DA donates computers to judicial commissioners
After decades of writing warrants by hand, Warren County’s Judicial Commissioners are moving into the computer age and will soon be issuing computer-generated paperwork.
The move comes after District Attorney Lisa Zavogiannis received permission from the state to donate two surplus computers from her office for judicial commissioners to use at the jail, according to County Executive John Pelham.
‘The Policy and Personnel Committee has initiated a program to put computers at the jail for our Judicial Commissioners,’ Pelham said. ‘Our commissioners have always handwritten their warrants, but we will now be using a computer program to do this.’
Pelham says the new system will require some training, but will eventually have several advantages, including increased ease of use, standardization, and computer storage of records that can easily be browsed and searched electronically. Since the program is available on the software already in use at the jail, the only cost will be a secure erase of the computers donated from Zavogiannis’ office so none of the records formerly stored on those machines can be accessed.
‘Once we do the secure erase on them to make sure all the information there is gone, then our technology person will install these computers hopefully within the next week or so,’ Pelham said. ‘Once they’re up and going we’ll probably need to do some training with our judicial commissioners, but it’s a program we feel will make it easier on them once they are familiar with it.’
Pelham says this type of computer program is becoming more common and has been gaining acceptance with judicial commissioners who use them.
‘There are other counties around us who already have this program,’ Pelham said. ‘Ken Martin, who is the chairman of Policy and Personnel, and I traveled to Manchester recently to view this program. The commissioner there told us he was a little bit reluctant initially, as we all tend to be with change, but he went on to say that now that they have the program and commissioners are used to it, they don’t know how they ever got by without it.
‘So we feel like our commissioners hopefully will feel the same way and take this as a positive,’ Pelham said, ‘since it is designed to make their job easier once they learn how use it.’