|
The Challenge
By law, the State of Tennessee is responsible for providing services necessary for the
protection of an indigent defendant's access to the justice system. The most common
example of this is an indigent criminal defendant's right to have a court-appointed
attorney appointed for him. The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) is
responsible for the auditing and payment of expenses associated with the legal
representation of the indigent.
The AOC accepts claims from attorneys and others seeking reimbursement. Once these
claims are approved, the AOC transfers claim information to the State of Tennessee
Finance and Administration (F&A) for payment. This transfer is accomplished by
keying in claim information into a mainframe system under control of Finance and
Administration.
Prior to 2004, The AOC did not have a centralized electronic system for tracking indigent
defender expenses. There was a critical need for an information system which allows
automated processing of claims and payments associated with criminal defense of
indigents, along with auditing and reporting capabilities.
Third Day's Solution
Third Day Solutions developed and implemented a system for the AOC to track expenses
for indigent defendants. This system, the Tennessee Indigent Expense System (TIES),
captures, queries, and tracks indigent claim data. The system assists the AOC in
processing claims, tracking over-claims, and where necessary, generates requests for
more information from the claimants. The system also generates approved claims for
input to the Payment system to facilitate claims payment.
The system was developed utilizing the .NET platform with an Oracle 9(i) database.
Users of the TIES system benefit from a multitude of new functions and enhancements to
the old method of managing indigent defendant expenses. In particular, TIES can:
- Manage pre-approvals for expenses.
- Audit total amount approved and paid per expert witness.
- Identify invoiced services that should have been pre-approved but were not.
- Default maximum payments to each case based on a table-driven fee schedule and
table driven case type.
- Support multiple fee schedules.
-
Manage overpayments
- Audit payments to attorneys (lead and co-counsel) per case.
- Identify potential duplicate billings.
- Verify correct judge signoff against county/district/court where work was
performed
- Identify over-billings based on multiple cases disposed in a single hearing
- Maintain and apply state rates for miscellaneous fees based on date of expense
(i.e. travel, copies, court reporter transcript fee, etc.)
- Allow for entry and maintenance of invoice information for attorney fees, Court
of Appeals fees, Dependency Neglect/Termination attorney fees, judicial
hospitalizations, expert witness costs, investigator costs, and other miscellaneous
expense bills.
- Assist in the production and tracking of letters and notices
- Assist in tracking responses to over-claims letters
- Provide a means to invoke imaging software for purposes of scanning documents
- Allow the user to review a status history for each document.
TIES has been utilized in a production environment since September 2004 and TDS is
continuing to enhance the system to support the ongoing needs of the AOC in supporting
the indigent expense function.
|
