streamWrite Connect is pleased to once again be an exhibitor at the National Center for State Courts eCourt conference taking place December 5-7 at the MGM Gran Hotel in Las Vegas. We look forward to re-connecting with friends, customers and colleagues. We invite you to visit our exhibit at booth #226, where we will be showcasing our latest justice innovations, and you can enter for a prize drawing.
Every other year, the NCSC sponsors an eCourts conference, which is designed to improve court efficiencies and effectiveness by educating court professionals about the latest breakthroughs and best practices in court technology
If you are not able to attend in person (on site registration is sold out) you can attend via live stream from the comfort of your home of office. Visit https://e-courts.org/register/ for more details.
streamWrite is once again attending the NACM Annual Conference, taking place in Milwaukee, WI from July 10-14. We look forward to re-connecting with friends, customers and colleagues. We invite you to visit our exhibit at booth #407.
The theme of this year's conference is Courts Leading the Way in Advancing Justice: a Call to Action, which calls upon Courts and court leaders to take charge of leading the way to advancing justice and transforming their future.
For more details on the conference, including registration and the on site and live streamed agenda, please visit: https://nacmnet.org/conferences/2022annualconference-2/#1618236499105-7daf0119-8a55
In a previous post, I discussed the importance and value of providing outbound court notifications. Today we'll take a look at some best practices for sending effective outbound notifications.
Notification Content
There are multiple posts and sources, including the link below, which cite that reminding people of court dates, when combined with other messages regarding the consequences of FTA (failure to appear), is more effective than just sending date, time and location notifications.
In addition, notifications are being customized with remote appearance instructions (number to call along with PIN, or video link information) or Covid-related instructions, such as "if you are experiencing Covid-19 symptoms or have tested positive in the last 10 days, please call the court."
Frequency and Quantity of Messages
Depending on the type of event, consider sending multiple notifications leading up to the event date and time. In the example of an upcoming hearing, an initial notification might be sent two weeks before the hearing date, followed by additional reminders one week, one day and two hours prior to the scheduled time. It can also be beneficial to send notifications after events for FTA or past due payments.
Notification Methods
It can be useful to provide notifications in multiple ways, and if sending multiple notifications for a single event, it might be good to combine different types of notifications, such as post cards, emails, automated calls and text messages.
The New York City Criminal Justice Agency has provided a comprehensive publication that shares summary data from multiple studies, and delves deeper into best practices, including data collection, messaging templates, when to send notifications, how to evaluate the success of your program and more.
https://www.nycja.org/publications/court-date-notifications-2
I recently wrote about the upcoming Windows 11 release scheduled for later this year. Along with Windows 11, Microsoft will be releasing the next generation server operating system, Windows Server 2022. This release is now in preview for Windows Insider members.
Security Enhancements
Several security enhancements will be included in the release such as:
- Secured core server includes a set of drivers for hardware and firmware along with virtualization-based security and a number of other measures affecting hardware and hypervisor related vulnerabilities and concerns
- HTTPS and TLS 1.3 are now enabled by default, eliminating outdated cryptographic algorithms
- Encrypted DNS keeps name resolution traffic private by using HTTPS
- SMB AES-256 encryption enables more advanced cryptography when connecting to other computers that support the algorithms, and can be enforced with Group Policy
Azure Hybrid
Azure hybrid capabilities will allow management of servers hosted outside of Azure using tools from within Azure. A hybrid machine (with the Azure Connected Machine agent) connected to Azure becomes a connected machine within Azure, giving it a resource ID and resource group. Organizations can then use Azure Arc to simplify the management of the environment through a single pane of glass.
Windows Containers
Included are several enhancements for running Windows Containers and using Kubernetes. Among them container image size will be reduced by as much as 40% with startup time improvements of 30% and greater performance overall.
Edge Browser
Microsoft's Edge browser takes over as the default browser for Windows server, finally replacing IE once and for all.
Storage Migration
Storage migration including user and group storage, Linux server storage, etc. becomes easier with Windows enhanced Storage Migration Service.
Summary
Detail on other features and much more information is available from Microsoft on What's new in Windows Server 2022.
Our team is looking forward to spinning up this latest server operating system and running validation tests on it with our Portals, self-service, application-server software.
We get notifications reminding us of our many things in our daily lives, such as dentist appointments, package deliveries, or the expected arrival time of the cable TV repair technician. There has been a dramatic increase in usage by the public sector - perhaps most notably regarding the Covid-19 vaccine. While attending the NACM (National Association of Court Management) in mid-July, we had some interesting conversations that underscored the importance of court notifications, the focus of this post.
Courts use notifications for a variety of things, including jury service reminders, hearing reminders, payment reminders, collections notices and more. When it comes to criminal cases, nationwide, 35% of defendants fail to appear for court dates. As a result, warrants are issued, people are detained for days weeks depending on the nature of the charges, and the court date is rescheduled. This slows down an already backlogged system, and the cost of issuing and serving warrants and detaining people is staggering. Courts that have implemented hearing reminders have experienced a reduction in failures to appear, and since the cost of each reminder is pennies, it is a valuable tool.
Payment reminders are an effective way of improving cash flow. Collections notices are also effective because most people want to avoid being sent to a collection agency and courts want to avoid this because a significant percentage of the revenue is often retained by collection agencies - as much as 25% or more. Jury reminders are now offered by jury management system providers and IVR system providers alike, and help to improve jury yields.
By selecting the right solution for your needs and following best practices, the impact and value of these reminders will be optimized. We will cover this topic on a future post.