Electronic Court Filing 3

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www.oasis-open.org Electronic Court Filing 3 Technical Overview DRAFT December 21, 2007

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Electronic Court Filing 3. Technical Overview. DRAFT December 21, 2007. Where it all began. LegalXML.org Community – 1998 Legal, court, business, academic, and technology professionals Collaboration on nonproprietary standards for the legal community LegalXML Inc. – December 2000 - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Transcript of Electronic Court Filing 3

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Electronic Court Filing 3

Technical Overview

DRAFT

December 21, 2007

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 2

LegalXML.org Community – 1998 Legal, court, business, academic, and

technology professionals Collaboration on nonproprietary standards

for the legal community LegalXML Inc. – December 2000

Nonprofit corporation

Where it all began

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 3

OASIS LegalXML Member Section LegalXML joined the Organization for the

Advancement of Structured Information Systems (OASIS) – March 2002

Advantages: Funding, infrastructure, organization Part of a recognized standards body Proven open technical process Broader community – ebXML, WS-Security, SAML, UBL, …

Active Technical Committees – TC’s: Electronic Court Filing (ECF) eNotary

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 4

What does the ECF TC do? The LegalXML Member Section develops

specifications for the use of XML to create and transmit legal documents

The ECF TC develops specifications for other functions essential to the e-filing process:

Querying a court for data or documents Expressing unique court policies and requirements Providing legally sufficient service of court filings Linking electronic documents to case management systems Linking to document management systems Handling payments associated with electronic filings Security to ensure confidentiality, authenticity, correctness,

and completeness of information transmitted

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 5

Justice XML1.0/2.0

GJXDM3.0.x

ECF1.x

ECF3.x

What happened to 1.0 and 2.0? Previous specifications:

LegalXML 1.0 (2000) LegalXML 1.1 (2001) Court Document 1.1 (2002) Query and Response (2002) All approved by industry organizations and in use today by

courts and vendors The latest release of the ECF standard is 3.x, rather

than 2.0, to reflect association with GJXDM 3.x

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 6

What’s new in ECF 3? Addresses new requirements based on experience

with LegalXML 1.x Supports NCSC’s Standards for Electronic Filing

Processes (Technical and Business Approaches) approved in 2003

Electronic service (secondary service on parties already associated with the case, not primary service on new parties)

Access to court documents and data Elements needed to initiate new case filings for all

case types Payments of fees and other court obligations Electronic court policy Advanced features of document and message

authentication, integrity, and security

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 7

Technology changes in ECF 3 Uses XML schema

rather than DTD Leverages new and

emerging standards: Vocabularies:

GJXDM UBL

Web services W3C OASIS WS-I

OASISOASIS

WS-IWS-I W3CW3C

UBLUBL

GJXDMGJXDM

ECF3.x

ECF3.x

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How does ECF 3 relate to the GJXDM and NIEM? Global Justice XML Data Model

(GJXDM) conformance was a core objective of ECF 3

ECF 3 uses GJXDM version 3.0.3 where the structures and definitions correspond to the requirements of ECF 3

Newer versions of ECF will conform with the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM)

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 9

GJXDMCore

Components

Document Incident Location Metadata Organization Person

Activity Arrest Case Citation Contact Info Court

Property Subject Supervision Vehicle Warrant

GJXDM core components used by ECF 3 messages

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 10

Interoperability A primary objective of the ECF

architecture is to support interoperability among: Court case management systems Court document management systems Court hosted e-filing systems Vendor hosted e-filing systems Law firm case management systems Any combination of the above

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 11

Architecture Strategies Separate architectural components

Core (messages) Service interaction profiles Document signature profiles Policies (human and machine)

Multiple technical solutions Service interaction profiles (two so far) Document signature profiles (five so far)

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 12

Architectural Components Core specification

Defines Major Design Elements (MDE’s) and the operations and messages that are exchanged between them

Service interaction profiles Describes transmission system infrastructures that deliver

messages between MDE’s Document signature profiles

Describes mechanisms for signing electronic documents Court Policy

Documents in both human readable and machine readable form policies, procedures, and codes required to support e-filing functions in a given court

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Major Design Elements (MDE’s)

ECF divides the electronic filing process into four MDE’s and describes the messages passed between them

ServiceMDE

ServiceMDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

Court Record

MDE

Court Record

MDE

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 14

Service MDE Enables a party to receive service

electronically from other parties in a case (secondary service only)

ServiceMDE

ServiceMDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

Court Record

MDE

Court Record

MDE

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Filing Assembly MDE Enables a filer to submit a filing and

receive a response from the court Supports service on other parties in the

case

ServiceMDE

ServiceMDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

Court Record

MDE

Court Record

MDE

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 16

Filing Review MDE Enables a court to receive and review a filing

message and respond to filers Prepares filings for recording in the court CMS and

DMS Enables filers to obtain court policies and status of

filings

ServiceMDE

ServiceMDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

Court Record

MDE

Court Record

MDE

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 17

Court Record MDE Enables a court to store electronic documents Enables a court to post docket entries and other

updates to its CMS and DMS applications Enables filers to obtain service information, case

information, and documents

ServiceMDE

ServiceMDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

FilingReview

MDE

Court Record

MDE

Court Record

MDE

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 18

Sample Configuration #1Court Hosted

All MDE’s are implemented at the court

CMS

DMS

E-Filing

Court

`

`

`

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 19

Sample Configuration #2Third Party Filing Assembly MDE

`

FilingAssembly

MDE

CMS

DMS

FilingReview& CaseRecordMDE’s

Court

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Sample Configuration #3Multiple Filing Assembly MDE’s

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

`

`

`

CMS

DMS

FilingReview& CaseRecordMDE’s

Court

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Sample Configuration #4Law Firm as Filing Assembly MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

`

`

FilingAssembly

MDE

`

Law Firm

CMS

CMS

DMS

FilingReview& CaseRecordMDE’s

Court

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Sample Configuration #5Portal with split Filing Review MDE Functions

`

`

`

CMS DMS

FilingReview& CaseRecordMDE’s

Court A

CMS DMS

FilingReview& CaseRecordMDE’s

Court B

CMS DMS

FilingReview& CaseRecordMDE’s

Court C

`

`

FilingReviewMDE

E-Filing Portal

FilingAssembly

MDE

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Sample Configuration #6Portal with 3rd Party Filing Review MDE’s

`

CMS DMS

FilingReview& CaseRecordMDE’s

Court A

CMS DMS

FilingReview& CaseRecordMDE’s

Court B

CMS DMS

FilingReview& CaseRecordMDE’s

Court C

`

FilingReviewMDE

E-Filing Portal

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

FilingAssembly

MDE

`

`

FilingAssembly

MDE

Law Firm

CMS

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Messages A message stream contains:

A required core message Basic information common to all

courts and case types An optional case-type-specific

message Information appropriate only for a

particular type of filing An optional court-specific

message Information appropriate only for

cases in a particular court

Core MessageCore Message

AttachmentAttachment

AttachmentAttachment

Case-Type-Specific Message

Case-Type-Specific Message

Court-Specific Message

Court-Specific Message

ECF 3.x Message Stream

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More on messages… A message is an XML document transmitted

between MDE’s that validates against a message schema

All messages are asynchronous Supports SOA principle of stateless design

A message may include binary-encoded documents

Embedded in the message using the GJXDM <j:DocumentBinaryData> element, or

Included in one or more MIME attachments to the message stream

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Operations ECF operations are defined in the core

specification, including: Operations supported by each MDE The normal sequence of operations Business rules for each operation

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Note: Operations shown in bold text are required

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Additional Operations Other query operations

GetFilingList GetFilingStatus GetCaseList GetCase GetDocument

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Service Interaction Profiles Service interaction profiles support

interoperability and reusability The core specification defines a

comprehensive list of nonfunctional requirements for service interaction profiles and document signature profiles

Each profile defines exactly how it meets and implements each nonfunctional requirement

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Service Interaction Profiles (continued) Each service interaction profile must support:

Transport Protocol MDE addressing Operation addressing Request and operation invocation Synchronous mode response Asynchronous mode response Message/attachment delimiters Message identifiers

Each service interaction profile should support: Message non-repudiation Message integrity Message confidentiality Message authentication Message reliability Transmission auditing

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Service Interaction Profiles (continued) Current service interaction profiles

Web services (based on WS-I Basic Profile)

Portable media (sneakernet)

Potential future service interaction profiles

Electronic mail (e-mail) ??

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Document Signature Profiles Each document signature profile must support:

Signer name assertion Signed date assertion Multiple signatures

Each document signature profile should support: Signer and date non-repudiation Document integrity Document signature auditing

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Document Signature Profiles (continued) Currently defined document signature profiles

Null XML Signature Application-specific Proxy and Symmetric Key

Potential future document signature profiles Password Password/PIN

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Court Policies Court policies support customizations and

local practices through: Human-readable court policy

May be HTML, text, or other document format Court’s rules and requirements for electronic filing

Machine-readable court policy Must be XML (an ECF 3 message) ECF 3 options supported in the implementation Court code lists and extensions Design-time and run-time information

Courts should start with small core set of information and expand as semantics can support

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Lessons Learned Separate functional and nonfunctional designs

Messages vs. service interaction profiles Standardized services – not applications

Leverage standards (e.g., GJXDM, UBL) for content Enclose documents with messages using MIME or

DIME attachments rather than embedding Use the GJXDM extensions mechanism where

possible, but multiple layers of extensions complicate interoperability

Where appropriate, describe and enforce customizations in schema

Document remaining customizations separately

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ECF 3 Technical Overview 36

Questions?

Thanks to the many contributors to the ECF standard!

Getting the standard:http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=legalxml-courtfiling

Contacting the Committee:

Ron Bowmaster, Public Sector [email protected]

John Greacen, Private Sector [email protected]