Months of testing will soon result in one aspect of the Shawano and Menominee Counties District Attorney’s office becoming paperless.
Kay Zuleger, legal secretary in the DA’s office, told the Shawano County Public Safety Committee on June 5 she is ready to make the change effective July 15.
“Once our office goes paperless, and that’s hopefully in the future, it’ll be very nice,” she said. “The whole program will run seamless. It’s all a work in progress, but this is something I’m willing to do already, and I’m ready to make that change.”
Supervisor Tess Serrano said a complete paperless office will happen.
“Yes, the DA’s office will be paperless,” she said. “That’s been a goal of mine for years.”
Digital Evidence Secure Transfer (DEST) is part of the District Attorney Information Technology (DAIT) program that provides IT services and support to more than 1,600 customer users in all of Wisconsin’s 71 state prosecutor offices.
There is no cost to the county for the DEST program.
“What we’re looking at doing is starting sending our discovery out where we don’t have to make copies, where I don’t have to burn discs, where we’re not mailing it out any longer. It’s something that’s sent through the computer system,” Zuleger said. “It’s an encrypted way to send discovery out, where it shouldn’t cost us what it’s costing us to mail it, to make copies of it, to be sending it out any longer.”
Zuleger said she has been testing the program for about eight months with attorneys in the state public defender’s office.
“It works really nice,” she said. “It’s slow at times, depending on how much body camera, photos, videos that go with it, how many reports I have, things like that, but that’s with any program.”
Using the program will reduce costs for paper, padded envelopes, discs and fish drives, and postage. Billing will no longer be based on the number of pages but on the size of the files.
“We’ve been hoping that they could get this the last few years now,” Sheriff George Lenzner said. “It’s a long time coming, and it’s going to make their lives a lot easier in the DA’s office.”
Zuleger said she will be better able to maintain the discovery files, with the program making it easier and more convenient when she has to resend them.
“The one thing that’s nice is that I’m able to go back into the program and resend the discovery,” she said.
When an accused party changes attorneys, it’s easier to send discovery to new attorney, as it is all saved in one file.
“The defense has 30 days to take it out of the DEST program,” Zuleger said. “Once they take it out of the program, they download it onto whatever they need to, print a copy, whatever they want to do with it.”
She is now working with attorneys to have all updated information in the system so when they go live, everyone is ready. She said she doesn’t want to have some using E-Discovery and others still accepting paper and discs.
“This is going to be an all or nothing,” she said. “All the defense attorneys are going to have to go to this.”
Lenzner said many other counties are already using the system.
“A lot of surrounding counties have had this for years, because there are times they send us stuff that way, also,” he said. “It’s just easier for everybody.”
Because of DAIT, Wisconsin is one of few states in the nation where state prosecutors have a secure, centrally-managed network, state-standard hardware and software, and a state-standard, custom-built case management system with interfaces to key systems used by the courts, law enforcement and attorneys.
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
