Court Administration Management System (CAMS)
The Court Administration Management System (CAMS) is a software system designed and developed for the administration of municipal provincial offences courts in the Province of Ontario. The system was created by James Whitaker, as an employee of the Regional Municipality of Niagara, over many years. The system was constructed for Niagara’s use, and then shared freely with several other provincial offences courts in Ontario. The system gained wide-spread acceptance around the province, between 2012 and 2019.
The system is a desktop (client/server) application, developed using the Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.8 and Microsoft SQL Server.
The system is divided into three key areas of functionality for provincial offences courts:
- Prosecution
- Courts administration
- Collection of unpaid fines
Tracking of un-convicted offences, upcoming appearances, court briefs, witnesses, requests to enforcement agencies, charter motions and motions for adjournment is available for prosecution staff.
Key court administration processes are managed by CAMS. Data entry and upload to ICON for new offences provides an improved and more efficient interface for entering ticket information (vs. ICON). All applications for appeal, re-opening and extension of time to pay are tracked within the system. This provides a valuable tool for managing the status of cases in this process and provides a critical integration between the applications and collections processes. The system can produce all of the relevant court forms in support of this and many other court administration activities.
A fully featured workflow task management system has been incorporated to support staff activities and to ensure accountability. Users may create any task manually to ensure that no work task is ever forgotten, or workflow tasks may be automatically created by the case process to ensure that cases and offenders are processed in a timely and accurate manner.
The system incorporates a user configurable process model that allows for the total customization and modification of the case management process (as managed by the system) without the need to make any programmatic changes to the application. This includes a vast list of criteria available for controlling the process and increases the flexibility of the process significantly.
Key features of CAMS:
- Security driven menu system
- User defined case process for offences
- Workflow task management
- Keying or electronic uploading of new offences for validation and interfacing to both ICON and CAMS active records
- Produce completed Provincial Offences Court forms for defendants
- Produce Notice of Fine and Due Date for convicted offences
- Management of offender applications for appeal, re-opening and extension of time to pay
- Management of offender requests for disclosure
- Tracking of offender request for motions for a stay of prosecution under section 11(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
- Upload electronic documents of any kind specific to an offender or case for prosecution or collections
- Communicate with enforcement agencies to cancel officers and witnesses for trial
- Tracking and summons of witnesses
- Motions for adjournment (for both prosecution and defendants)
- Prosecution time docketing
- Court appearance scheduling
- Tracking of court appearances and outcomes
- Electronic interface for 3rd party collection agencies
- Electronic interface for address skip/trace
- Custom correspondence (printed letters and/or e-mail)
- Small Claims Court documents for civil enforcement
- Electronic interface to ICON for Collection Agency Cost (CAC) amounts
- Electronic interface to ICON for write-off codes applied in CAMS
- Electronic interface to ICON for payments
At the end of 2019, Niagara ended support and the system was passed on to the municipalities around the province, without limitation. Since September 2019, White Acre has contracted with 33 municipalities for the ongoing maintenance and development of CAMS.
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