Approximately 1,900 Clerk's Office employees -- more than 80 percent of the court's staff -- traded in slow, aging computer terminals for new HP Thin Client technology supported by HP ProLiant blade servers and HP storage with VMware virtualization software.
The Circuit Court of Cook County, Ill., is improving record-keeping and citizen access to services and court files by moving to thin-client technology.
For the past 10 years, the court has been employing technology to improve service, including creating and maintaining timely, accurate and complete records of court cases, according to Dorothy Brown, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
The Clerk's Office also aims to provide justice-related agencies with timely and efficient information services to help strengthen public safety and protect civil liberties.
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The Circuit Court of Cook County operates 17 locations, including branch courts in the city of Chicago and five suburban districts, the Criminal Courts complex and a records center. Litigants file 2 million new cases annually, and more than 400 judges conduct 6.5 million hearings each year. The documents needed to support those cases can be staggering: the Clerk's Office manages roughly 1 billion electronic court records, city officials said.
Approximately 1,900 Clerk's Office employees -- more than 80 percent of the court's staff -- traded in slow, aging computer terminals for new HP Thin Client technology supported by HP ProLiant blade servers and HP storage with VMware virtualization software.
Four hundred additional thin clients were installed as public-service terminals.
Thin-client computer systems are components of a broader computer infrastructure, where many clients share their computations with the same server. A thin-client system is designed to be especially small so that the bulk of the data processing occurs on the server.
With budgets as a constant challenge, thin clients can provide excellent performance and reliability, said Bridget Dancy, CIO for the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
Court staffers and citizens now have Web-based access to applications, which eliminate the need for many to travel to court locations. Previously, citizens couldn't take advantage of online technology to access court services. Instead, they had to navigate a maze of rules to find the right office or court to conduct their business in person, court officials said.
Source: GCN (http://s.tt/1h5u4)
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