| Courts Service of Ireland |
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System Dynamics assisted the Courts Service to deliver a wide
range of information about the operation of the courts system in
Ireland to over 5,000 people on a daily basis via the new Courts
Service website.
The Challenge
The Mission Statement of the Courts Service is “to manage
the courts, support the judiciary and provide a high quality and
professional service to all users of the courts”
Included in this service is a commitment to deliver detailed information
about the operations of the courts system to the public, including
the legal profession. Given the wide variety and range of information
to be communicated, the key challenge was to accumulate and deliver
this information in a structured fashion through a medium that
was easy to access and common to all parties.
System Dynamics was engaged by the Courts Service to deliver a
content-centric website to deliver the information requirements
of the Service.
The Approach
The approach System Dynamics took was, working closely with the
Business Unit and the IT Department in the Courts Service, to identify
the key requirements of the website; to identify the relevant content
repositories and to put project controls and structures in place
to ensure the project could be delivered on time and to requirements.
The Solution
It was clear from the requirements that the Courts Service has
a large amount of content that would need to be managed on a day-to-day
basis. It was imperative that this was managed by Courts Service
users (not IT or System Dynamics). System Dynamics recommended
the use of their content management tool “IntraDynamics” because
of its easy adoption for the client.
As the project progressed, there were a number of challenges to
be resolved. One was the migration of all existing content
to the new content management solution. Both System Dynamics and
the Courts Service worked very effectively, using a structured
implementation, migration and training plan to migrate, update
and publish all of this content. In addition, there were a number
of databases (e.g. the daily court lists known as the Legal
Diary; decisions of the courts known as Judgments)
that needed to be referenced by the content management engine but
kept outside its realms as they are used by other departments and
functions. This posed a challenge as some of these were using older
technologies that would not map very well to the website. System
Dynamics “web-enabled” these “external databases” to
ensure they adhered to the new website image.
As with all projects full testing and QA is fundamental to success.
In this case, testing encompassed three different phases:
- Testing of the functionality of the content management tool.
- Testing of the functionality of the overall website including
external databases.
- Testing of all of the migrated content.
Full testing and QA procedures were implemented to ensure all
testing took place in a structured and controlled environment.
The Benefits
The creation of the new document management system for the website
had an immediate effect on the content delivery of the Courts
Service to its users:
- Information on the site is available through a single portal
interface.
- Information that was previously difficult to find is readily
available.
- All content is managed easily and consistently through a content
management engine by Court Service users.
- Information that is managed other than centrally (e.g. the
Legal Diary) is available to the public as soon as it
is published.
The website has been very favourably received by users. It
was the winner of the Best State Body website award at the Irish
eGovernment awards 2005, a competition which attracted over 260
entries.
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