Tyler presentation prompts debate: clerks seek more flexible public portals, judges warn against inconsistent access

Tyler Technologies presented a product called Justice Case Access as an alternative to Research Texas, prompting a broad discussion about whether counties should be allowed to operate county-configured public portals.

Tyler's Steven Sailing said Research Texas is the statewide public-access platform, but some clerks want a separate, locally configurable portal that can show more of the criminal record and allow clerks to set prices or offer documents for free. "Research Texas is our public access platform... Justice Case Access is essentially a separate copy of Research Texas that allows local configuration," Sailing said.

Several judges and OCA staff pushed back on allowing widely varying county configurations. "My concern is if we start doing something like this, then we lose that coherence," Judge Heinz said, warning that differing local portals would confuse the public and complicate accountability for mistaken disclosures.

OCA general counsel Menna Ramona told the committee that county portals are not new but said Research Texas was intended to reduce that fragmentation; the limitations on criminal-document exposure in Research Texas are the primary reason some counties want alternate portals. Members discussed statutory fee rules (referenced in the transcript as Senate Bill 41), privacy and sensitive-document flags, and the risk of bulk data sales.

Committee members asked clerks to provide a prioritized list of specific criminal-document types that are driving demand for greater local visibility. Vendors and clerks described technical tools to restrict access (document-level sensitivity flags, page-level previews, and registered-user gating) and said some counties already provide more extensive local views while keeping Research Texas as the statewide minimum standard.

The chair proposed forming a working group to coordinate policy and technical changes with Tyler and OCA; several members volunteered to participate. The committee asked Tyler to document the differences between Research Texas and Justice Case Access and to work with staff on policy-compliant configurations.

The discussion did not result in any formal rule change; rather, the committee agreed to pursue follow-up meetings and a clerk survey to identify the precise documents and security mechanisms at issue.

The committee emphasized that any change must be consistent with Supreme Court rulemaking and statutory constraints, and it singled out criminal-document and privacy protections as an area that requires careful, clerk-driven review.