 Thanks Art. Um, can we see the PowerPoint? Yep, looks great. Excellent. Um, so hi everybody I'm Anna Steele. I'm the director of consulting at just tech. We provide Technology related consulting services to legal aid providers Prior to that I was a technology coordinator at legal assistance of Western New York based out of our Geneva office And today I am joined by Angela Tripp from Michigan Hannah Kaufman from Illinois and Susan Lucas from Pennsylvania and And what we are going to do today is go on a little bit of a road trip There are a lot of really great technology projects that are happening around the country both the program level regional level and statewide level and There's obviously a lot of infrastructure both technical and I guess human infrastructure It's kind of going on beyond behind the scenes that allow these types of projects to happen So that's what I wanted to explore today to unpack today And hope that folks have Something to learn from us and what we have been doing in our states and so I'm going to start today with New York So I've spent About 15 years of my life in New York Both in early childhood and my college years and my legal aid years So we'll always have a very special place in my heart, especially professionally as it's where I got introduced to legal aid and fell in love with it and You know, New York is not unique in that it has some pretty stark Differences between the urban and the rural parts of the state Obviously the the rural parts of the state don't have the same access to the same resources as the more urban programs have and it can be really challenging for More rural providers to fill sysadmin jobs tech support positions As they just don't necessarily have the talent pool that you have in urban areas. That's not to say it doesn't exist. There are the Rural programs do have great folks working with them, but it can it can be really hard to fill those positions And so geography obviously poses a little bit of a barrier for tech But we have worked as a state to kind of find ways to overcome those barriers and with all of providers right there's Around 90 providers in New York alone. So there's a lot of room for collaboration there Fortunately, we do receive funding from a number of streams the biggest ones being LSC our office of court administration in Iola But all that being said we don't have centralized tech services and The programs throughout the state have a mix of staff and consultants So there's obviously a lot going on in New York State and we really wanted to make sure That we are sharing resources. We're not duplicating services both the program directors and the tech folks are learning from each other and We're really fortunate that we have two different working groups in New York that allow this to happen So the first that we're going to talk about is nice tech Started formally in 2012 The New York State technology coordination work group also now known as nice tech Is a group of stakeholders that are devoted to brainstorming and implementing Ideas that use technology to improve the delivery of legal services Members of the work group initially included non-tech decision makers and managers and supervisors within legal services organizations But over time it has involved evolved to include also the technology responsible people and technologists Who work for these different organizations? We have a small group of facilitators usually around two or three people those folks have kind of changed over time, but Those who were involved initially in the beginning of nice tech are still involved whether they're facilitators or not And we have monthly calls In and these can happen in a variety of different formats our agendas often include discussions around policies and projects One of my favorite parts of these calls is what's called around the horn where everybody takes about two minutes to update folks on What's going on in their individual programs? We try and make time for that once every couple of months to make sure That folks have a chance to kind of share and learn from each other One year we were alternating between these administrative calls with set agendas and webinars The webinars were great because there would be a nice tech member who would kind of take They would adopt a month they would help coordinate a webinar They would be very similar to the ones that start was talking about at the beginning But would have a New York twist on them and be really kind of honed in on some of the New York State specific issues we've had webinars on online intake and triage. We've had webinars on security and some and data visualization So really kind of unpacking some of these issues that are getting talked about it talked about a national scale and applying them to What's happening in New York? the group has also Brainstormed and submitted panels for different conferences for TIG for EJC and for our the New York Bar Association's partnership conference And with the goal of right, you know TIG is tech focused EJC. You're seeing more and more tech Panels happening, but are the New York State Bar Association Conference we really wanted to plug it to make sure that we were plugging in To that audience and making sure that the program directors and the supervising attorneys and the staff attorneys were aware of what was going on tech-wise The group also offers comments and support on initiatives as a group So if there's something that we really like and are excited about or something that We have a little bit of pause about and want to be Bring up some considerations. We will do that as nice tech And we also the past few years have helped coordinate the statewide technology conference, which i'll talk about in a little bit So the other group we have is the technology working group for our permanent commission on access to justice So when the permanent commission on access to justice was getting started it was initially a task force And technology kept coming up as a way to address the justice gap So eventually the members of the task force decided to create a working groups to specifically focus on technology related issues This working group publishes a report annually that makes a series of recommendations to the permanent commission on access to justice for their report and In the past we've seen a number of different recommendations. One was surrounding a survey a statewide survey that was done on technology within new york state And some additional analysis was done and within its within its report the permanent commission reported out on some recommendations around staffing and policies and security and training kind of the classic issues that That legal aid providers know and realize that they need to enhance as far as their technology services go We've seen recommendations on the pro bono tech initiative, which i'll be talking about in a little bit We've seen recommendations on the two pilots that are currently happening for online intake and triage They were at the commission recommended that these happen two different Groups one in western new york and one in new york city secured some funding And we've been piloting some online intake and triage projects specifically for consumer law projects The commission recommended that while that these pilots kind of happen in tandem So they could continue to kind of communicate with each other share resources share ideas And that's what happened I worked on the project In western new york when I was with law new york the western new york consumer help finder It is it is launched and operational at this point that was funded By lsc through through tig grant and then christ schwarz from the city bar justice center down in new york city Led the initiative to develop the new york city consumer help finder With support from the new york community trust and donations from legal server so That was kind of a really cool recommendation that came out of a need that the permanent commission saw they saw a need for Additional services related to consumer law and and integrated that with technology and now we have these two pilot projects that are happening So, you know in general, I think new york is really fortunate that we have an access justice commission We have an access justice commission that really supports The technology and that has its own kind of group of folks who are really focusing on technology issues So one of the coolest things I think to come out of the collaboration between nice tech and the Working group was our statewide technology conference So this has happened our inaugural one was in 2015 We've had our fourth this year at cornell tech out on roosevelt island, which was really exciting These conferences are really geared towards Leadership and management as well as the technologists or the tech responsible people We found it really important to get both of those folks in the room Um, because often you see technologists go off to tech conferences. They have really good ideas They come back they present them to their leadership and leadership like I have no idea what you're talking about So this has allowed kind of both of those folks to be in the same room together while still learning in a way that makes the most sense for their position in their individual programs, so we have multiple tracks, right that allow for um leadership to explore what they need to explore the techies to explore what they need to explore And we also have a number of plenary sessions It's only a one-day conference Which has proved to be challenging because there's obviously a lot of information out there to be Discussed but some of the highlights include peer-to-peer strategizing It's a one-hour session tables are set up with a facilitator and a topic and You sit down at a table talk about this issue commonly for half an hour and then switch To talk about another issue with folks people really seem to like that. It really allows you to kind of pick and choose what What you want to learn about and still have a facilitator at the table who? Can help lead the conversation and can serve a service an expert in that area And then obviously one of the major highlights of this is just being able to get everybody together for a day I know Many of us work on projects with folks that we've never met in person So it's a lot of fun to put faces to voices from conference calls and really have some time to talk about innovative initiatives and next steps on projects This year was really interesting because we had a theme for the conference rather than just kind of pulling out topics That we generally wanted to discuss this year's theme was on integrations and how to make different Make sure that our different systems are able to talk to each other and making sure that we're doing work outside of silos So it's really interesting and and really rather inspiring conferences this year and on our second day We had a smaller group of folks meet More technical focus to really kind of get into the nitty gritty as far as these integrations are what apis are available What's not available? What data can be shared? What data can be transferred? And a lot of really cool conversations came out of of that day So we're really excited about kind of hopefully incorporating that into some of our following conferences So quick stop before I move to something else I want to talk quickly about lessons learned as far as the technology conference goes I alluded to this a little bit earlier. Don't pack too much material into one day It's really it can be really exhausting to be in a conference all day long and when You're learning a lot and there's a lot of moving around and there's a lot of new topics getting discussed It can be really challenging. I think smaller breakouts Equal more participation, which is great panel discussions are awesome and a great way to get a lot of information out at one time But we've learned that mixing those up with these with smaller breakout groups and these peer-to-peer strategizing sessions have really been successful For anybody who's been to a conference before you'll I'm sure you'll agree with me on this ending the day with an interactive session can be really challenging trying to get folks to Share their thoughts or their ideas Or next steps at the end of a full day conference can be tough So what we have kind of done In lieu of that is ending the day with the facilitators for the different presentations and panel groups reporting out on what happened So anything that didn't happen in an inflammatory can still be discussed And I think building in time for networking and follow-up is really important Some of the greatest things that come out of conferences are those backhaul conversations conversations over lunch conversations at happy hour afterwards And so you really want to build in that time for folks because the end of the day Conferences over we all get back to our desks We have 600 emails that need to be caught up on and we really don't have time to synthesize and apply what we've learned And follow up with all those people that we intended on doing so giving people a little bit of Building some structured time into the into your conference is really important So the last new york initiative I wanted to touch on real quick was our cio work group project So this came out of the technology working group with the permanent commission on access to justice and We brought in cios from the private law firm community who were willing to do some pro bono work for legal aid law firms And what we discovered is these cios really had a lot to learn as far as How legal aid worked and how different it was from The big multinational firms that they were a part of so We decided to do some pro bono assessments and this obviously greatly benefited the folks who participated in the assessment as well so the cios came in And they did some assessments for programs all around the state both in the city and upstate And uh reported back, you know, some folks did some uh very targeted feedback as a result of these technology assessments and both the cios found it very educational and the Providers found it to be a really useful to learn about How to better tech plan and what resources they may need to use and and how to kind of prioritize what updates needs to be made over time So that then evolved right everybody now wants an assessment Right and so that evolved into this kind of self-guided assessment that that the cios worked to create and There was a survey monkey that would go out you would answer a series of questions Folks did some analysis on the answers to that questions and then a webinar would be given on that particular topic So it would be kind of group recommendations as opposed to like very targeted recommendations But again, we found this to be a really great way Uh to utilize these cios who are willing to to do pro bono work and be able to kind of share Their knowledge as much as possible Um Without You know, we wanted to be inclusive as possible and we wanted as many legal aid providers to take advantage of that as possible. So that project just recently wrapped up as well and it's been a really exciting initiative and As part of it also due to some of their relationships, the cios were able to kind of negotiate some competitive pricing on uh different software packages For legal aid providers if they wanted to move based on some of the recommendations that they made So another quick stop with some lessons learned um A project like this needs centralized project management You know one common theme throughout this whole thing is that none of this was really funded Um, there's no like real centralized body on this this all of these different projects came out of seeing a need And responding to it. Um, so that's one of the big challenges with the cio project is that as an unfunded project There was no real uh central project management Uh, that obviously I think it would have benefited a lot from Uh law firms also don't have the pro bono capacity that they used to surrounding technology Uh, you know the security issues alone in private law firms have just totally ballooned So they are dedicating obviously more and more and more of their resources to make sure that They are operating in a way that makes a lot of sense for them security and tech wise so they don't necessarily Have the uh the pro bono opportunities aren't necessarily as available as they once were And as I talked about in the beginning the whole urban rural divide in new york state It gets really challenging to get mid-size Firm cio's from upstate to be involved. We did have some which was awesome Um, but it obviously presents a challenge for A project like that Um, so with that just a couple of takeaways for you on this section of our road trip. Um You know as I was talking about you don't need A funding you don't need a big funding stream To tackle any of this. Uh, you need folks who are excited about technology who are dedicated to the cause and who are willing to give Give up an hour a month to start a technology Working group locally and within your state and can see what initiatives and what connections and what resources can be gathered from there Um, so I definitely recommend um, if you don't already have a technology working group Put in your state to consider looking into it even if it starts at a regional level even at a programmatic level If you're a program that has seven eight nine offices Make sure that internally you're collaborating and you're just talking regularly about the tech That is happening within your program and that can hopefully blossom into something greater Uh, so again, I'm anna steel. Here is my email address if you have any questions about what we've done in new york I'm happy to talk if I have any folks from new york on the call today Who are not currently members of my stack feel free to shoot me an email and we can get you a part of that group And now I will pass us on to angela Hi everyone. Um, good afternoon. I am here with my co-pilot and cat Claire she's very excited for her youtube debut Um, I am going to talk to you about um what we do in michigan in michigan Um We have a pretty different setup from new york. You'll hear a lot of the the same ideas But we're structured very differently. And so i'm going to talk to you about um all the The things that we do in the midwest First of all, I have a couple of different job rules. Um But i'm here today as the Manager of the michigan poverty law programs id department Um, I also am the director of the michigan legal help program. Um, but that's not what i'm going to talk about today So in michigan, um, I want to give you an overview of the technology resources and where they are Located, um, the michigan poverty law program is a statewide research and litigation support office We have six subject matter experts and an it staff of three This program was funded um in the year 2000 By our iota funder the michigan state bar foundation We are not lsc funded in any way or restricted in any way and primarily we as an organization focus on support litigation support for attorneys all over the state Training support for all the legal aid programs in the state administrative and legislative advocacy And a certain amount of it support In michigan, there are about 12 individual legal aid providers So while we do have the urban rural split as you can see in my photos here of detroit and pictured rocks Um, it's much it's a much closer split than what new york has And we're just a much smaller state. So we have five lsc funded providers that cover the whole state In about seven other legal services providers depending on How you count everything? All programs have their own technology staff But a lot of duties are handled centrally by the michigan poverty law program The all of the providers of legal aid Work together. They have a legal services association in michigan. It's actually a little nonprofit And we meet every two months to talk about issues related to legal services We engage a lobbyist and so we That's how we work together as a state of different legal aid providers And part of that as a legal services association in michigan is the legal services computer committee Kind of like what anna was talking about although Not as exciting as you know, we don't have webinars. We just have five monthly meetings to talk about issues statewide projects issues come into all and special requests Some of the things that we've worked through as a group were online intake and texting Which were statewide projects that mplp undertook Sometimes we talk about issues that are common to everyone such as electronic data storage Or ending of support for different windows platforms technology reporting needs for each program And things like that so it's more of a problem-solving Group rather than a shared education, but I love the idea and of throwing some webinars in there to keep people engaged We don't have an access to justice committee We have what we call a state planning body and there is no specific technology subgroup of that Our state bar foundation is our iota funder, which as I mentioned funds the michigan poverty law program including our it services We have a nearly statewide intake and advice hotline called the council and advocacy law line And so mplp works closely with them on all things technical related to the hotline And while we don't have a tech subcommittee of the state planning body We do have a newly formed integrated technology and innovations committee And that group is made up of leaders from legal services The machine state bar and the state court administrative office and we meet every two months Really around trying to make sure that all of our different technology projects are coordinated And integrate with one another because all all of us tend to you know, we we cover different aspects of the Legal community and so we want to make sure that all of our projects work together as well as possible And that we're not duplicating services So michigan, um Is an example of a state that undertakes Big technology projects centrally in order to increase efficiency and expansive service for everyone unlike new york Where and it just said, you know, you can do it with without a lot of resources michigan has specifically dedicated resources To the michigan poverty law program to be the the leader and the organizer Of statewide technology and to take on some of the tasks specifically so What michigan poverty law program does um related to technology for all the legal aid providers in the state We host and maintain pica cms, which is our case management systems We host all of these except for one legal aid program And these are big programs small programs law school clinics itty bitty two attorney nonprofits Anyone in the state who is a non-profit legal aid provider Can ask us to set up a pica in a great instance for them and we will do it We will host it. We will Make sure it's up to date and maintained And make modifications reasonable modifications as requested Um, we do have one statewide resource for self-reprisoned litigants. It is the michigan legal help program so Legal aid programs do not have their own Information legal information for litigants. They each have their own sort of brochure aware website about their services but they leave all of the Education and self-help to us at michigan legal help and we all and they we work with them They don't contribute content, but we definitely take suggestions and recommendations and They often tell us what things need to be changed or Added and that's really valuable input to us We have a statewide triage as part of the michigan legal help website Where we direct people to or from to or away from legal aid And we have centralized online intake That was built by michigan legal help and michigan poverty law program And we customize it for each legal aid program But again, we build it we maintain it and all they have to do is Pick up the cases when they come into their PECA case management system MPLP IT staff maintains websites for statewide programs We have about 17 websites that we maintain As I mentioned legal aid programs maintain their own brochure where you know, this is who we are and what we do websites, but because We work with the statewide programs such as the michigan immigrant rights center the michigan other justice initiative We maintain all of build and maintain all of those websites MPLP staff Provide consultation services, but it's not helpdesk style support We're not You know troubleshooting why the internet doesn't work in someone's office We limit our consultation to our areas of expertise And we will consult up to the point where we need system access So what this means is that you know, I might consult in project management of a technology project Or our web our website staff person might Provide consultation on how to best lay out a website or how to build You know, if someone wanted to build a Drupal website, which is the platform that we use He might give them extensive consultation in terms of What modules to use for what things and things like that But he's not going to tell someone how to give any consultation on How to make a wordpress website, for instance, because that's not our area of expertise And then our systems administrator provides the the most consultation Because he's the most knowledgeable about the widest array of problems And again, people call him people email him from all the other legal aid programs He provides consultation To different levels, but it's not it's not helpdesk style and it's not it's not individual staff people he will talk to A program's IT person or a program's director To give sort of that top level consultation. There's no way that he could keep up with Sort of a helpdesk style support But it is it is I see it as sort of the the equivalent to what our MPLP staff attorneys do they advise in areas of Legal matters and are and provide consultation and direction and research And so our IT staff sort of has that same role As it refers to IT, you know MPLP attorneys don't write individual You know little briefs for people just like our IT staff isn't going to provide helpdesk service Just to take a few moments to talk about the roles of the three IT staff at MPLP Our systems administrator Side note. He's leaving us. So if anyone wants to move to michigan, it's a beautiful place We're hiring a systems administrator The he maintains all of our IT for Our larger program not just MPLP, but the larger program that we're a part of called The michigan statewide advocacy services and he works with the michigan advocacy program tech technology manager To co-manage those the two programs together um He maintains upgrades it creates modifies pika instances for everyone in the state He provides assistance with Some of the statewide technology projects That we do like online intake We also did a recent TIG project that added texting capacity to pika And so he played large roles in those statewide projects And he assists with training we also do technology training a couple times a year as part of our role at MPLP He assists with those and as I mentioned the consultation services Our website coordinator builds and maintains those statewide program websites And as I mentioned all individual legal aid programs build and maintain their own websites But we handle basically everything else Including michigan legal help statewide triage online intake And all of the the statewide Advocate advocate and public-facing websites Finally IT grants and project manager. That's me I supervise the IT staff. I build an annual work plan and a technology plan I chair our lscc meetings A project manage statewide projects like triage online intake pika texting I'm the lead trainer and organizer And I handle our IT specific grants We do partner with the michigan advocacy program to apply for and work with TIGs We also have a few other small streams of funding And I should mention to go back to that to our how How we Host and maintain all the pika instances. We do charge a small amount of money for that We charge programs between 500 and $2,500 per program To maintain those websites Um, which I'm going to talk about right now. So, uh, Anna asked us to talk about a couple Sample initiatives to give you an idea of some of the things that we do The first one is that statewide, uh, cms As I mentioned, we host and maintain pika instances for all legal aid providers in the state except for one Um and many law school clinics and very small programs And so I think we're at about 15 instances right now that that we maintain We charge programs a small fee to cover the hosting And data storage and statewide license and that's again as I said between 500 and $2,500 a year depending on How many users the number of modifications requested by the program and The size of the storage We also add modules like the texting and online intake to each program instance troubleshoot problems that they encounter We host all the instances and are responsible for backups managing downtime consulting on potential modifications And we lead We take the lead on the statewide projects such as online intake and texting So we contract with the vendor pika software Plan the project manage the statewide meetings Do the initial testing manage broader testing Um and then do widespread training and implementation Um another project that we have done recently is uh around electronic data storage and destruction Um over the last few years. This has become an issue as more and more Um programs store documentation on pika and so you know because we host those instances We are aware of how much data that is and how much is changing um So everyone was getting we were getting concerned about storage space And as a result the programs were concerned about what that will do to their cost Of pika. Um, and so everyone wanted to talk about how to handle electronic file destruction Um, so we had uh, we dedicated Some time at our legal services computer committee meetings to talking about this Um and mplp led the discussion Did a bunch of research and we drafted sample electronic data destruction policies With with the legal services computer committee group and then shared them with the larger legal services association in michigan Um with all programs so that each program can modify and adopt some version of electronic data destruction policy And then as people want to implement those policies We'll also Provide the assistance For destroying old data within pika And also provide consultation on how other electronic data destruction can be managed within each program Finally, um one of our other initiatives is involving technology trainings. Um much like the other Just a quick question on the data destruction part. This is highly interesting to me as i'm One of the other projects we're working on at end tap is the redrafting of privacy policies Um to include information about data destruction Was that one of the things that you looked at as part of that? Is what kind of disclosure you give to the public over the destruction of that information? Um, that was a little bit of it, but primarily we were interested in in just the logistics of how to manage it and more how to manage it within our programs because um, it's a huge change in the way that people do business if we're asking them to Get rid of their files on the network drive Get rid of certain emails in addition to sort of the the easier things to get rid of such as the old files in pika Definitely, and it's such an important thing from a security perspective because keeping information no longer lead Need uh could cause a lot of harm if if it's ever hacked into so Great job there. I think you're really leading the nation on that And I I would love to see Uh some of the work product from that be picked up by some of the other case management systems Because I know some of them don't even have the ability to delete stuff and they've turned that off intentionally Right. Yeah, I'm happy to share what we've come up with I'd say we're sort of Two-thirds of the way through this we've done a lot of planning and talking but there hasn't been a lot of implementation yet So, okay, well, we'll definitely follow the project as it moves forward and then try to take some of that and use it for other states and other programs awesome um, the last initiative I want to talk about briefly um is our our technology trainings Like the rest of mplp is responsible for substantive Law trainings and skills trainings and plp it department is responsible for technology trainings um, we do fifth friday trainings For any month that has five fridays Which usually gives us three to four trainings a year Um, and these are just for michigan. Um, these are typically hour-long webinars Here toward all legal services providers in the state um any level it can be frontline staff or technology staff we try to Talk about things that pertain to everyone Um, we record these and we make the recordings and materials available on the michigan poverty law program website Recent topics have included training on the two new pika cms features the online intake and the texting Um, we did one about conference calls and web conferencing. What are the best tools for meeting remotely? And we did have another one about reducing your storage footprint optimizing files for sharing in storing Michigan is also part of a four-state effort to do training collaborative called the committee on regional training um, and they do uh, big, you know, it's michigan, ohio indiana and west virginia Um, we get together and do skills training like, you know, three or four day long skills trainings um one or two day long substantive law trainings and then there's a fifth there's a first friday webinar every month That the four states rotate and we've done a couple of technology trainings through that as well for an even bigger audience We also try to alert people We have a listserv where we try to pass along information about lsn tap webinars and other national resources of interest So that's how we tackle that's um responsibility for statewide technology training And that is all I have today um Again, i'm anchela trip. There's my email address um It was great talking with you and now i'm gonna pass it off to Hannah hi everyone Can you see my screen? Yep Excellent. Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm hannah kaufman. I am from state of illinois Um, and i'm delighted to be here talking about this. This is a really important um issue to us uh in illinois and one that were We're kind of right in the thick of thinking about and have been working on for some time I serve as the council for innovation and technology for the lawyers trust fund of illinois And that is our state's aiolta program. So i'll talk a little bit more about my role As we get there, but in terms of giving you a little bit of context for the state So illinois has uh somewhere between 40 and 45 providers of of civil legal aid services depending on Some of the smaller programs and programs within programs and how you count those Three of those are large regional Lsc funded organizations that blink at the state And as you can imagine and as others have mentioned We have a high concentration of legal aid providers in the city of chicago And in our more rural areas Some of the larger providers are responsible for serving as many as 70 counties just themselves So there's less overlap there In terms of the funding situation as I mentioned, uh, the lawyers trust fund is the aiolta program and that's where I work The three programs that are funded by lsc Take a majority of their funds from there We have several other legal aid foundations in this state as well the chicago bar foundation the illinois equal justice foundation And the illinois bar foundation are the primary ones And then several of our grantee organizations and other legal aid providers Are funded by the government or other non-profit foundations That that serve a broader audience and have grantees beyond just civil legal aid I thought it was worth mentioning that about 90 of the providers that we fund currently use legal server for case management Um, it's it it's about 75 percent throughout the state and we serve 30 We fund rather 38 providers And about 90 percent if those are using legal server That has happened in part because in 2010 We asked some of our larger grantee organizations Which electronic case management system would you like to use this decision should come from you? So why don't you do a little research? Tell us what you decide and then we will fund it And so they decided on legal server at the time and we purchased it for them and then others Historically over the years have kind of gotten on board with legal server But it was never an official policy or requirement for legal aid organizations in the state So in terms of who does the coordination now, there's there's several players in place Illinois legal aid online or or leo Is is a major force for coordination and collaboration throughout the state And they're really doing a great job of coordinating legal services and playing sort of a defacto consultive role As it comes to technology needs for legal aid organizations, but they don't necessarily provide any kind of formalized statewide It consulting services. So that's all sort of done On a on a program by program basis Either with staff or consultants depending generally on the size of the program So a leo focuses largely on Their site, which is Illinois legal aid dot org. It's our statewide website And they're balancing many responsibilities including serving pros and litigants with their site Managing creating managing and and running our statewide online triage and intake system And providing information to attorneys, but that's generally support for them In their role as attorneys In the in the legal aid Area, so it's it's more substantive legal support on a statewide basis as opposed to technology support specifically We also have carpals legal aid Which is a hotline and provider of brief legal services And a source of referrals to legal aid programs. They are based in chicago and Since 1992 have been working exclusively in chicago and cook county But as of this year, they have taken some steps to pilot Serving as a hub for the full state of illinois and so With the pilot program that i'll talk about in a little bit. They are now Really working to coordinate service delivery across the state as well So those are the two main providers that work in that capacity I I mentioned that I would come back to my role and I I think it's worth noting because Our iELTA program is the only program to my knowledge in the country That has created a position called counsel for innovation and technology And that role was really created We're still figuring out exactly what the parameters of it are But it's it's really represents a commitment from the the state's funding body Not just to fund specific statewide initiatives that relate to innovation and technology But to also provide staff support in the way of leadership guidance and and quite a bit of project management for some of these statewide initiatives, so I thought that was worth mentioning in that it's kind of a different approach That a funder could take so if there are any funders or If you're ever in touch with your local iELTA program, I recommend, you know Considering this model sounds like there's a question if you're willing to send us over the the job description And a short bit about what you do on a regular basis We're happy to turn that into a blog post because I think that's the type of strategic leadership We need a lot more of coming from iELTAs and funders in particular Absolutely. Um, yeah, I would be delighted to let's let's talk later Because the job posting so i've been there nearly two years now, so I can certainly share the job posting Um, and a little bit about what I do how connected those really are Remains to be seen so there there might be um, I I think there has been some evolution in exactly what the job description looks like But I'd be happy to speak to that more And and I agree with you. I think that is something that we should be looking to Create more of on a on a national level. So yeah, I'd be happy to do that um, the the final Source of coordination and this sort of goes You know again to my role as as being an employee of a funding organization The Illinois Equal Justice Foundation in particular has a staff member who is working on a pilot project and That individual is is playing an enormous role in terms of project management as well Uh for some of the statewide coordination projects So it's really sort of leaders of specific projects at legal aid organizations Certainly a leo is always playing a major role carpools is often playing a major role as well um, and then there are staff members at funding organizations as well who are sort of stepping up and supporting these specific projects that are focused on statewide collaboration And what you'll not see here that Anna and Angela have talked a little bit about is there really isn't sort of a formalized statewide IT support network And that's a gap that we're Curious about and and thinking about and thinking about how we can best support The legal aid community particularly smaller legal aid programs that don't necessarily have the resources to have full-time IT support in-house and Maybe need a little bit more hand-holding when it comes to using something like legal server So that's something to think about And in terms of the framing of the rest of this conversation with respect to Illinois I kind of mapped it out as as the ghost of collaboration past present and future And I'm thinking of this as Experiments and I think that's really the best way to describe it because we have taken Sort of an experimental model with the state where we've tried some different things Um, and some of them have worked and have remained in place others, you know our current experiments um, and and The reason I think that's an important framing is because you'll see as we get to where we're going in the future We really want to take a look at how do we coordinate all of these different experiments? And what is the value of having them running parallel in some respects as opposed to um as as angela is doing in michigan having One very clear centralized method for coordinating the technologies In the state instead, we've sort of had these more organic springing up Opportunities for collaboration and now we have to coordinate the coordination So in terms of what we've done in the past, um, just a little sampling Um, I mentioned that there is no centralized statewide it support desk um My organization the lawyers trust fund did um attempt a sort of statewide help desk idea Uh previously And that was abandoned relatively early on in part because We were really not the the the proper organization to be hosting that as much as we can provide Some of that strategic guidance. Um, we're really not Staffed appropriately or resourced appropriately or we weren't at the time at least To be able to answer those questions About you know, how do I fix my printer? and we also We noticed and this is something I think other states can learn from That it kind of matters who is giving the advice and when a funder is telling you Here is what we think you should do with this particular system It may decrease some of the intrinsic motivation that the staff of a legal aid program would have had Uh to use that system because now they're being forced to buy a funder where they don't really have a choice So we want to avoid that. Um, and so I think out of some of that experience We learned to take um a more Hands-off approach in terms of decision-making, which um is something that has consequences as well And we need to think a little bit about now. So that's one past experiment The the middle one is the collaborative data system task force and that is An experiment that was funded by a tick grant and it was A collaboration among all three lsc funded programs in illinois and illinois legal aid online And what they did was they collected Made uniform and cleaned All of their data So that they could really compare Program by program and get a sense of the whole working of the state Which is excellent. Um, and I think the primary lesson learned from that Or the lessons learned from that are One, um, it is very hard to get programs to agree On certain language and certain data fields Particularly when it comes to something as sensitive as outcome measures, which we Tried and and simply weren't able to to get agreement on um And it also requires quite a bit of attention to keep up and people are still Submitting their data into the system. I think on a quarterly basis but We haven't invested the resources on a statewide level for somebody to actually be looking at that so um So these these systems require support and they require support in the way of funding and they also require support in the way of actual eyes on a project uh, the final Experiment is is legal self-help centers, which is a way of sort of extending Illinois legal aid online's Reach of their website throughout the state By equipping different libraries and courts with self-help centers Um throughout the state particularly in rural areas Um and training people to walk people through um a leo site Um, and again, that's something that really requires a lot of maintenance in order to make it meaningful And I I'm not sure that we've always uh As a state um invested as as we might have in that In terms of the present collaboration experiments, I think this is where things get really exciting Probably just because we're in it now, but um, we do have an online triage and intake system This is a statewide system that is run through Illinois legal aid online's website Uh, that does some triaging uh for the public of their legal issues if they indicate that they want legal help If they don't have if if the state does not have a legal aid provider That is has already indicated that they're willing to take this case and have capacity to do so Then the individual who's online will be diverted out and presented with either referrals Well, not either they will be presented with referrals to legal aid programs Um in a variety of methods. They will be presented with self-help tools Things like guided interviews and and checklist and forms Um, and they will be provided with legal information in the way of text generally from a leo site If on the other hand A legal aid program is able to accept the case and we currently have Uh seven programs accepting cases as intakes through this system Um, then the the system will collect a little bit of uh information Um and send it through to uh the different seven programs as appropriate So that's an exciting, um experiment in Uh collaboration of service delivery. And so a leo is hosting that program Um, and it has a Drupal front end, but then they're using a statewide instance of legal server Uh to maintain sort of the the holding queue of cases as they come in And then each of the different partner programs that is accepting intakes through the system Also uses legal server and they receive those as an e-transfer Um, so whenever that's ready. So what we're working on right now, this system has been in place since 2013 Um, and this year we are doing um, and and my organization is funding and we're sort of spearheading Along with a leo A multi-month comprehensive assessment of how the system is working Where there are improvements that can be made What the ideal role for a system like this is in the the legal aid ecosystem more broadly in the state um, and What changes we want to make moving forward? What are we committed to as a state? So we've never really taken that comprehensive a look before And what we want to do now is really take a step back And and see what makes sense moving forward So that's one program We're also, I've mentioned a couple of times carpals evolving role as a statewide leader in this space And they are really the leaders along with the illinois equal justice foundation The pilot project called the illinois armed forces legal aid network Which is a network of legal aid programs throughout the state serving veterans specifically And the entry point is carpal's hotline And then much like the online triage and intake system People enter by phone and then the cases are either handled in-house through carpal's providing brief advice On the spot or they're referred out to one of the network partners And that from a technology standpoint carpal's uses highly customized version of sales force And so what we're noticing is that there are challenges because the majority of our legal aid programs use legal server And carpal uses sales force. And so the interoperability challenges are Are something that we are working through right now um, so that's another example, um, and then LTF where I work um has invested um over the years in several business process analysis projects to help grantees revised systems And processes that they have in place to to help them be more efficient And this current round of bpa projects that we just provided funding for and that are starting up over the summer Both projects that we funded involve collaborations among two different organizations Um, and those are sort of going to be used as a model of how or whether BPA is an effective technique to help facilitate collaboration among different organizations And then try to extrapolate onto a statewide level How do these lessons learn to apply? And how can we expand the collaboration and what kind of Facilitative support do we need and what kind of funding for that support do we need? To get to the next level. So that's what we're looking at next Um, and then as I mentioned the future really is We have all of these individual pieces of the collaboration puzzle and again, I'm sort of focusing on coordinating service delivery Um, and now we're we're looking at the next level, which is coordinating that coordination Um, and I just wanted to talk about some considerations that we're wrestling with right now Some of these are trade-offs and some of these are really just ideas The first is an idea of customizability versus uniformity and so In particular with with respect to the online triage and intake system What we've noticed is that we have leaned highly in a direction of customizability And so each of the programs that accept online intakes through a layout site and through that system Are able to actually write their logic for how people End up at their door themselves And that is excellent because programs really want control over who's coming in their door and that makes a lot of sense The challenge with customizability is that it requires a lot of resources in the way of training oversight Potentially developing an administrative interface that can be costly And so we're running into a lot of challenges that are being revealed through our Evaluation of the Otis system Where we're noticing that We've gone so far in the direction of customizability That people love the idea of the control that they can have But they are intimidated by the interface and don't actually know how to Execute that in in reality. And so the system isn't being used as much as we would like Um on the flip side of that is is this uniformity idea where you know, we say we're going to do This particular screening for financial eligibility for legal aid And if you're one of those seven programs, then Let's hope that we can all agree on what that financial eligibility threshold is And that's historically been difficult But I think You know, there's some value to considering that question So so that's one piece of the puzzle Um The next two are sort of, you know, how do we structure resources particularly from the position of a funder But really on a statewide level To support and sustain some of these initiatives. Um, as I mentioned, it's it's great to put something collaborative in place Um, and it requires a lot of the ongoing maintenance and attention And human touch And then, you know, with respect to collective action challenges I think, you know, when you do have collective ownership over a particular project or or initiative, it can be challenging to See who's exactly taking the lead And make it a high priority for each individual program Or person working on it And then the final piece which I kind of hinted at earlier and i'm not really sure that interoperability Versus duplication is the right way of framing this But these are two ideas that we're thinking a lot about. Um, and As i've talked about in illinois, we have the majority of people using legal server Which is phenomenal in many ways because it has made things like the online triage and intake system Very possible and very easy in some ways because we can just transfer cases easily among the statewide instance and individual programs instances And the process is the same across all of these and so that is very helpful Um, and I can see the value of having everyone using the same Case management system being being very valuable Um, the challenge for us comes in in the fact that it's not a hundred percent of people using legal server and so when you throw a You know a carpal's into the mix and carpal's is Playing a truly coordinating role in the state When it comes to service delivery and they're using sales force We need to work through exactly how that all works. Um, so that we are Having a seamless experience Of course for the clients and that their Information is moving from one system to another smoothly But also for the legal aid programs so that we can minimize the number of places that they're logging in Um, so so that's a piece of the puzzle Um Kind of on the flip side of that is is the idea of duplication of services And I think that this is a little bit of a double edge stored So I think the the common wisdom that I certainly agree with is that we don't want to be duplicating services We have huge amounts of unmet need in legal aid and a few providers And it is ridiculous that we are not able to coordinate them so that people are doing what makes sense for them to be working on When it comes to the technical piece, I think there may be some value in experimenting with different systems And seeing okay, we can try it this way where we're stringing together multiple systems Or we're going to try it this way where maybe there's a system that comprehensively walk somebody start to finish through an entire process And yes, there's duplication of those systems And the value of that is that we're still kind of maintaining this experimental model where we're testing things out and seeing maybe we learn from the duplication Some lessons that we wouldn't have learned as easily had we only had one player in that space So that's something that we're thinking about and and working towards resolving and we're we're very excited about the future And bringing all of those individual circles together Thank you so much for listening and I would be happy to answer any questions. Thanks very much I'm going to turn this over now to Susan Thank you Hannah and good afternoon all. I'm Susan Lucas and I work as a compliance consultant to the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network Which is viewed generally as a state support center I apologize for the lack of video. My webcam is experiencing some technical difficulties this afternoon I've been working in legal aid in one capacity or another for almost 40 years Having spent 15 years in a program And then I kind of just fell into consulting by accident In 1993 and the rest of it is pretty much history I don't consider myself a techie But I do have a major role in pennsylvania in case management And also in planning for statewide technology coordination And I will give you a quick overview of pennsylvania as you can see here in the pictures We uh Have a beautiful city in pittsburgh in the west at night And then we're also seeing the lehigh valley over toward the west In the fall for those of you who like more of a getting back to nature instead of urban areas In pennsylvania, we have eight regional programs and six specialty projects That are funded by the pennsylvania legal aid network The regional programs except for one are basically general legal services programs And community legal services in philadelphia Primarily addresses systemic issues and does legislative and administrative Advocacy The six specialty projects focus on health law institutional law affordable housing utility advocacy Migrant and immigration issues And the sixth project focuses primarily on class action litigation In innovative advocacy The major funders of the pennsylvania legal aid network are the pa department of human resources n iolta And we do not receive lsc funding, but of course most of the programs That are recipients of planning funds do receive the lsc funds Pennsylvania legal aid network has a role in training training Providing regional and statewide training for advocates, including CLE trainings We hold an annual statewide conference with one pre-conference day of legal server training There's an annual fiscal training a separate technology summit each year And we also sponsor a robust Martin Luther King intern and fellowship program There is some statewide coordination of technology There are a variety of factors and available funding basically that drive different priorities at the program level We do not have someone on staff at plan ink coordinating technology We tried that with several different hires and for some reason in pennsylvania That project simply was not successful In may of 2017 We Had everyone come together for a statewide leadership conference and I will talk more about that in detail shortly We're fortunate enough to have 100 of the plan funded programs Plus the second legal aid program that is lsc funded in philadelphia Using the legal server case management system And I've been asked to talk in detail about how we actually achieved that dream There's no statewide helpline in pennsylvania for intake brief services or referrals Most of the regional programs have centralized intake units And they basically start client services through those units With significant walk-in traffic in the philadelphia and the pittsburgh offices Plan does provide some technology support as I mentioned already. We do have an annual technology summit And then every other year we fold that annual technology summit Into our semi annual leadership conference And we just held that in may and again, I will expand the discussion on that shortly Plan recently relaunched a redesign website and we're now working on a voca grant application With the hope of getting some funds to implement a chat feature for those in need of legal help The liaison rule for case management Is primarily to ensure compliance with the many requirements of the plan funding sources And to oversee case tracking and centralized reporting I have that rule for pennsylvania as a consultant and I've been doing that kind of work For more years than I care to recall We also are having technology systems assessments done for some of the programs Planning is contracted with just tech Who's completed one program assessment? We have two more scheduled And basically what we're looking to do is have these done statewide for those programs That would benefit from some constructive input From the experts at just tech I've been asked to talk about two particular plan inks statewide initiatives that have had impact for all of our programs As you can see from this picture of the main leadership conference We had excellent turnout And the conference was very well received The leadership conference itself was held at a central location in pennsylvania. We chose state college Everybody likes to go to the home of penn state university And we make sure to do this when classes are not in session The pennsylvania legal aid network sponsors These leadership conferences Paying for the hotels and the meals the trainer and speaker expenses Which certainly is proven for us to be a great incentive to get people to attend For this year's conference We had anis steel and michael bowman who was formerly with just tech And before that spent 10 years employed on the it staff at community legal services Work with us and the technology leadership of the programs To plan for the technology track of this conference We cast a wider net this year than we usually do including resource development and pr staff And they join the directors the it staff and the fiscal management In this leadership conference Our primary goals to the conference were to emphasize the importance of effective communications Internally among these four groups of leaders We have found in the past that there are some challenges to making sure That these four groups that are instrumental in moving the program forward Are actually communicating with each other in an effective manner It's not unusual not unusual for us to plan to hear From staff members that The directors are putting in some proposal And they've not asked fiscal to prepare the budget Or the it staff has gotten the approval of manager management for large purchase of technology And it's something fiscal managers were unaware of and it's not in the budget So we took the opportunity this year to bring the four groups together and have a communication session To try to get them to be a lot more Cognizant of communicating timely with each other We also did a messaging session on how to promote civil legal aid We had Martha Bergmark conduct that session And it was really well received by everyone in attendance We also had a combined session on the national state of technology so people could stay informed And then we provided from some other sessions some learning opportunities And round table discussions in smaller breakout groups The particular sessions in the technology track Focused on opportunities for IT staff and some of the other attendees That have some tech overlap responsibilities To discuss the state of technology within pennsylvania and for them to share best practices That are happening within the programs There were two breakout sessions we did in technology and those were facilitated by staff from just tech The those sessions were about optimizing technology for client services One of them were for the IT folks who tend to get into the techie weeds with their talk And the second one was more for other attendees to discuss opportunities To use technology so they could streamline client services And have those discussions in a non techie type of language We found too often when you mix the two groups you have the non techies tend to glaze over very quickly at times So at the recommendation of just tech we decided to split the two groups One of the main themes of this leadership conference was to encourage not just more communication but more teamwork Among program leaders of these four groups With the hope that we would see Then working much more together and collaboratively as they work to enhance technology And so these groups aren't moving as much or working as much in isolation From our leadership conference and other conferences including the tech summit and the annual fiscal conference We learned the same lessons that Anna had mentioned and that is that we tend to try to build Way too much into too short of a period of time And what we end up doing is having to cut the sessions too short The trainers don't have enough time for any kind of an exchange with the attendees And our evaluations indicated that we need to be Later with the agenda topics and allow more time It's also clear to us that attendees do prefer to have adequate networking time Especially during gatherings for breakfast and for lunch So we try to stay clear of scheduling speakers So they'll have time to basically share ideas and network with one another Another challenge that we have which is very hard to overcome Is there are always conflicting sections of interest To individuals forcing them to choose And ideally we've had people indicate to us that it would be great to be able to have Some repeat of some of the sessions so they could attend more than one But of course, unfortunately that it means extending the conference And people simply cannot get out of the office And devote that much time to these kind of statewide efforts So they do have to make a choice what they want to attend the next session I've been asked to talk about or the topic I should say Is for those of you who they're interested in achieving the dream of a statewide case management reporting system It is not an easy thing to accomplish But we have found now that we have gotten to that end goal It was worth all the effort and the time And the programs are much more satisfied With what they are currently currently using Back before we undertook this project. We had most of the programs using an old version of join camps prime Community legal services and philadelphia legal assistants Were using legal server and had been for several years Then we had some of these smaller specialty projects Using their own internally designed case management system And the differences In these systems made it very difficult from time to time For the programs to report Uniform data to plan ink which they are required to do So anytime a program would update their own case management system, we ended up with compatibility issues So that was just one of the many reasons that we wanted to move the pennsylvania programs to the uniform system The first step of this process for us was to Build consensus Among the programs in one of our key funders Which is iota We started the process By getting input from a variety of different people in the programs including case management specialist leadership Advocates those who supervise advocates administrative staff And we gathered this ongoing input because it was very very crucial that everybody viewed this project as a team goal And that everybody was really satisfied with the decisions that were being made and really embrace this great opportunity We also involved iota from the onset because they too always wanted to see pennsylvania in a uniform case management system So they were involved from the onset Once you build consensus And programs are willing to move forward the major challenge is you need to find the funds And in pennsylvania, we were very fortunate because iota had recently received some sci pray funds That were initially slated for general services By the programs and they were going to allocate the funds to the programs But we had built the consensus and iota was willing to target those funds To moving all of the programs to a uniform system with the understanding that every program Had to agree to make the change So that's how we ended up in pennsylvania Getting the money to do this project I will tell you that the entire cost of this project was somewhere in the vicinity of about 800 000 It is a major undertaking That does not include any monthly user fees For the system to be maintained by legal server The next step was to select the system and the vendor We brought all interested parties together Again in a statewide meeting It invited the vendors From for prime legal server and legal files To do on-site demonstrations and to be present for questions After they did their presentations we spent the rest of the day Having an in-depth discussion of the pros and cons of each of the system There was overwhelming preference for legal server And one of the reasons that many expressed The desire to move to legal server was because it was web based And that was a very strong factor in pennsylvania In us making that decision Once the decision was made the next step was to negotiate the purchase and support agreement With ps technology And that was done between plan and ivy ashton of legal server Negotiating that contract took several months for obvious reasons But eventually we got it signed and every program was signed as a party to the agreement The next step then was to designate a statewide project manager We did not believe that we had anyone at plan ink We're in the programs that could take on that rule So our initial plan was to outsource the project manager role And that worked well for us for maybe three or four months Till our project manager decided to take a full-time job with a legal aid program And so we were left without a project manager And at that point we reevaluated and decided to bring that in-house As I was asked to oversee that project I agreed to take on the role because it was aligned with many of my other responsibilities At plan ink But a major lesson that I learned is that given the number of programs that we had in pennsylvania And what is required of this If you're fortunate enough to be able to get this far It's really important that you dedicate A staff position where you have a temporary person or you outsource the work For managing this project Because I found that it probably took up about 60-65% of my time In addition to all the other work that I was committed to during this implementation period So that's just a little bit of advice if you go down this road Each of the programs they were asked to form an implementation committee With a chair The chair was responsible for keeping the staff moving forward That was on the committee And to serve as a liaison to me as the project manager and to the staff of legal server That committee had weekly onboarding calls With legal server I was present on all those calls unless they had a conflict That was unavoidable And they also had weekly internal meanings among themselves Because every week they had project tasks that had to be performed As they prepared for their next onboarding meeting with legal server We staggered the transition Usually during one program about every six to eight weeks But I avoided late November and December because with the holiday season The last thing you want to do is transition a program to a new case management system The training was provided by legal server staff And they came on site along with me for all of the regional programs And one or two of the specialty projects We did most of the specialty project training before go live With by webinars simply because they had small staffs Even though some of them have offices statewide and it was just too difficult To try to bring six seven eight people together in a central location Another lesson that I learned was that This project and transitioning of it doesn't end on day one When you go live with the new system Pennsylvania we failed to keep these implementation committees active After the transition And that was a mistake simply because Legal server or any case management system that you have is all of you know It's always a work in progress As you continue to expand your services You change your delivery systems you take on special projects It always impacts the case management system So you need a small working group who's always going to make sure that whatever you're doing in the program The case management system is keeping pace There were many other lessons that were learned from this project But that goes way beyond the scope of this webinar If any of you are considering this kind of move statewide or even if you're considering it within your own program I would be happy to have further discussions with you About the transitioning process and how we made it happen Feel free to email me and anytime and I will be glad to set up call Any questions? Okay, I'm going to change the presenter back for closing comments A huge thank you to uh Angela hannah and Susan for their contribution to today's webinar. Um, I hope that You guys found it informative and uh, that there are some things that you can take back to your own states Um sart anything else? No, I wanted to thank you guys so much. We covered a huge amount of content today Um, I definitely encourage people to reach out to each of the presenters if you have any Questions regarding the different topics that they talked about today, uh as we covered so much today Thank you so much for coming out. I love to see the coordination that's going on on a statewide level And several of these topics we could do a single webinar over them. So thank you for the overview and There will be a survey that follows this up if one of these topics is something you want to hear more about Please put that into the survey. We will take that into consideration when planning our webinars for next year Thank you Thank you