During the 80th legislative session, the Office of Court Administration (OCA) received $3 million in funds to create and maintain an “automated registry” system to coordinate the sharing of information from various state agency databases and the judicial system.  OCA will use $2 million for a contract with Unisys to develop the Automated Registry (AR) system, and the remainder will be used for infrastructure and staffing needed to support the AR system.   OCA worked with a number of stakeholders from the Texas judiciary to flesh out a vision for the AR system to provide criminal, family and juvenile judges with real time access to certain state agency databases for the purpose of providing a consolidated view of information about a defendant/litigant appearing before the court.

Access to the state agency systems is through a secure, Internet-based software application. The data flows one-way only, from the state agency to the court. The AR system does not retain any of the response data after it has been viewed. The AR user enters identifying information for the individual appearing before the court and selects the reason the person is appearing before the court. Based on each state agency’s business rules and restrictions for the data access, the AR system will determine which state agency systems to query depending on the type of court event. 

The Department of Public Safety and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will be the first agencies to provide data through the Automated Registry. The Department of Public Safety (DPS) systems provide information related to state and national criminal history, state and national warrants, concealed handgun licenses, citizenship status, state and national driver’s history, vehicle registration, sex offender alerts, probation violators, protection order status, and threat to law enforcement alerts. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) system provides current and historical information on probation, parole, and incarceration for an individual. The DPS and TDCJ data will be available for criminal cases and is envisioned as a tool to complete pre-sentencing investigation reports.

OCA is currently in discussion with the Texas Workforce Commission, the Department of State Health Services and the Department of Family and Protective Services about receiving data from their systems. 

The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) system contains wage information for people employed in Texas. The wage information could be used for verification of indigence.

The Department of State Health Services (DSHS) mental health system contains information on people who have been in the state mental health system at some time. This information could be used in criminal cases to ensure that continuity of care is provided to defendants with mental health needs. The DSHS vital statistics systems contain information on the court of continuing jurisdiction, as well as information related to acknowledgement of paternity.

The Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) system contains information on child support cases. The data from this system would be limited to child protection and/or child support cases.

OCA will pilot the initial version of the AR system in February 2009 in the counties of Blanco, Burnet and Llano. Once the remaining agencies have been added to the AR system, a second pilot will occur in May 2009 in still to be determined counties. Once the pilots have been completed and OCA has approved the system, OCA will begin implementing the AR system across the state in the fall of 2009. 

Questions about the Automated Registry project can be directed to the Automated Registry Project Manager, Thomas Sullivan, at Thomas.Sullivan@courts.state.tx.us.

More information on the AR project can be found at the project website.