By Trish Svoboda

The district courts of Kansas, which were impacted by a cybersecurity event on October 12, have successfully cleared the accumulation of new cases and paper documents that were filed during the period when their court information systems were down from mid-October to the beginning of January.

District courts across 104 counties transitioned to paper filings as the court information systems, overseen by the Office of Judicial Administration, were disconnected.

Certain courts shortened the operational hours of their court clerk offices to provide staff with undisturbed time to concentrate on clearing their paper backlogs. A team of approximately a dozen individuals from court clerk offices in various judicial districts formed a statewide workshare group to aid other courts in addressing their backlogs.

Before the new case management system was introduced by the judicial branch, inter-district and inter-county collaboration was not possible. As of August 2023, all district courts, except for Johnson County, have transitioned to the Kansas eCourt case management system. Johnson County is expected to make the transition later this year. This system allows public access to most district court case information online through the Kansas District Court Public Access Portal. Now that the paper backlogs have been cleared, the portal includes data from the period when courts were using paper systems