Progress and Change for Dallas County
In 2006 I pledged that if elected I would work to move the District Clerk's office into the 21st Century by joining other Texas counties innovating with new technology, online document retrieval and electronic filing. In the little more than two years, I have made real and measurable progress to that end.
- Realized $150,000 in savings in the first 6 months in office
- Realized $989,982 in savings since taking office on January 1, 2010
- Will realize and annual savings of $880,000 in records storage costs by eliminating paper records in the District Courts
- Initiated the District Clerk's Digital Courts Project
- Eliminated 2 years of Office of Court Administration reporting arrears
- Diversified management team
- Removed one year backlog of family court filings
- Collaborated with the District Attorney's office to ensure the destruction of expunged records and cases subject to non-disclosure
- Identified 27 months of uncollected Juvenile payments
- Implemented privacy protection plan for divorce cases
- Received Dallas Observer's "Best of Dallas" award for best public office
- Reached 10 millionth document imaged milestone
- Initiated a collections improvement program for the criminal and civil divisions
- Implemented credit card acceptance in all departments
- Reorganized and revamped Records department and implemented a modernized records retention plan
I am particularly proud of what the office has accomplished in the digital courts project. Under my administration, the District Clerk's office has gone from 200,000 records to 14 million in only 3 years. I have initiated a project in the civil district courts to bring E-filing directly to the courtroom. In the family courts I have moved one court to a fully paperless environment and will be rolling out the remaining courts by the end of 2010.