Case USA57: How a State Judiciary System Equated Document Digitization with Enterprise Architecture Reform

Sunil Dutt Jha
Jul 31
2 min read

Updated: Nov 3

Overview:

This case is part of a 100-diagnostic series revealing how US public sector programs have mislabeled technology upgrades as “Enterprise Architecture progress.”

In state court systems, a recurring pattern is treating the digitization of legal documents as evidence of enterprise reform.

Filing cabinets were replaced with scanning stations, case files were searchable online, and e-filing portals were launched — yet the enterprise structure linking case intake, judicial workflows, evidence management, and appeals tracking was never modeled.

P1–P6 Insight Preview:

P1 (Strategy): Digitization was justified as part of a “modern justice” agenda, but no architectural roadmap tied it to measurable improvements in case resolution times or fairness.

P2 (Process): Filing and retrieval workflows were streamlined, but the processes for judicial review, inter-court transfers, and public access remained inconsistent.

P3 (System): Court management systems, evidence repositories, and scheduling platforms were still siloed; no shared behavior models governed their interaction.

P4 (Component): Document management platforms were deployed with uneven metadata standards, making cross-court searches unreliable.

P5 (Implementation): Rollout succeeded on-time, but future enhancements were driven by vendor feature lists instead of enterprise design needs.

P6 (Operations): Business ops could locate files faster, but tech ops still handled large volumes of manual corrections and data reconciliations; neither could ensure case progress tracking end-to-end.

Role Disconnects:

CEO/Chief Justice: “We’ve brought the courts into the digital era” — but the justice process still moves at the same pace.
CIO: “Every document is online” — yet judges and clerks still exchange physical evidence and manual notes.
Sales Head (Court Administration): “Attorneys and citizens appreciate online access” — but filings still get lost between jurisdictions.
Chief EA: “We digitized paper, not the enterprise justice system”
Head of Case Management: “I can pull up a case instantly, but I still have to call three other offices to get its status”