Accepting the award for the Indiana Supreme Court’s electronic Citation and Warning System are, left to right: Auri Rahimzadeh, TAG; Lt. Col. Larry Larkin, ISP; Maj. John Clawson, ISP; Mike Ward, Executive Director, Indiana Association of Chiefs of Police Foundation, Inc.; Col. Rick Weigand, ISP; Chief George Kehl, Fishers Police Department; Chief Richard Russell, Noblesville Police Department.

The Indiana Supreme Court’s electronic Citation and Warning System (eCWS) was honored with the first place Cygnus 2008 Innovation Award for Software at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference in San Diego, California earlier this month.

eCWS also received an honorable mention in the prestigious 2008 Best of the Web and Digital Government Achievement Awards given by the Center for Digital Government and was part of the Indiana Supreme Court’s international Information Integrity Coalition winning entry.

Used by Indiana State Police and 38 other law enforcement agencies, the e-ticket system allows law enforcement officers to use a hand held device to scan a bar code on a driver license and registration to create a ticket at the roadside.

In the future, the eCWS system will give officers access to up-to-date records in the field.

“The recognition this project has received is a true testament to the teamwork that made it such a success. eCWS would not have been possible without the assistance of the Indiana State Police, Criminal Justice Institute, the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association, Association of Chiefs of Police, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Council and local law enforcement,” said Chief Justice Randall Shepard.

The Judicial Technology and Automation Committee (JTAC) of the Indiana Supreme Court’s Division of State Court Administration built eCWS in-house and gives the system and its source code to other governmental agencies for free. eCWS was developed with state and federal grant dollars, using TAG as the software developer.

Using a unique interface, officers can complete a field stop in less than five minutes. The application is capable of adding up to four offenses per ticket, and assigning a court date. A combination of citations and warnings can be issued and printed on separate official documents using standard printers.

Citations are uploaded to a Web-based Central Repository, and cases can be automatically filed with Indiana's court case management system (Odyssey), eliminating data errors, and saving countless dollars and administrative time on paper filing and tracking.

More information on the eCWS program and a demonstration are online at http://www.in.gov/judiciary/jtac/programs/ecws.html.   Or sign up for the JTAC blog and get up to date  information on one or all of JTAC projects at  http://indianacourts.org/blogs/jtac/index.php.