County Court of Victoria revitalizes the future of public service with process automation

Challenge: Slow and laborious process

The Court system knew it needed to modernize the way it managed a high volume of paperwork but wasn’t sure where to start or which technology to use. i2 Management, who handles their IT resourcing, recommended using K2 Software to digitally transform several complex manual processes using business process automation.

The first process the Court tackled was the directions correspondence workflow. which generates hundreds of pieces of correspondence that had to be individually printed and assigned. According to Grace Ong, Digital Transformation Project Manager, “The process prior to Nintex K2 Five was manual and paper-based, involving our registry staff having to print emails and draft documents. There were literally trays and physical inboxes with documents awaiting review.”

Solution: Automated routing

With Nintex K2 Five, the process is much more straightforward and tightly integrated with the Court’s iManage CRM system, a common legal industry platform. The Court can now efficiently route any documents to the correct party, assigning appropriate priority levels to ensure the most critical documents are addressed first. When a document is routed to a judge or judicial registrar, K2 Software provides more context regarding the case, which helps inform them to provide guidance for the decisions they make against the draft order.

Ong says, “The [Nintex] K2 Five solution is very flexible in terms of how the judge or judicial registrar prefers to work. Some may want to be a bit more detail-oriented and work directly on the order, which is great because we’re all working in the same document, providing us with version control and only one document to manage.”

Challenge: Complicated audits

Next up for i2 Management and the County Court system was to tackle how they handled auditing and compliance. Court staff dreaded this convoluted manual process, which required pulling files in Melbourne and from circuit courts around the region. The process was painful to manage, with numerous people passing information back and forth in a number of ways with no top-down view of all activities.

Solution: Clear case management

With the new Nintex K2 Five task-based system, staff can now easily see a unified list of audits that need to be performed across the appeals court and civil court, as well as additional courts across regional Victoria. With this view, audit processes are easily routed to the appropriate owners. Once a task is assigned, court staff can begin the process of identifying the correct case file and make sure all components are stored in the correct repositories.

Internal audits previously took 3 days and several people, but today they require one person and just 4 hours. The case management system keeps track of upcoming audits that are due and automatically assigns tasks. Information is also easy to find within the electronic case file. Additionally, the team has a dashboard which shows the audits, percentage of passed audits, and graphs charting trends.

Challenge: Antiquated and fragmented approach

Not all Nintex K2 Five solutions are workflow based, and case-in-point is how i2 Management used the platform to build a SmartForm to collect information for any case that has a plea or trial which may not be recorded in the case management system. Previously, a hard copy questionnaire with checkboxes and free-form text would need to be transposed and typed into spreadsheets. this information proved to be very informative for the court system, as it provided information they don’t readily see during proceedings. They found great value in better understanding the impact that self-represented litigants have on a proceeding. However, gaining these insights was cumbersome.

Solution: Electronic capture and tracking

Now, paper-based forms are gone. With the new SmartForm and the way it’s able to mimic the previous method, Nintex K2 Five allows the courts to extract more meaningful data. This information resides in a data warehouse, allowing them to better tell the story of what is happening in court. Now, County Court employees can schedule hearings and trials more efficiently and provide better service when litigants represent themselves. They’ve also been able to research and evaluate court proceedings for bias or other potential trends that can guide further efficiencies.