Making PACER Court Records System Free Wouldn't Add to Deficit, CBO says

Friday, December 09, 2022

CBO: S. 2614 would require the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC), working with technology experts at the General Services Administration (GSA), to establish a centralized, cloud-based case management system for all public court records that is accessible to the general public at no cost. That system would consolidate the dozens of case management systems currently in use throughout the federal judiciary.

Posted by retort at 04:47 PM | 5 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

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Even if it did they should provide this service for all citizens.

It's the right thing to do. Open court records and all.

I have no doubt it will be fee service. It's the amerikkkan way.

#1 | Posted by fresno500 at 2022-12-09 10:41 PM | Reply

I have no doubt it will be fee service.

I don't have a problem with that. I access a lot of public information from government websites; court records, real estate records, tax records etc. Accessing the information is almost invariably free. Downloading or printing an official copy of the record may incur a fee that's nominal.

PACER is different. It charges a fee to "access" i.e. view the record. The fee structure is complicated. pacer.uscourts.gov Scroll down about a quarter page to the "how much does it cost" FAQ.

On top of that, after the fee, the site irreparably sucks. It's not at all user friendly. Short anecdote, I forgot my login info. Typically a minor hiccup. Not so as an attorney on PACER. I had to send an email to a certain person who could only snail mail info to access may account. The site sucks. Fix it.

#2 | Posted by et_al at 2022-12-10 02:49 AM | Reply

Ever since the Obama years with Data.gov, the federal government has been making more and more government data available to the public in formats that can easily be consumed by non government application developers. A similar approach could/should be taken with PACER data. I am sure a cottage industry would emerge that would make that data available in new and interesting ways.

#3 | Posted by FedUpWithPols at 2022-12-10 08:32 AM | Reply

PACER charging a fee should never have been allowed in the first place. Putting court records behind a paywall is inexcusable.

#4 | Posted by DarkVader at 2022-12-10 11:56 AM | Reply

If taxpayers are paying for the system these documents describe, then taxpayers should have open access to said documents. Obviously there should be exceptions, national security or an open case, for example.

This is the way with government scientific data, with the exception of a few NASA satellites that were developed with private entities, where the data costs for a few years untill the project is paid for, then is released to the public for free. This is on the order of petabytes of data, and storage/distribution is usually not a problem.

Why can't the court system do the same?

#5 | Posted by horstngraben at 2022-12-10 11:58 AM | Reply