Strategic Plan For Georgia’s Magistrate Courts April 2016

1. Strategic Plan For Georgia’s Magistrate Courts April 2016

2. Contents • Executive Summary 3 • 2016 Topics Addressed 5 • Approach Overview 6 • Internal/External Influencing Stakeholders 7 • Strategic Objectives 8 • Strategy Map Development and Details 9 • Objective Owners Responsibilities 22 • Sample Status Reports 23 • Strategy Map for Magistrate Court 25 • Plan Usage 27 • Appendices 28

3. Executive Summary • The Council of Magistrate Court Judges has been engaged in Business and IT strategic planning since 2006 and have made significant progress over the years in completing many of its key initiatives. In 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013, the Council met and updated its Business Strategic Plan and in 2010, it updated its IT Strategic plan. • In 2016, the Council determined that a revised Plan was once again required and in an effort to link the Business and IT initiatives both plans were reviewed and a combined plan was created. The 2013 plan was reviewed and updated to reflect progress against previously defined initiatives and to develop new Strategic Objectives and prioritized Initiatives to support ongoing efforts of the Council. The focus of this facilitated session was to not only update the plan by adding additional strategies to support the objectives, but also for the participants to challenge the validity of the current objectives and to brainstorm on additional issues and trends that will affect the Council and the Magistrate Courts operations. • This effort included members of the Executive Committee and selected Council leaders to participate in the annual planning meeting held at The Brice Hotel in Savannah, GA. During this planning session it was recognized that the Council wanted a streamlined plan with fewer, more actionable initiatives and a realization that they needed to continue with this type of planning on an annual basis to provide continuity and consistency across the annual change in Council leadership. • The end result of the 2016 planning session included: • Reporting of the progress realized against the 2013 Strategic Plan; • Focus on defining the Council’s priorities for the coming 2-3 year(s); • Creation of a revised Strategic Plan to account for progress and shifts in priorities; • Alignment and prioritization of the Strategic Objectives required to support the Mission and Vision of the Council; • Process for measuring and reporting progress on a quarterly basis, and, • Defined Action Items, ownership and timeframes for completion of executing against the new Plan.

4. Drivers • Guiding Principles • Applicable to all Magistrate Courts • Complies with statutory requirements • Flexible and adaptable • Considerate of interested parties • Communication with other Classes of Court, governing authorities, and other agencies • Available support and training resources • Promote public understanding and confidence in the Court Mission To improve the administration of justice by providing quality education, resources and support to Magistrates so that the public shall have access to and understanding of Magistrate Courts Vision Statewide Efficient and Accessible Uniform Justice Strategic Objectives Advance Our Legislative and Judicial Agenda Create, Improve, Promote and Implement Effective Training Promote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency Key Initiatives • Collaborate with MCTC to develop a Magistrate Leadership Academy • Update the mandatory action items on the Mentoring List to better define effective mentoring • Post videos and training materials for judges to access to make training more available • Create a curriculum and training in order to develop regional training opportunities • Create a Disaster Recovery/ Business Continuity awareness campaign and distribute to the judges • Gain buy-in from MCTC to change Chief training timing requirement from 24 months to 12 months • Expand curriculum committee to address issue of criminal procedures • Address access and availability of interpreters statewide • Revise the MCTC statute to add “teeth” • Introduce joint legislation on compensation for performing weddings • Educate Council on modernization needs for Contempt bill • Educate Council on modernization needs for Search Warrant video procedure bill • Create Study-group to review and update 15.10 – address mandatory 40 hour week requirement • Publish a resource list of best contacts (Subject Matter Experts) for key topics • Fill all available Magistrate committee positions on external groups • Develop opportunities for more networking within the Council to get more judges involved with the Council • Develop instructions and promote the Pro Se Wizard to increase usage • Train judges to be active and visible in their community to increase brand recognition at the local level • Measure usage of the Pro Se Wizard and expand functions • Create/Adopt Uniform Rule that requires the use of Standard forms Measures Of Success • Progress on Strategic Objectives will be tracked by assigned Objective Owners • Status reports will provide updates on progress on each Key Initiatives within the Objective on a quarterly basis • Executive Director will compile the status into the Master Status Reporting tool • President will publish reports to the Council membership

5. 2016 Topics Addressed by Council The following internal influencers and influencing factors were identified in 2016 as key areas to be addressed by the leadership team: • Statewide use of interpreters • Training availability, effectiveness and timeliness • Legislation and impact of Search Warrant, No-Knock and Bond • Leveraging best practices and experts in specific areas of the law • Internal and external communication improvement • Recognition and branding for the Court • Increased involvement from Council members • Promoting and expanding usage of the Pro Se Wizard and other IT solutions across the Council and Court Through the completion of several of the 2013 identified Key Initiatives, the Council was able to make significant progress towards achieving the Strategic Objectives of the organization. The successfully completed Key Initiatives are listed in Appendix C grouped by each Strategic Objective.

6. Approach Overview The Council of Magistrate Court Judges determined the need to update their Strategic Plan to identify, simplify and prioritize its major objectives for the current Leadership team and beyond. This Strategic Plan will be supported by a closely aligned IT initiatives that will be included within the Plan and that identifies the technology objectives required to support the business strategic vision and objectives.Using facilitators to guide the information gathering process, the Council of Magistrate Court Judge’s Leadership team met in a two day off-site session to discuss the following and focus on ways to: • Reporting of the progress realized against the 2013 Strategic Plan; • Focus on defining the Council’s priorities for the coming 2-3 year(s); • Creation of a revised Strategic Plan to account for progress and shifts in priorities; • Alignment and prioritization of the Strategic Objectives required to support the Mission and Vision of the Council; • Process for measuring and reporting progress on a quarterly basis, and, • Defined Action Items, ownership and timeframes for completion of executing against the new Plan. The session focused on simplifying the Strategic Objectives and Initiatives into a set of focused and measurable projects so the Council can continue to manage to successful completion. Note: See Appendix A for attendees list.

7. Internal/External Influencing Stakeholders The group recapped the stakeholders (listed below), both external and internal to the Magistrate Courts, that have an influence on the prioritization and implementation of the initiatives in its Strategic Plan. External Influencing Factors: • Internal Influencing Factors: • Attitude • Equipment • Court Staff • Funding • Lack of Training • Lack of Uniformity • Magistrate Court Judges • Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) • Constitutional Officers Association of Georgia (COAG) • County Commissioners • Frequent Litigators • Governor And Staff • Institute Continuing Judicial Education (ICJE) • Law Enforcement • Legislators • Media • Municipal Court Council • Probate Court Council • Prosecutors • Public • Public Defenders • Standards Council and Local Offices • State Bar • State Court Council • Superior Court Clerks Authority • Superior Court Council • Vendors/Suppliers

8. Strategic Objectives Next, the group identified a number of needs and developed a list of potential strategic objectives that the Leadership should consider. Based on the discussions, the team agreed that the existing Strategic Objectives still meet the vision of the Council and kept the list of three key Strategic Objectives which included: • Advance Our Legislative and Judicial Agenda • Create, Improve, Promote and Implement Effective Training • Promote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency

9. Strategy Map Development Based on a common understanding of high-level priorities and needs amongst the group, the focus shifted to developing the plan or “roadmap”. The development of each component of the map incorporated feedback from the entire group.The activities included in updating the components of the Strategy Map included confirming, revising and/or defining a: • Mission Statement (confirmed) – Why are we here? • Vision (confirmed) – What do we aspire to be? • Guiding Principles (confirmed) - How will we operate and what rules/guidelines will we use? • Strategic Objectives* – Groupings of what we want to do. • Key Initiatives* – Projects or major activities to be done with specific actions. • Measures of Success* – How do we measure the success of our objectives (at the Initiative and Objective level)? An (*) indicates the items included in this update The following slides contain the results of the group discussion in each of the above areas. These points were individually agreed upon by the group in order to confirm that consensus among the group was achieved.

10. Magistrate Court Mission Mission To improve the administration of justice by providing quality education, resources and support to Magistrates so that the public shall have access to and understanding of Magistrate Courts Confirmed

11. Magistrate Court Vision Vision Statewide Efficient and Accessible Uniform Justice Confirmed

12. Magistrate Court Guiding Principles Guiding Principles • Applicable to all Magistrate Courts • Complies with statutory requirements • Flexible and adaptable • Considerate of interested parties • Communication with other Classes of Court, governing authorities, and other agencies • Available support and training resources • Promote public understanding and confidence in the Court Confirmed

13. Key Initiatives for the Magistrate Courts Next, using a defined prioritization process, the inventory of initiatives that the group thought was needed over the next 2-3 years was subdivided to align with specific Strategic Objectives and then prioritized within each area as depicted on the following pages. These initiatives have been ordered within each of the High, Medium, and Low priority groups based in descending order of priority based on the results of group voting. The definition for the priorities is as follows: • High - Must Have • Medium - Great to Have • Low - Nice to Have

14. Prioritized Key Initiatives – Advance Our Legislative and Judicial Agenda Goal Manager: Legislative Chair; Backup Manager: Legislative Vice Chair or Appointee Timeframe ST – Short term, MT – Medium term, LT – Long term Status New, NS-Not Started, IP – In Process, O-Ongoing

15. Prioritized Key Initiatives – Advance Our Legislative and Judicial Agenda Goal Manager: Legislative Chair; Backup Manager: Legislative Vice Chair or Appointee Timeframe ST – Short term, MT – Medium term, LT – Long term Status New, NS-Not Started, IP – In Process, O-Ongoing

16. Prioritized Key Initiatives – Create, Improve, Promote and Implement Effective Training Goal Manager: MCTC Chair ; Backup Manager: MCTC Vice Chair Timeframe ST – Short term, MT – Medium term, LT – Long term Status New, NS-Not Started, IP – In Process, O-Ongoing

17. Prioritized Key Initiatives – Create, Improve, Promote and Implement Effective Training Goal Manager: MCTC Chair ; Backup Manager: MCTC Vice Chair Timeframe ST – Short term, MT – Medium term, LT – Long term Status New, NS-Not Started, IP – In Process, O-Ongoing

18. Prioritized Key Initiatives – Promote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency Goal Manager: 1st Vice President ; Backup Manager: 2nd Vice President Timeframe ST – Short term, MT – Medium term, LT – Long term Status New, NS-Not Started, IP – In Process, O-Ongoing

19. Prioritized Key Initiatives – Promote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency Goal Manager: 1st Vice President ; Backup Manager: 2nd Vice President Timeframe ST – Short term, MT – Medium term, LT – Long term Status New, NS-Not Started, IP – In Process, O-Ongoing

20. Prioritized Key Initiatives – Promote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency Goal Manager: 1st Vice President ; Backup Manager: 2nd Vice President Timeframe ST – Short term, MT – Medium term, LT – Long term Status New, NS-Not Started, IP – In Process, O-Ongoing

21. Defining Success Next, the group discussed how it would track and measure success in addressing the Strategic Objectives. After seven years of managing and assessing the past plans, the Council reviewed the measures focusing on tangible progress results that can be captured using their existing processes and tools. The result of this discussion created specific measures for each action as well as an overall measure of progress against each Strategic Objective that will be used to generate progress reports to the Council leadership and membership as well as external stakeholders (e.g. the General Assembly, Judicial Council, Counties). The status reporting tool will be used to capture progress against the plan by Strategic Objective and by priority levels while the individual measures will serve as a completion checkpoint for each action. Each objective group is then rolled up to a “President’s Report” that reports overall status on the plan. The timeframe for collecting each measure has been assigned as quarterly for the Council. Additionally, the group assigned Objective Owners and their backups to measure and report on progress by Objective against the Plan. The following tables demonstrate the quantity of Initiatives each Objective Owner is managing. And, roles and responsibilities of the Objective Owners have been provided.

22. Objective Owners Responsibilities Below are the general roles and responsibilities of the assigned Objective Owners that can be modified to best suit the Council leadership. Responsibilities include: • Produce Quarterly Status details and send to the Executive Director for input into the Master Status Reporting workbook • Transition effectively to next Objective Owner by providing support during changeover with organized documentation • Work with the President to build out the committees with dedicated participants • Delegate the Strategic Plan initiatives to their committee and manage the team and initiatives to completion within the defined timeframe • Train others to help build leadership depth across the Council • “Plan the work and work the plan” – define expectation of work and effort to be completed • Communicate to the Council on the whole

23. Sample President Status Report

24. Sample Objective Owner Status Report

25. Magistrate Court Strategy Map With each of the components of the Strategy Map revised and agreed upon, the map outlining the business and IT strategy for the Magistrate Courts for the next 2-3 years was developed and is provided on the following page.

26. Drivers • Guiding Principles • Applicable to all Magistrate Courts • Complies with statutory requirements • Flexible and adaptable • Considerate of interested parties • Communication with other Classes of Court, governing authorities, and other agencies • Available support and training resources • Promote public understanding and confidence in the Court Mission To improve the administration of justice by providing quality education, resources and support to Magistrates so that the public shall have access to and understanding of Magistrate Courts Vision Statewide Efficient and Accessible Uniform Justice Strategic Objectives Advance Our Legislative and Judicial Agenda Create, Improve, Promote and Implement Effective Training Promote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency Key Initiatives • Collaborate with MCTC to develop a Magistrate Leadership Academy • Update the mandatory action items on the Mentoring List to better define effective mentoring • Post videos and training materials for judges to access to make training more available • Create a curriculum and training in order to develop regional training opportunities • Create a Disaster Recovery/ Business Continuity awareness campaign and distribute to the judges • Gain buy-in from MCTC to change Chief training timing requirement from 24 months to 12 months • Expand curriculum committee to address issue of criminal procedures • Address access and availability of interpreters statewide • Revise the MCTC statute to add “teeth” • Introduce joint legislation on compensation for performing weddings • Educate Council on modernization needs for Contempt bill • Educate Council on modernization needs for Search Warrant video procedure bill • Create Study-group to review and update 15.10 – address mandatory 40 hour week requirement • Publish a resource list of best contacts (Subject Matter Experts) for key topics • Fill all available Magistrate committee positions on external groups • Develop opportunities for more networking within the Council to get more judges involved with the Council • Develop instructions and promote the Pro Se Wizard to increase usage • Train judges to be active and visible in their community to increase brand recognition at the local level • Measure usage of the Pro Se Wizard and expand functions • Create/Adopt Uniform Rule that requires the use of Standard forms Measures Of Success • Progress on Strategic Objectives will be tracked by assigned Objective Owners • Status reports will provide updates on progress on each Key Initiatives within the Objective on a quarterly basis • Executive Director will compile the status into the Master Status Reporting tool • President will publish reports to the Council membership

27. Plan Usage • Future Use of Plan: • Internal and external communication tool • Agenda setting tool for Council meetings • Measuring “stick” for progress • Assisting with continuity for the Leadership team • Increase participation of Council • Long-range planning tool • Approval of Plan: • Executive Committee • Council Membership • Stakeholder Group: • Owner: Executive Committee, Council • External: AOC, COAG, ICJE • Ongoing Maintenance of Plan: • Continuous on-going maintenance • Quarterly assessment, adjustment and status reporting at Executive meetings • Annual 1-2 day refresh and update

28. Appendices • Appendix A - Session Participants • Appendix B – Action Items • Appendix C – 2013 Completed Initiatives 28

29. Appendix A – Session Participants • Kristina Blum • Glenda Dowling* • Jimmy Griner, Jr. • Alan Harvey * • Sharon Reiss* • Amos Sheffield • Bob Turner • Allen Wigington* • Jorge Basto, AOC * 2013 Combined Plan Participant

30. Appendix B: Action Items

31. Appendix C: 2013 Completed Initiatives Summary Status Updated: Ongoing - 13 Deleted – 20 Total Initiatives - 61 Timeframe ST– Short term, MT– Medium term, LT– Long term, O-Ongoing Status NS-Not Started, IP – In Process, C-Completed

32. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesPromote Legislative and Judicial Agenda Business High:

33. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesPromote Legislative and Judicial Agenda IT High: Business Medium:

34. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesCreate, Improve, Promote and Implement Effective Training Business High:

35. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesCreate, Improve, Promote and Implement Effective Training IT High: Business Medium: IT Medium:

36. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesCreate, Improve, Promote and Implement Effective Training Business Low: IT Low:

37. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesPromote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency Business High:

38. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesPromote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency IT High: Business Medium:

39. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesPromote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency Business Medium: IT Medium:

40. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesPromote Awareness, Involvement and Consistency Business Low: IT Low:

41. Appendix C: 2013 Completed InitiativesIT Initiatives Impacting All Strategic Objectives IT High: IT Medium: IT Low: