 You're watching FJTN, the Federal Judicial Television Network, coming up on Court to Court. People involved know why they're doing something or why this is important and why it's important to be accountable and responsible for court property. Don't take the bait. They're trying to trick you into divulging personal information so they can steal your identity and run up bills or commit crimes in your name. I think it's easier in a smaller office to resolve any type of conflict that we have because we all of us can talk to each other and come to some type of compromise. This is Court to Court. Your connection to what's happening in the federal courts around the country, providing information and ideas that will enhance your job and how the courts function. Now with today's program, Michael Burney. Welcome to Court to Court, the Federal Judicial Center's educational magazine program for all court employees. Today we'll learn how managing property inventory means good stewardship. See fishing that Field and Stream magazine never dreamed of. And visit a divisional office where everyone can do everyone else's job. Property inventory management is one of those responsibilities that often sits on the back burner for a very long time. While property management is key to stewardship, it also can be a huge pain. But there are courts that have successfully tackled the owner's task, creating systems that might take an initial time commitment but pay substantial time and ease of use dividends from then on. As the administrative office worked on new property management requirements, leaders at the bankruptcy court for the Western District of New York wondered whether their existing approach to property management would meet the new guidelines. I asked the question of the people involved in our property management, how many PCs do we have? And the answer was between 50 and 151. Do we know how many chairs we have? Do we know how many desks we have? And if the answer was, well, we kind of know. I took that to mean, no, we really don't have an inventory. And I think that made it fairly clear to me that property management was something that we were aware of, but probably not doing a particularly good job actually doing. Whenever you had a question about anything, you had to go to one person who would want to report. It wasn't always complete. And all of the furniture items or the automation items were included in it. And it was really very, very hard to work with. And if the system is built to always focus on one person to be ultimately responsible, that's not really a system. That's a firing line. And we wanted to get out of that. Warren credits David Oliveria, clerk of the bankruptcy court in the Middle District of Florida, with many of the ideas on how to change, such as? We take the time to get it fixed, and then we don't have to spend that kind of time and energy to keep it fixed because there's a system in place set of rules that people can understand and follow so that they help us keep that information fresh and current as new things come into the court. Basically we brainstormed with everyone involved who could potentially be affected, whether it be someone who was doing an audit or someone who actually was doing the tagging or someone who was responsible for doing the inventory or maintaining the inventory. Warren brought into the discussion those often excluded from property management, the people who actually use the property, including case administrators. One of the results was causing us to think through all the variables who could possibly use an inventory database and what possible uses there could be for it. They asked themselves whether they had a property management system or just a software package. The answer turned out to be just software. I thought back to my college days where I was hired to do inventories and factories, which meant you counted everything, not mostly everything. And so we dispensed with the notion that mostly everything was not an inventory and we needed to start capturing the data as step one. 2836. Okay, and that's with the computer full desk. Even if you have an old inventory record, how will you know how accurate and timely it is unless you go back and look at every item and compare it against a written record? We needed to know that on day one we had a 100 percent error-proof set of information in the system where it was never worth even doing. And in order to do that it required my chief judge giving myself and my chief deputy basically three days to wear blue jeans and t-shirts and crawl on our hands and knees. They each selected another staff member to work with them, and these two teams physically cited every item in the district. Blue leather chair, tag number is 2843. Of course they needed something to put these data into, and that meant inventory software. The software is where people always get it wrong because they always focus on the software first as if there's a magic pill here. And if they have the right software, inventory is something that happens by itself. Inventory is not about the software. It's about the people who give the information to the administrator. The nature of the inventory system is just a repository of information. It's a simple tool to add, edit and search for information. The inventory property management system allows each individual to act as a caretaker and each employer, each caretaker understands that the equipment associated with their workstation is theirs. And in notions of caretaker came out of the guide when it was republished on the JNAT, you're legally responsible for that piece of equipment. But that doesn't mean internal controls is a game of musical chairs in which someone wins and someone loses. It's really about protecting everyone. It's protecting the clerk, it's protecting the chief judge, it's protecting the taxpayer and it's protecting the case administrators. Under the new system, everyone in the clerk's office and chambers has access to all of the inventory. Each person can run reports on the property that has been charged to them. You may have a keyboard missing, or you might have a mouse missing, or you have a different chair than the one you thought you had, so you can run a report, check the inventory number and then you can run around and find the chair that indeed was assigned to you. You know, if you want me to, I can certainly break down the equipment. You know, we ought to do, let's spend some time today with the Custodial officers. All procurement documents are included in the system too. Each one is scanned, converted to a PDF and attached to the inventory record. I can follow the purchase through from the beginning to the end and make sure that an item that needed to be tagged was in fact tagged and the system shows exactly where it is. I also use it as the, for the clerk's order report, which I give to the judge during our quarterly meetings. A lot of the designation items are already on the system. Todd Stickle is a designated internal control officer and oversees the yearly internal audits. That process dramatizes how property inventory management is not dependent on one person. The benefit of the property management system allows each caretaker to print their own report during the audit cycle and check off the information and then sign the report. If they have something that isn't on their report, we can do a search in the database against that tag number to find out where it should be and if they don't have something that is on their report, it will show up from someone else's. The new system just seemed to be a lot more user-friendly, a lot clearer. The system makes it easier to account for property when equipment is disposed of or staff leave. It looks like we need to do a physical siding when a custodial officer is relieved from duty. Handling repairs is easier too. This monitor that was damaged a few weeks back, I was able to call the support people at Dell, give them the order number. They saw that it was under warranty, they indicated the serial number and without question they replaced the monitor so I had a new one sitting on the individual's desk the very next day. Can I get a service call made for the Xerox copier here because it doesn't seem to want to print legal paper anymore? Certainly because that should be covered under a maintenance contract. Organizations often place inventory responsibility within the IT department. However, Warren disagrees with that approach. But to have them involved at that level of the inventory which they used to be was a poor use of their time and a recipe for disaster and frankly it's not fair to them. When push comes to shove and a server goes down I guarantee you that the new printer that you just bought that shows up is not going to show up on your inventory because that becomes a second level of responsibility to the IT department. The bankruptcy court's IT department did create the inventory program using free open source software. I took a database that is a flat file database for single users only. I basically took it and made it so that everybody could access it. The court's investment was staff time and labor to ensure information that went into the software was accurate from the start. Whether you spend zero dollars as we did or ten thousand dollars as other courts have if your culture isn't one that respects and understands that stewardship is there to help people that this that doing this right is a help and not a hindrance spending the money will make no difference. Here we have a system that allows each individual to know what they're responsible for. So they're part of the ownership of the court philosophy too and that always enhances morale. The payoff to using the inventory management system is it makes us all better stewards. All involved know why they're doing something or why this is important and why it's important to account be accountable and responsible for court property. Lisa Migliarotti the only person authorized to change information in the database says the integrity of the data is only as good as what she receives and how she enters it. This note here for instance came from Melissa our property and procurement officer in Buffalo and it's basically telling me that a piece of equipment a Dell laptop was moved from our Rochester office to our Buffalo office click on edit record and then change the location here the division office is changing from Rochester to Buffalo. So if the AO were to come in and perform an audit and they came across that laptop they could go and see that it jives with the database information with reduced personnel and budgets and higher caseloads. Some may fear that it's not possible to invest the time to create an inventory system that is accurate and meets the goals of the guide. And I would almost suggest that you can't afford not to do it. If I have a system that can be implemented and maintained using less of my resources personnel resources monetary resources time resources then that's what I need efficiency and effectiveness as well as stewardship. We're stewards we all pay taxes too. We need to do it and do it right and do it right all the time. Paul Warren says he will be glad to share what they've created with other court units and he can be reached at the telephone number or email address on the screen. Other courts also have created inventory systems and some can be found at the JNET resource called Ed's Place. It features locally developed applications. The site can be found by clicking on information technology in the JNET resources box. Once at Ed's Place type inventory in the search box. The court operations exchange on the center's website also features ongoing discussion and tips on property management. You can find the topic by clicking on the search discussion link and typing inventory in the search box. The internet keeps spawning new words and phrases which come to us in varying degrees of cleverness. Sometimes though they're simply new takes on old words or combinations of words. You wouldn't think that one would have to go so far afield to track down their meanings but that's what my colleague Bob Fagan did. Welcome to the great outdoors. No luck so far but you never know what you catch in these waters. That's just the way it is with fishing but there's another kind of fishing. It's spelled P-H-I-S-H-I-N-G. Ever heard of it? Fishing is sending illegitimate emails that claim to be from an established enterprise in an attempt to scan the recipient into surrendering private information. It's a form of identity theft and here's how it works. Fishers try to hook you up with emails or pop-up messages that appear to be from a business or organization you deal with. Like your bank, your credit card company, a government agency, even your internet service provider. The message usually says you need to update or validate account information. It might even threaten dire consequences if you don't. The message usually directs you to a website that looks legitimate. Don't take the bait. They're trying to trick you into divulging personal information so they can steal your identity and run up bills or commit crimes in your name. So if you get an email or pop-up message asking for personal or financial information don't reply or click on any links. Just delete it. Legitimate companies don't ask for the information via email. And if this happens at work, report it to your IT department. Fishing attacks have increased by 8,000% in the last year. Don't get hooked. Whoa! I think I got something. Hold on. It's an unopened can of spam. I guess even the fish don't like this stuff. Let's see. Judging by these ingredients, it's not for me either. You know, this reminds me of another term, self-spamming. You probably heard of computer spam, which is basically junk email most people don't want. Although studies show 14% of us read these advertising messages and 4% actually respond. But why call it spam? The name probably came from the British comedy troupe Wandy Python's Flying Circus. Who did a sketch about too much spam, the canned food, back in 1970. I think I hear them now. I make a fuss, dear. I love your spam. I love it. I'm having spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baby, spam, spam, spam, spam, fake pizza roll. Look at our spam instead. You mean spam? Those guys were out there. Anyway, spam the food product became spam the annoying junk email most of us don't like. But what's self-spamming? To find out, I talked to one of our computer experts at the Federal Judicial Center. Here's what he had to say. Well, what would happen if I push this? Oh, please don't do that. Oh, sorry, sorry. Well, I'm here with Ken Withers and Ken's going to tell us about self-spamming, so Ken, what is it? Well, Bob, it's not a spam message that you sent to yourself, although it looks like one because your name is in the from and the two lines. The spammer is relying on two things, curiosity and emotional response to make it more likely that recipients will open these messages and respond to them. After all, they come from someone that has the same name that you have. But these spammers are just trying to sell you something. And what's worse is that they're confirming your email address information in order to sell that on to others. Well, how can we avoid it? Well, the first thing that you do is never give your email address out to strangers. That means don't post it on a website or in a chat room. Next, use your email's filtering features and make sure that your antivirus software is on and up to date. Finally, if you do get one of these messages, don't open it. And if you happen to open it by mistake, don't click on any link or attachment. Well, thanks, Ken. That's great advice. So where are you going fishing? Rock Creek. Oh, yeah, I hear the spammer jumping these days. Well, there you have it, fishing with a pH and self-spamming. Two things you should avoid. So until next time, this is Bob Fagan hoping you only catch what you want. And that's a throwback to everything else. As annoying as spam is, there's now also SPIM and SPIT. SPIM spams you on instant messaging and SPIT and voicemail. But I think we'd better move on. When we visit court units, most often we go to the main office or a larger division. But there are many smaller divisional offices throughout the federal judiciary. And we wanted to learn what it's like in an office with few staff. While many issues are similar to those in larger offices, there are nuances. Court division offices come in many sizes, and each one has its own culture. At the Harrisonburg Division of the bankruptcy court for the Western District of Virginia, each of the clerk's office six staff members has a primary responsibility. My primary responsibility here is full case administration. My main concern would be getting cases ready for court, making sure the docket is correct. My primary responsibility at the court is managing my case numbers. My main responsibilities is opening the mail in the mornings and distributing that to the case workers. I'm a case administrator. I review pleadings that come electronically for accuracy, make sure that everything's correct. In the interim, I am supervisor of this divisional office. I'm also case manager, supervisor, and financial deputy. But as Clerk of Court John Craig says, there's more to it than that. Here in Harrisonburg, you have to be far more of a multitasker. My other duties here would include back up to intake. I also back up the courtroom calendar deputy. And sometimes there's a need for some technical liaison between our office and Roanoke, and that's also my responsibility. Jackie, I'm having trouble with my computer. Can you look at it? Sure. I can't get to do anything. Here. I am back up for the counter. I help answer the phones. I do work the counter, cashiering, answering the telephone. Just anything that comes up. Hi, can I help you? Yeah, I want to file for bankruptcy. Do you have your papers? Yes, ma'am. Let me see what you got. I do financial back up when the person that normally does the deposit would be off that day. I also do the archiving for the office. I am also the ECF editor for the cases. I am the ECF trainer and also the liaison between chambers and the clerk's office. With many different tasks and so few people, what's the most difficult thing about a small office? When you come in and you see one or two cars in the parking lot, and you walk in and it's only one or two people here and the phone starts to ring. So you know you're going to get bombarded with a lot of additional responsibilities and work loads. I mean we might have two or three people out, that's half your staff, and it makes a big difference. We all just tend to pull together and prioritize well and do what we need to do. Just dive in and get going. Most every employee here can jump in and do any job and can do it pretty well. One thing that's been extremely helpful here is to have a staff, an experienced staff for the long tenure with a very broad range of knowledge. We have a great backup system. We all have or assigned a backup person to take over our duties the days that we're out or someone calls in sick. They'll actually do each other's work occasionally just to stay up on it and they're great at it. We still each have a specialized area, so you can go to that person and ask, yeah, tell me how to do this again. Cross training and having a buddy system and a backup system is the key role to organizing a small office. Training is constantly a work in progress that requires myself as a case manager supervisor to be continually focused on the case managers to see what their needs are. The attorney sent this in, but I don't think he's got it labeled the way that it is supposed to be labeled. How are you going to know what needs to be made part of the record or what not? We give a lot of one-on-one training. In a small office, we have the opportunity to do that. The dismissal case, which gives the extra stipulation here, would bar them from filing within 180 days. The court recently converted to CMECF, and the Harrisonburg Clerk's office trains attorneys about three times a month. We've tried to train some by drawing on resources from other offices because when you pull one person here to train, you pull one-sixth of the staff. And it's an office that's not exactly over staff to start with. Craig's understatement relates to other issues too. For example, he asks that no more than two employees take annual leave at the same time. We do have to coordinate the vacation, but there's never been a problem with vacation. Our staff is very vigilant about not overlapping when they are requesting their vacation leave. I really don't think we've had a problem here. I mean, everybody works together good, and we confer with each other and, you know, make sure there's not a conflict. We can pretty much take vacation whenever we need to. I think we all pitch in and try to get the work finished. We just know that it, you know, what has to be done, and we just pitch in and do it. There is nothing that's sitting here waiting for me when I come back. The work is done. The Western District of Virginia bankruptcy court has three staffed division offices, and Harrisonburg is a two-hour drive from Craig's office in Roanoke. Your clerk is only a phone call away, and if there is a situation that arises, he has always been very accommodating to our staff and their needs. I think a lot of people need to see me eyeball to eyeball, discuss the problems and the concerns with me. So you're saying Steve's position probably will not ever be filled? Not to say, well, not this year. How about that? But the budget forecast for next year are very pessimistic. Secondly, sometimes I can't see the problem if I'm just hearing about it. We do a lot of video conferencing now and things like that, but, you know, sometimes I just have to be here on site to see what's going on. The attorneys are filing electronically. They're not filing all of their pleadings electronically. They continue to maybe mail something in or bring it to the counter. Right now we cannot refuse that, but you may have to at some point look at refusing a paper plating if they are electronic. I know some courts do. In the past, Craig might have gone to Harrisonburg two or three times a month, but the chief deputy clerk recently retired and funding does not allow Craig to replace her. So now he gets to this division only about once a month. And I like having a family atmosphere in this district, and that's almost impossible to do if everything's long distance. Craig says the biggest challenges to managing a smaller division office are not enough people and not enough money. The district like ours, which runs from the gates of Richmond to west of Detroit, Michigan, is a huge district geographically. Be impossible as to serve from one location. The reality here is this office is absolutely necessary. It's absolutely essential, but we deal with it. And we deal with it together, everything we discuss. Discussion also plays a key role in dealing with conflict in a small office. We tend to resolve conflict rather easily. I think it's easier in a smaller office to resolve any type of conflict that we have because we, all of us can talk to each other and come to some type of compromise. And we have guidelines to follow. There's a conflict or an issue that needs to be resolved. I don't think you have as much red tape to go through. If there's a problem, it's easily solved. I mean, there's only a few people. You know, we sit and we can discuss any problem and go on from that. You know everyone here in the office and you get along with everyone. You also get to know the attorneys and the secretaries that comes into the office. And it's just a small office and a friendly environment. That friendly environment seems to come from the thing about a small office that these staff like best. I think the most rewarding thing of working in a small office is you create and have that family atmosphere. You enjoy the people you work with. We know about each other's professional lives as well as our personal lives. Okay. Thanks. Bye. I think the environment and the people is the best thing about working in a small office. It's pretty laid back. I mean, you can come in and ask somebody how their evening was the day before and find out what's going on with their kids. It's just relaxed. I just believe that it's a warmer, cozier atmosphere. When you've been in an office of this size for many years, you've grown with employees, not just as coworkers, but you've grown with them through their own experiences. The most satisfying part of working in a small office I think is knowing everyone and there is a lot of variety. You do a little bit of everything in a small office. Every day it's something different to work on and there's so many different things to work on. Charlotte P. Borgans, confirmation of plan, amended on January 20th of 2005, show costs on dismissal of case by trustee. That's also one of the challenges. Trying to remember everything is difficult. I think the most challenging part of working in a small office is that we have to know pretty much how to do everything. Having to wear so many different hats and keeping up with those changes under those hats. The 341 notice will kick that plan off, right? Or do I need to kick it off? They take a lot of pride in doing their work and they look on it as their work, not my work. It's a very user-friendly office. When I hear from members of the bar here, both in person and in writing, I don't hear any complaints, but I get a lot of compliments on the people here going the extra mile. Here's your coffee bag. Thank you. Have a good day. You know, the camaraderie they have here, the dedication to the mission, like I said, the absolute pride in their work. And if I could bottle this, I'd bottle it and sell it because the cooperative spirit here is why this is an extremely successful office. An added note to that story, the Harrison Burke Division receives about 2,300 new cases each year and at any one time has about 1,000 cases pending. That's our program for today. We'd like to hear your comments and get your ideas for future topics. Please email me at the address on the screen. Our next court-to-court will feature a public ceremony recognizing retired court staff and a successful offender employment program. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of everyone at the Federal Judicial Center, thank you for watching today.