Pennsylvania courts have been selected this year as a two-time winner of the National Association for Court Management (NACM) and Court Information Technology Officers Consortium (CITOC) 2019 Technology Awards.

AOPC’s recently implemented Guardianship Tracking System (GTS) won the Court Process Innovations Award in the Court Management category for its “optimization of the way people, processes and technology work together to transform courts”. Among its many benefits, the GTS:

• flags potential guardianship problems immediately
• eliminates the potential for an unsuitable guardian to relocate to another county
• allows guardians to file reports entirely online and sends reminders about upcoming filing dates

The GTS is a product of the recommendations made by the Elder Law Task Force and was developed by the Office of Elder Justice in the Courts and AOPC/IT under direction from the Supreme Court’s Advisory Council on Elder Justice in the Courts.

Simultaneously, the AOPC’s PDF/A electronic document archival solution (a project that developed a way for courts to permanently store court documents electronically) received the Emerging Technologies Award in the Court Technology category. The project was recognized for its utilization of cutting-edge technologies that solve the increasing retention problems county courts are facing in attempts to store all their paper records. This innovative PDF/A format ensures the long-term preservation, as well as the accurate display of all electronic documents, even in the distant future after computer standards and formats have evolved.

“For more than 30 years, Pennsylvania has been a technology leader among other state court systems. While this is not the first time our talented staff has been honored by peers nationally, it is the first time two such honors have occurred in the same year,” said Court Administrator of Pennsylvania, Tom Darr.

Coming on the heels of implementation of Pennsylvania’s landmark Clean Slate program, which depends on Pennsylvania’s Judicial Computer System for data, this is a year of significant technological achievement for Pennsylvania’s Judiciary.”

Pennsylvania will be recognized at both the 2019 NACM Annual Conference on July 25 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and at the 2019 Annual CITOC meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Sept. 9.

For more information about GTS, visit http://www.pacourts.us/judicial-administration/court-programs/office-of-elder-justice-in-the-courts/guardianship-in-pennsylvania.

Original News Release

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