Reporters who cover Iowa courts have a new resource that will help them access electronic court records.
The new resource is a guide for using the Iowa Court Information System (ICIS), a computer program created when the Iowa Judicial Branch began converting court records from paper to electronic.
The ICIS program was designed for Iowa news media in collaboration with the Iowa Newspaper Association to give reporters the ability to search for court filings on a daily basis or within a specified range of dates. Users are charged 50 cents per page for printouts listing newly filed court documents.
The new guide explains how to find the program on these terminals, how to log on and how to conduct a search. The guide also has a list of user names and passwords for logging into the program on public terminals at individual Iowa county courthouses.
Grant Rodgers of The Des Moines Register regularly uses the ICIS program. “I use it every few weeks to sort through new civil lawsuits that have been filed in Polk County. How often I do it varies depending on what’s happening.”
Jared Strong of The Daily Times Herald in Carroll said, “We use this in four counties on a weekly basis. In Carroll, I run them on Wednesdays for our weekly roundup of what’s been disposed of in court. The other papers we own use them in the same way, though on different days.”
The new guide was collaborative effort of the Iowa Judicial Branch, the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and the Iowa Newspaper Association.
The guide can be found here. A Guide to using the Iowa Court Information System search program[5906]