The Marshall County Council has given the final go ahead to allow court cases to be accessible through a statewide system.
Marshall County Clerk Debbie Vandemark initially made the request with the County Commissioners after receiving information okaying the switch from the Circuit Court judges and IT Department.
The system, called Odyssey, would apply a technology fee to each court case to fund the software. Vandemark says the maintenance on the current system is $45-thousand.
“They’re not mandating it; however, I think eventually it will get to that point,” says Vandemark. “There are currently 52 counties on the statewide case management system. There are four ahead of us, we may be 57, 58 once we get on board. I think it’s just a matter of time.”
Currently Marshall County uses CSI to provide case management services. Because of the scale of the new program, continued use of CSI will be needed for some additional time while the switch is made.
So far as the county knows, there is no cost to keep the statewide software – a claim that invoked snickering from the County Council. It is a goal of the state of Indiana to move all counties onto a statewide case management system.
Vandemark says they want to make sure all of the data is clean and ready for the conversion.
“They have to do a number of things on their end. Our IT Depatment will have to do things,” says Vandemark. “We’re looking at nine months to a year. The CSI contract comes due, may November, so we’ll want to stay on that for at least another year, maybe two years.”
The Marshall County Council approved the request to make the switch, unanimously.
Work will begin to implement the technology and begin training staff to efficiently change the case management system.
