year budget presentation regarding the need for additional dollars with $150 million already invested. She also questioned State Budget Director Jen Flood on the system’s progress during the presentation, but did not get a clear answer.
Members of the judiciary have reportedly had conversations with Bollin and her appropriations counterparts in the Democratic-controlled Senate to help lawmakers understand the need for ongoing funding.
State Court Administrator Tom Boyd, in an interview with Gongwer News Service, said marked progress is being made toward getting every court on board, and that the ongoing funding would ensure its future success.
“When we were originally talking to the budget office and the Legislature about unified case management system, about effectuating the vision of the Trial Court Funding Commission … we gave them two numbers. One was $150 million to unify the system, and the other was $38 million … additionally to operate,” Boyd said. “The analogy is if you if you have a hospital, and you build a new wing on the hospital, it’s going to cost X amount to build the new wing on the hospital, but then you’ve got to put beds in there, and you’ve got to put doctors in there, and you’ve got to put nurses in there. You don’t just need a new wing. You want to provide more services. And so that’s really the exact same thing we got going on here.”
Boyd said the $38 million, which was an estimate not accounting for a rise in inflation when it was first proposed years ago, was not mission critical to the current work to expand the use of the Judicial Information System and a new state-of-the-art data “lake house” that is replacing the state’s older data warehouse.
“We could stage it over a number of years because as we grow, we’ll need more resources and people,” Boyd said. “We’re in the third bite (stage of seeking funding). Last time, the Legislature gave us most of what we asked for, but not all. It was $1.7 million less than what went through the subcommittee, so what we’re asking for this year is really just the next piece of that. It won’t be the last piece, we’re not at that $38 million yet, and that (proposal) was in 2020, so by the time we get to the whole thing, inflation will likely drive that number higher.”
That said, the funding is critical to the overall project once the build out is completed, and Boyd has said a legislative history lesson on the system and its progress were the State Court Administrative Office’s best tools to secure additional funding.
Court officials began work on expanding the Judicial Information System to all courts statewide in 2021 after the Trial Court Funding Commission recommended unifying statewide under the same data umbrella. It started with a mandate for all trial courts to share data with the Judicial Data Warehouse and later evolved into building out the Judicial Information System.
Since then, the system has become the top priority for the judiciary because having accurate and immediately accessible data helps solve some of the court system’s most pressing issues. SCAO has been able to get the Legislature on board and has received steady funding to the tune of $150 million in previous years.
At present, the judiciary has committed $65 million of that money to the process and various contracts with vendors to make it possible, with the remaining $85 million still available to finish the expansion, Boyd said.
Although the number of courts not in the system is getting smaller, with a little less than 20 percent left to go, the 52 courts that remain are among the most complicated and utilized circuit courts, like those in Berrien, Kent, Wayne, Oakland, Macomb Muskegon and Washtenaw.
Currently in progress are projects in Ingham, Saginaw and Oakland, each with their own unique complications. For example, Boyd said, in Ingham, SCAO is having issues with the local courts’ current vendor, one the county has been using for years, in terms of access to the data that should be owned by the state but is not.
Saginaw has a complicated history with case management, having built its own homegrown system that didn’t quite work and are just now coming onto JIS
Boyd said the Ingham situation was in and of itself another argument for a state-managed and operated case management system. The Saginaw situation, as a result of its own issues, is also why SCAO has taken discovery steps to better understand systems before trying to add them to JIS and migrate old data.
Boyd said the discovery process seeks to understand what data is out there in a given court system, how its structured, the language and data-dictionary descriptors a specific non-JIS court use to classify its data and ways to match existing JIS classifiers. Boyd described this issue as one of the major hurdles back in 2021, as well. There have been some temporary bridges built between disparate systems and JIS, but Boyd said that wasn’t a long term solution.
In those cases, Boyd said the solution might be just to not transfer or migrate some of that old data because it’s become too onerous to process and make compatible. But Boyd said that was “Plan Z” and considered a last resort.
Oakland will be among those courts that will see the biggest data migration effort yet, and will likely be its most strenuous. Boyd said SCAO is involved in that discovery phase with Oakland now.
“The Oakland system was homegrown, meaning it’s not a vendor. They built it themselves. It’s reaching a point in time where it just won’t work anymore. It’s got a few years, and we’re going to transition it during the next few years,” Boyd said. “But what we’re finding is that they have a core system and a whole bunch of other operational elements that are just sort of bolted onto the side, and they’re in databases, and they’re really not part of the core case management system.”
The good news for a system like that, Boyd said, is that it fits the SCAO creed of creating new systems with high value and service-minded components for stakeholders and end-users alike. The bad news is that it’s become complicated to know what’s part of that core system and how it can be transposed using JIS.
Like so much of the changing technological landscape and its intersection with government, the days of automation are now here for the judiciary. Boyd said automation was a great word for the product SCAO is seeking to deliver with its new system. The Oakland mission is helping in that regard, because several of its current “bolt-on” systems are used for automated processes.
“We’re in the very early stages of the project in Oakland, but we’re definitely looking at how we can make sure that we retain as much automation as they’re used to as possible,” Boyd said.
That mentality was the kind of working ethos driving the build out of JIS – the system is being built every day as more components and good ideas from the disparate systems are added on.
“If some of their automation is better than what other places have, (we’ll be) building it on internally, so that way everybody can share in the advancement,” Boyd said. “That’s the key.”
Overall, judges who have been bridged and acclimated to the system are still experiencing growing pains.
“(In Ottawa), we’ve recently had conversations with judges, and they’re like, ‘well, I still haven’t figured out how to do this, and this is different,’” Boyd said. “But this is something that’s – how do you politely say – not for the convenience of judges. Our system isn’t built so the judge’s life is easier. Our system is built so that case cases are managed and data is created. … When you get to this year and Ottawa’s on JIS, there’s literally zero work, that’s all done automatic. So, the number of hours of staff time freed up in Ottawa because they’ve changed systems is incredible.”
As to whether the newest class of lawmakers understand the need for a unified system, Boyd said SCAO has worked over the years to help present the history of the problem in digestible terms and frame the issue of incompatible data systems as one of the judiciary’s clearest future barrier to offering efficient services and sound justice. Some of its current discovery work on the systems, with the help of data archeologists to map how the disparate systems work, is also aiding the effort of clarifying SCAO’s goals.
The reason they keep coming back to lawmakers in an educational position is because, as Boyd put it, legislators are “very smart people,” but constant turnover in the Legislature creates a situation where some “don’t understand that each statewide task force, whether it had to do with jails or juvenile justice or indigent defense a decade ago was hamstrung by not having the data.”
“They have to learn all that because they didn’t experience it with us,” Boyd said. “When people hear about the statewide unified case management system, especially if you’re an appropriator, you really do need to hear the role the Trial Court Funding Commission played in all of this to understand what we’re doing as we talk about funding for the future. … (Funding the statewide system) is absolutely our number one priority. It’s a large endeavor and the ability for the judiciary to answer questions for legislators, the media and the public really hinges on our ability to push this project down the line.”
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