NC State Judicial System

The people, mission and context

The mission of the North Carolina Judicial Branch Administrative Office of the Courts (NCAOC) is to provide centralized administration and budgeting services for courts across the state. The organization serves the more than 6,000 local officials in all 100 counties of the state. Their ultimate vision is to develop and standardize a set of recommendations for how court proceedings can conducted remotely.

The problem

The COVID-19 pandemic forced judicial officials to find creative, legal ways to hold court proceedings remotely out of necessity. Legislation passed in 2021 allows for the continued use technology to conduct many kinds of proceedings remotely, including the first appearance proceeding. NCAOC needed to come up with a model for how to schedule and conduct these appearances that would coordinate within and across counties while ensuring the rights and due process of the defendant. 

The solution

”Team Justice” created a handful of personas representing the various judicial officials: the sheriff’s office, and defendant who all play a role in conducting a first appearance.

The team immersed themselves in this intricate process, learning how disparate systems of communication, technology, and physical record-keeping were being used today.

Their solution laid out a roadmap for how their personas could use a tools and technologies already available to them conduct first appearances more efficiently and safely. As well as a long-term solution that integrated e-court systems into a more cohesive platform.

Going into the project, the stakeholders from the NCAOC knew generally the process of conducting a first appearance but had never before seen all the people and their tasks laid out end to end. The stakeholders were excited to take the team’s recommendations back to the Remote Proceedings Task Force for consideration.