The Court Service commissioned the CaseMan initiative in early 1994. The purpose of the system was to eliminate the need for county courts to keep and maintain manual record cards by the creation of a database of cases containing such information as the case number, the names, addresses, representatives and titles of the parties, and the type of case etc. This was achieved by a series of modular developments covering case record creation, warrant control, attachment of earnings and suitor’s cash handling. During each of these phases the system was designed so that specific and known management information requirements could be met. It then became apparent that the system could be used for the production of documents, particularly court orders, and this functionality was ‘tacked on’ to the database function.

The system allows a case record or history to be built up through the creation of events, and the judge is able to call for a print-out of that case history, should he require it. In larger cases, particularly where the court file has become unmanaged or unmanageable, this can be useful in order to ascertain the stage reached in proceedings or the date of the last order made which, regrettably, is not always immediately apparent when one first opens the paper file. It can also be useful in determining whether judgment has been entered in a particular case, as it is not the general practice of Court Service to keep a paper copy of a default judgment unless and until some enforcement process is initiated.

The system also allows a large number of outputs to be created covering the majority of the most commonly used forms and notices. Included in these are case management or ‘directions’ orders.

CaseMan is operational in all county courts (currently 223), and each court’s system is separate with a dedicated server/data base. User terminals are of the ‘dumb’ type and are character-based. Windows functionality is not available.

Although each court has its own separate system, there is some interconnection. It is possible for a user at one court to log on to another court’s system; this facility is used to manage workload and resources between courts.

There are also facilities for electronic transfer of data-for example cases are transferred electronically between courts and from the bulk centre at Northampton to local courts, and also between local courts, but there is no central database.