DCL-03-01, Automating the Exchange of Court Data

DCL-03-01

DATE: January 28, 2003

TO: ALL STATE IV-D DIRECTORS

RE: Automating the Exchange of Court Data

Dear Colleague:

Over the past year, the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) have worked together to explore automating the exchange of information between state and local Child Support Enforcement (CSE) agencies and courts. The project, funded by OCSE through a State Improvement Project (SIP) grant verified the feasibility of creating eXtensible Markup Language (XML) standards to exchange data.

A Courts/CSE Work Group composed of state CSE representatives and state or local court officials supported the project. The following two documents, provided for your review and comment, were generated by the work group:

Child Support XML Standards: General Overview and Background, which includes:
- Electronic Court Filing Standard (ECFS) developed by the Court Filing Work Group, a subgroup of LegalXML;
- How the CSE agencies could submit and receive information from courts; and
- Steps needed to test the use of XML in CSE communications with courts; and
Child Support XML Standards: Draft Child Support XML Specification for IV-D Agency Review

I would appreciate your review of these materials, with a special emphasis on whether your state could benefit from automated transmission of data with courts using the XML standards. If you have any questions please contact Helen Smith at hsmith@acf.hhs.gov or (202) 690-6639. Please return your comments within 60 days of the date of this letter.

Sincerely,

Sherri Z. Heller, Ed.D.
Commissioner
Office of Child Support Enforcement

Enclosures

cc:
Regional Program Managers
ACF Regional Administrators

Child Support XML Standards: General Overview and Background (76kb MS Word Document)

Child Support XML -Standards: Draft Child Support XML Specification for IV-D Agency Review (96kb MS Word Document)