Tribal Court Case Management Software
Case StudyShingle Springs Tribal Court
Modernizing Court Case Management for Shingle Springs Tribal Court
The Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians is a federally recognized tribe in northern California. In 2009, the Shingle Springs Tribal Court was established to uphold tribal ordinances and enforce state court orders. To meet the demands of today’s workplace and develop efficiencies in process, the tribe needed to modernize their approach for tribal court case management.
Challenge
Since its inception, Shingle Springs Tribal Court staff was using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Word documents to track and manage their tribal court system. Over time, the tribe developed a library of standard court case forms and templates that made their business processes more complex. In addition, another local tribe’s tribal court has partnered with Shingle Springs to outsource their court case management. These complexities drove the need to seek out a better software solution to improve operational efficiencies.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for digitization in maintaining business continuity. Shingle Springs Tribal Court turned to Zoom virtual meetings in order to provide a safe, contactless environment and needed a better way to track meeting details.
“I’m really happy with the way Arctic IT has conducted the project and responded to our requests. The team has been great at communication and the weekly meetings keep everything moving forward. The tailored solution has quickly improved our workflow.”
Solution
Shingle Springs Tribal Court selected Arctic IT’s Tribal Platforms® Tribal Court software to meet its business process goals. The application was deployed on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform with the ability to toggle between Shingle Springs’ and the contracting tribe’s court cases. The court case information is kept separate and secure via role-based security – down to the field level.
The Tribal Court application was configured to meet all the requirements for the tribes’ multitude of legal documents such as court orders, statements, judgments, and subpoenas. Benefits of the court case management solution include:
- Auto-generation of court documents (court orders, notices, etc.)
- Court documents can be uploaded and stored securely within the court case record for ease of reference.
- Court documents auto-sync to SharePoint as indexable folders via case title, actively reducing the opportunity for human error.
- Role-based security permissions are shared from Tribal Court to SharePoint to allow authorized users access to case-related files.
- Court clerk dashboards allow clerks to review upcoming hearings, active court cases, overdue court fines and more.
- Individualized judge dashboards allow the judges to view their own hearings, active court cases, and court cases by type.
- Calendar-based hearing scheduling gives the clerks and judges a bird’s eye view of the court hearings and other scheduled activities within the system.
In addition to the base application, Arctic IT developed the capability for the system to track Zoom meeting details within the court hearing records and built a payment management capability for court fines and judgments. Tribal court staff can track the payments from initiation to processing, with the ability to drill down into itemized payment details for audit purposes.
Results
The needs of two tribes were met with one tribal court solution. Arctic IT was able to deliver on Shingle Springs’ unique project requirements, which in tandem helped improve the base solution for Tribal Platforms Tribal Court. Freedom from isolated spreadsheets and documents also gives the court staff one source of the full court case lifecycle on an application that can be securely accessed from anywhere, on any device via web browser.
Real-time analytics provide the Tribal Court with visibility into all active court cases by type, which allows for better resource planning for the tribal court, tribal police, casino, and attorneys/lay advocates.
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