Officials: Kane court case management system inefficient, archaic
A judge Tuesday is expected to sign off on the final batch of $520,000 in legal bills from the Deb Seyller vs. the Kane County Board case, but another chapter remains from the lawsuit: Implementing a new court case management system for the county.
Late Monday, 16th Circuit Chief Judge F. Keith Brown issued an order to have Kendall County Judge Tim McCann review the final bills at a court hearing Tuesday morning.
Both sides settled the lawsuit in September, which Seyller filed after the board denied her additional funding to run the Kane County Circuit Court Clerk’s office.
Judges, prosecutors and Seyller all agree the current system, Clericus Magnus by Jano Data Systems, which went online about a dozen years ago, is inefficient, requires the same data to be entered numerous times by different agencies and is sometimes so inaccurate data inquiries must be counted by hand.
Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon said a newer system would allow him to track trend data such as how many cases each of his prosecutors handles, where crimes are being committed and what is the average amount of time it takes to dispose of certain felony case.
As of now, the information is difficult to retrieve — if at all.
“We’re doing the same thing four or five times. That’s a ridiculous waste of time and resources,” McMahon said. “Most successful businesses make decisions on current data. We do that, but we collect the data using very archaic methods.”
Brown said a better system would help him better assign judges to courtrooms. He said the state reimburses the county for some probation services, but the county’s data using the system was inaccurate. Results were counted by hand and the county received $125,000 more in funding last year, Brown said.
“Our state numbers were that far off,” Brown said.
Seyller also said it’s difficult for her staff to extract data to make reports for county and law enforcement agencies, and hard for the public to use it as well.
“We have offices that are collecting data manually and re-entering data we’ve entered once. That doesn’t need to happen,” Seyller said. “Our public access (portal) is pretty horrible if you’ve tried it lately.”
Winnebago County officials also had Clericus Magnus system but spent $6.9 million to replace it late last year.
Some early estimates have pegged the cost to replace Kane’s system at $10 million, but a consultant will shed more light on that at a county board committee meeting Oct. 25.
“(The consultant is) going to recommend that we get a new case management system,” Seyller said. “I look at as the next step in a process we started a year ago.”