Court systems are the conduit to justice. Whether someone breaks a law, pays for a parking ticket, or settles a civil matter such as family custody, it’s handled through the court. For such a complex system to work, it needs modern solutions that are streamlined, easy to navigate, and accessible to all. 

The Arkansas Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) part of the Arkansas Court Information Systems (CIS) Division, faced a challenge with outdated systems for developing, implementing, and supporting court technologies. The CIS Division provides applications for case management, jury management, attorney management, electronic filing, online public access, online payment, and online jury participation. Some of these 20 applications were built in-house, while others were bought off the shelf or built by various vendors. Many required manual processes, which can trigger errors. When the error involves jail time or fines, this can be detrimental to the proper functioning of the justice system and can heavily impact individuals’ lives.

Some of the AOC’s applications were not mobile-friendly, either. Depending on where people lived—such as in rural communities or without computer access—they couldn’t get to the application they needed on their phones.

The main system the AOC uses—the case management system—was built by a previous vendor who could no longer service the application. At this point, it was also more than 20 years old. 

“All of our courts use this system,” says Tim Holthoff, CIS division director of the Arkansas Supreme Court. “Our appellate courts, our circuit courts, and about 44 out of 200 limited jurisdiction or district courts are using the case management system.”  

Tim notes the AOC began exploring alternatives to this system seven years ago, even considering putting a new interface on the system or building a new one from scratch. “For the last several years, we’ve had small teams exploring possibilities because we knew we had to modernize our system.”

Tim and the AOC team decided they wanted to work in multi-vendor teams with the goal of building the AOCs capability to sustain and maintain this system once the funds—and vendors—were gone. 

The AOC team decided on an AWS cloud solution for its modernization effort. Through introductions from AWS, the AOC team met Slalom. “The Slalom way of working was closely aligned to our way of working,” says Tim. 

And that type of teamwork was important to the AOC team. 

Working together, the team used several AWS components in the solution, from The Elastic Container Service to Lambda serverless functions, Database Migration Services, and the Amazon Aurora database engine.   

In January 2024, the legacy online access portal was retired and replaced with the Search ARCourts portal, which provides a streamlined search tool for court cases, enhanced search options, and advanced filtering. 

Sophia Rodriguez, senior principal with Slalom, was part of the modernization effort. “The modern case management system embodies several domains that replace those old apps so it will have the ability to do scheduling for the attorneys, judges, and jurors, as well as help with complete complex accounting across different jurisdictions,” she adds.   

The team is currently working on the case management system, which will go live in Summer 2024.  

This project is different from anything the AOC has ever done before. “The public portal wasn’t going to be finished when we launched, but we wanted to get it into the hands of our customers,” explains Tim. “It’s this idea of continuous improvement and development. We’re trying to find a way to continuously deliver value to our customers.” 

One of the reasons for the success of this project is the strong partnership that the AOC and Slalom formed together—and with the other smaller partners the AOC was already working with. “All of the folks that we’ve worked with are the best of the best,” says Tim. “We learned so much from our Slalom partners—they’ve been instrumental in helping upscale AOC folks to get them to a state of readiness to be able to take over the work.” 

The solution wasn’t just about technology either—Slalom helped the AOC with strategic consulting, change management, and training. Slalom offered its training through academies, which are comprised of six-week, eight-person, all-day cohorts for the AOC staff. 

Another critical component of the work was platform engineering—or building out different testing and automation tools with the AWS cloud solution. “A strong and fast platform is the way we got to where we are,” notes Rodriguez. 

Tim says the work has impacted all of the teams at the AOC, from developers to platform engineers and project managers, and trust was built quickly. 

Slalom also extended its partnership to help the AOC with its other smaller vendors so integration would be tight and coordinated.  

The AOC can now offer its public customers a more intuitive, organized, and streamlined system to perform court searches. Tim notes that court clerks used to have to embark on a six-week training course with the old system—but today’s system is simple to use and doesn’t require that level of training. 

“With our new system, most of it is intuitive,” says Tim. “The clerks are not going to need weeks and weeks of training. They’ll be able to sit down, and the system will help guide them to their destination.”

With all that time saved, the team also anticipates saving money in the future—especially once the case management system goes live. 

Slalom welcomed the opportunity to help the AOC with a solution that is mobile-friendly and that removes previous access constraints—which could have compromised timely justice. 

The new solution ensures more people can gain access to the public system, which leads to more equitable participation in legal processes for everyone. "We are committed to helping courts advance justice in four key areas: fairness, effectiveness, accessibility, and timeliness,” says Sophia.  

The AOC cloud solution will seamlessly handle any increased demand without compromising performance or security. Tim also feels the cloud solution will help ensure happier customers—whether those customers are the public, lawyers, judges, or the AOC team members. 

The AOC can rely on the integrity of the solution—including its ability to consistently serve the customers. Tim says, “Because we’re in the cloud, we can scale to meet demand—so we have happy customers.” 

For the AOC, moving to an AWS cloud solution helped the team understand the importance of innovation. For example, the court can now run analysis across court data to go after different grants based on demographics or statistics. The AOC is also interested in AI solutions someday. 

The future looks bright for the AOC as it continues to serve up streamlined systems in the Arkansas court system.