EXECUTIVE SUMMARY REPORT
INTRODUCTION TO THE PIA
Federal agencies are required by law to ensure the protection of the
personally identifiable information (PII) they collect, store, and transmit.
The Office of Administrative Law Judges (OALJ) used the Department of Labor's
Privacy Impact Methodology to assess whether its systems contained PII and if
so, does it meet legal privacy requirements. This methodology documents that
proper protections of the information contained in OALJ's Information Systems
is maintained.
The OALJ system that is documented under this assessment is the Case
Tracking System (CTS) which is the only Major Application for the agency. Over
80% of the 180 employees within OALJ utilized the CTS through their desktop
computers in the National Office and seven (7) District Offices throughout the
country.
Purpose
In total the OALJ has jurisdiction over more than 70 separate case areas
and has, on average, approximately 5,000 to 6,000 cases that are active (i.e.,
open) at any one time. The workload created by the processing of these cases
hearings and decisions is handled through this automated case management
system. The judges and their support staff use the CTS to manage their cases
from the initial filing until the judge makes a final decision on the cases and
they are closed. Once closed, the case information remains in the CTS database
for future reference. The CTS has the ability to add and retrieve information
regarding cases pending before OALJ since 1982 and run a variety of reports for
managing the caseload.
The Case Tracking System (CTS) is comprised of the following
interrelated application modules:
- Case Tracking Application (CTA): The client-server application
that provides the core electronic case management, event tracking, and
reporting functions.
- DMS: Web based application that issues a case document and its
associated service sheet, creates the service sheet document, creates PDF
electronic versions of the case document and service sheet, performs
"electronic service" (i.e. delivery), and attaches the PDF files to the case
record.
- Web File: A collection of SQL Server Jobs that publishes Case
Decision documents that are identified as being within FIOA regulations to the
OALJ Public Web Site.
- CaseLink: Intranet Application "links" a document file that is
not already stored within CTS to an existing Case Event. The CaseLink module
loads a document into CTS to an existing case event.
- DMS Search: a Search Engine of the public web site that
facilitates the public's retrieval of case decision documents.
PIA APPROACH
The PIA was conducted by the OALJ database administrator along with the
senior staff attorney who developed the Privacy Act Notices that were
re-published in the Federal Register on April 8, 2002.
PIA RESULTS
The CTS does contain PII which collects information on parties to the
cases before the agency. This PII has been published by OALJ as a system of
records in the Federal Register.
SUMMARY
The completed PIA Questionnaire did find one weaknesses with regard to
the system itself. This weakness has already been identified under security
assessments and is documented in the POAMs. A task is being worked on to
correct this weakness.
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