Having trouble accessing online court records in the Idaho Repository? Here’s why

Idaho’s computerized court records system has been up and down in recent weeks, frustrating those who access it on a daily basis. The website gets about 200,000 “hits” a day.

The problems with the system, called the Idaho Repository, have nothing to do with with an upgrade that’s being phased in county-by-county through 2017, said Senior Justice Linda Copple Trout, interim administrative director of Idaho courts. It’s simply that the Repository is failing with age.

“We currently have three servers and they are old. We are in the process of upgrading all three servers in the hopes that will make a difference,” Copple Trout said.

Court staff will also install a program that will route people to the most functional server. Right now, Copple Trout said, two people can log in at the same time and get different results depending on what server they end up on.

“If one goes out, it will automatically convert you to a different server,” she said of the software. “We are hopeful that the combination of those things will make it more reliable.”

Idaho launched the computerized court records management system in the 1980s to allow officials to look up how much money was collected in fines so they could make accurate budget projections. An upgrade about a decade later allowed the public to access some court records, including speeding tickets, criminal charges, civil suits and court dates.

In late 2013, the Idaho Supreme Court proposed replacing the system after its vendor declared it to be at the end of its expected lifespan. The court proposed a five-year, $21.6 million plan to replace the system.

The good news is that the transition to the new system — Odyssey, created by Tyler Technologies — has gone well in Twin Falls County, the first county to get it. The changeover was done in late June.

“There are bugs. There are issues, as you would expect, with any very, very large conversion of data from one system to a new system and a whole new software program,” Copple Trout said. “But it’s up and running, and it’s been going for three weeks.”

Ada County is scheduled to move to the new system in February of 2016.

This story was originally published July 16, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Having trouble accessing online court records in the Idaho Repository? Here’s why."