When the Hon. Dorothy Brown, clerk of the Circuit Court took office, the clerk's office ran all of its operations on a 1980's era mainframe, did not use e-mail or voicemail and provided only limited public Internet access to court operations. Most of the employees interacted with the computer systems via green-screen, "dumb" terminals, inhibiting productivity. This lack of investment in modern technology limited the employees' ability to provide quality, responsive service to the public.
Brown established a Transition and Strategic Planning Committee to review the state of operations that were inherited from the previous administration and to make recommendations for improvements. The committee's 200-page report, entitled The 21st Century Clerk's Office: A Blueprint for Change, found that the existing technologies were antiquated and reduced the clerk's ability to serve a jurisdiction as large and diverse as Cook County. The committee's report also supported Brown's primary goals of expanding technology in order to improve customer service, heighten employee training and development and increase operation efficiency.
"Modernizing the clerk's office computer systems to provide better public service and bring court operations into the 21st century was a commitment that I made when I ran for election in 2000," stated Brown. "I am very pleased to report that we have achieved our goals while saving the taxpayers' money."
In addition to modernizing court technology, the new system helps save taxpayers' money since ongoing capital expenditures were virtually eliminated. In coming years, performance can be enhanced by upgrading servers, not replacing desktop PCs, according to the clerk's office.
