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Idaho hits snags with new online court portal
Idaho counties and residents have experienced some frustrating hiccups with the transition to a new online court records system.
Because of that, city and county employees and journalists met with representatives from the Idaho Supreme Court Information Division and Tyler Technologies, who run the new iCourt repository system, Tuesday to talk about ways to fix problem areas for them and the public.
The iCourt portal system is relatively new in Idaho. Only 16 more counties in Idaho need to transition to the new system, which has been done incrementally, starting with Twin Falls County in June 2015. The portal allows people to search for court records and make court payments.
Complaints during Tuesday’s meeting in the Idaho Supreme Court building in Boise included the system not being mobile or tablet friendly, and name searches not working on the website.
An Ada County clerk employee voiced her concern that the public seems very frustrated with the system. They take more calls now with the new system than they ever used to when Idaho was using the old iStar repository system.
The Idaho Press reported in November, a month after Canyon County implemented the portal, that while use of the system was going well for county employees, it was not user friendly for the public.
In recent weeks, Kristy Grabo, with the information division at the Idaho Supreme Court, said an error message that showed up after a name search on the iCourts site has been fixed. In some cases, attendees of the lunch reported it wouldn’t work for an entire day or more.
A captcha code was recently incorporated onto the site to help with security and combating traffic to the site, she said.
A next step is to make sure all county courthouses are on the same page about what resources from the site are available, according to Kevin Iwersen, chief information officer of the court, and Carley Nelson, with the information division.
For instance, all county courthouses are supposed to have computers available to view documents related to cases in the office, Iwersen said. And not all requests for records need to be approved by judges.
Iwersen said the Idaho Supreme Court, along with Tyler Technologies, is making it a priority to improve users’ experience with the portal.
All Idaho counties are set to be transitioned to the portal system by October of this year.
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