The elected clerk of one of North Carolina’s highest-volume courthouses has urged state officials to delay the “rushed” expansion of new technology designed to modernize the judicial system.
In a four-page letter to the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts, Guilford Clerk of Superior Court Lisa Johnson-Tonkins laid out a series of “grave concerns” about the April 29 launch of a new electronic courts system in her county. The suite of eCourts tools — including a case management system the state now calls “Enterprise Justice” — has been on a phased rollout to groups of counties for the last year.
“Since the announcement of the go-live date of Enterprise Justice in Guilford County, everything has felt extremely rushed, and I personally feel that we are not getting all the information and training needed to be successful for the date Guilford County goes live,” Johnson-Tonkins wrote in the letter dated Jan. 31.
In his response to Johnson-Tonkins two days after her letter, AOC Director Ryan Boyce acknowledged “that preparing for implementation requires a large amount of work, for both your staff and NCAOC.”