This repo contains an open reply to the Massachusetts Trial Court's call for comments regarding its Proposed Uniform Rules on Public Access to Court Records. It is the joint comment of the individuals and organizations cited in index.html and served at http://ma-court-comment.github.io/.
Given that the adoption of a common data standard for the Massachusetts legal community offers the promise of increased efficiency, lower information sharing costs, and improved access to courts, we propose that the Massachusetts Trial Courts adopt a set of data standards to facilitate sharing information between the Trial Courts and other stakeholders, and that all data deemed publicly available be made accessible in a machine readable format consistent with these standards via an application programming interface (API) overseen by the courts. This would supersede the need for the Courts to create idiosyncratic user portals for various stakeholders, as described in Rule 5. It would also simplify the procedures described in Rule 3 as the use cases envisioned could be conducted over the API.
To add your signature, link to supporting materials, or pledge support, make a pull request for index.html with appropriate additions. Alternatively, you can contact David Colarusso of CPCS and he will help to add your information.
We believe that the court is more likely to respond favorably to this comment if it is clear that resources exist in the community to help draft data standards and implement an API. To that end, if you or your organization are in a position to volunteer assistance with any portion of the process, please make that clear.
If you make a pull request, and it is not immediately clear from your GitHub account that you have the authority to sign on behalf of the party you name, expect Colarusso to reach out for some type of validation. For example, if you cite your agency's Twitter handle, Colarusso will attempt to confirm your intent via a Twitter conversation with your agency's official Twitter account.