One of the early promises of the widespread use of the Internet was that there would be a Utopian paperless society — no more cutting down trees to make reams of paper that were filed and piled up in offices.

In fact, the opposite happened. With it easier to send and print documents, paper use has increased by half in recent decades.

Still, the ease of accessing and supplying information via the Internet has been one of the grandest changes is society.

While private sector businesses quickly moved to online models, government has in many cases been a bit slower.

This week nearly all south-central Minnesota residents will be able to electronically file court documents through a new online portal. The eFiling service is a welcome addition, allowing people to access the courts 24/7 and letting multiple users view documents at the same time.

The entire 5th Judicial District, which includes the Blue Earth, Brown, Nicollet and Watonwan counties district courts, as well as several others, now have eFiling. The 3rd Judicial District, which includes Waseca and Steele counties, is also beginning eFiling.

It comes after pilot programs have been used in recent years.

While the full switch to eFiling took some time in the judicial system, the methodical change to electronic filing was not without good reason.

The important court documents must be filed accurately and must be filed and indexed in a way that makes them easy to access. The records also need to be archived for many decades to come. And the switch requires a huge change for all of the court staff, attorneys and many others who use the courts. The court system has also been under fiscal restraints.

And while most information in a court system is public data, the system had to be designed to ensure that certain things — such as judge or attorney notes that may be, at least temporarily, non-public — are protected.

For all those reasons the switch took time and planning.

Access to the courts and to public information held by the court system is a vital component of democracy. The new eFiling system goes a long way to ensuring easier access.

 

— Mankato Free Press, Nov. 2