A reconfiguration of the Riverside County Superior Court’s online services portal ran into major stumbling blocks this week, stymieing members of the public, defense attorneys and prosecutors, raising concerns about when the site might be workable again.
Beginning last Friday afternoon and continuing through the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, the site’s search and pay services went offline for a planned overhaul, changing the interface in order to consolidate pathways into the criminal, civil and probate divisions, which had previously been accessible separately.
The site was delayed returning to active status at the scheduled time Tuesday morning, with an “under maintenance” message showing until late that afternoon. However, even after the portal returned to functionality, some of the pages remained virtually inaccessible.
Attempts to search single criminal and civil cases resulted in delays of 20 to 30 minutes — or time-outs of sessions that forced users to start over again completely.
As of Friday afternoon, the same hang-ups were confronting attorneys and the general public alike.
“The implementation of the court’s new case management system has certainly been less than ideal and has created a number of issues for our office and the courts,” Riverside County Public Defender Steve Harmon told City News Service. “This is a moment that calls for patience and creative solutions. We are doing all we can to be of help.”
The Superior Court Executive Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, saying that it was preparing a formal statement, slated for release before the start of the weekend. Questions regarding the specific reasons for the portal modifications, why contingency plans weren’t in place in the event of glitches to ensure services remained readily available and what resolutions may be forthcoming were expected to be answered.
“Our firm has attempted to use the Riverside County Superior Court website on multiple occasions over the past week,” attorney Elan Zektser, partner with Los Angeles-based Oakwood Legal Group, told CNS. “To say it was frustrating is an understatement. It’s unclear to us why they had to change the user-friendly way of doing business, but regardless of the reason, they really made life difficult on employees of our firm and victims of crime in that county.”
Media organizations trying to track down the status of cases have resorted to seeking assistance from the District Attorney’s Office, but despite having password-protected access, the agency’s public affairs unit has experienced many of the same problems with the court’s search function as the public.
“We understand that the transition has posed specific challenges for our communications division, particularly in accessing information through the new portal,” the D.A.’s office Communications Director Amy McKenzie told CNS. “We are prioritizing ongoing communication with our prosecutors and are ready to assist in ensuring that public inquiries are addressed promptly and effectively.”
She said that prosecutors and other staff trying to complete business on the website had encountered “some complexities.”
“We are actively working alongside our partners in the courts to address any issues that arise, ensuring that we adapt our processes effectively,” McKenzie said.
She could not confirm whether prosecutors had returned to hand-delivering filings to the court because of trouble submitting electronically.
The court web portal revamp is at least the fourth since the 2000s. However, the prior restarts entailed mostly minor adjustments to fields on the search pages and were seamless. The most recent one was a much larger size and scale.