Ohio courts that possess the requisite technological capabilities have two weeks to connect to the Ohio Courts Network or risk being out of compliance.

The Ohio Supreme Court adopted rule changes last year that outlined the connectivity requirement to the OCN, a central data warehouse for case-related information, enabling courts and justice system partners to share information.

The OCN supports functions such as criminal history reviews, protection order searches, pre-sentencing investigations, background checks, and pre-custody reviews. Currently, 311 of the state’s 382 courts are connected, representing more than 87 percent of the caseload volume statewide.

If a court has a case management system that can send data to the OCN, then the court must connect to the OCN by July 1, which marks the one-year anniversary of the rule’s effective date, according to Robert Stuart, Supreme Court Director of Information Technology.

For courts that are changing or upgrading systems, any new system coming online will have to connect to the OCN beginning July 1, Stuart said.

“To be clear, if a court’s case management system is unable to connect to the OCN due to technical issues, the court will not be out of compliance with the rule come July 1 unless and until the court upgrades or replaces its case management system,” Stuart clarified. “At that time, the case management system would need to be OCN compliant.”

Local courts at the risk of being out of compliance were notified earlier this month of the approaching deadline.