As many as 15,000 judicial workstations in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia may soon be fitted with an RFID-based system for managing and locating paper documents and folders, with the option of employing the technology for organizing audio dictation files as well.
Thax Software, which has already supplied its RFID-based Findentity system to a number of law firms, government offices and financial institutions (see Austrian Bank Finds RFID Yields Big Returns When Tracking Loan Files), was awarded a public tender to supply the technology to the North Rhine-Westphalia courts. Thax’s Findentity system has been commercially available since 1999.
In February 2004, the company began offering an optional RFID dictation module in a pilot conducted at the district court of Detmold, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Detmold court was one of the first in Germany to cease the use of analog dictation tape cassettes, which must be stored physically and located manually, and to switch to digital audio files, which are saved in electronic folders on a computer.
Since the 2004 testing, Detmold has steadily increased the number of workstations at which workers can use RFID to organize digital dictation files and save them in the proper places on their computers. Fifty Detmold stations currently have the RFID dictation system.
The RFID dictation module works in conjunction with Thax’s basic Findentity system, which features adhesive RFID labels attached to paper documents related to legal cases, or to the folders used to store such documents. As workers transfer case materials from room to room, they scan the tags by placing a stack of folders on a desktop RFID interrogator that resembles a mouse pad. The reader identifies all of the folders and documents by reading their tag numbers, and the system is updated regarding their locations, so that employees can determine the building and office in which a particular folder and its documents are located.
To pull up electronic files associated with a case’s paper documents, a worker passes the appropriate folder over the reader pad, and Thax’s software opens the electronic files within on the computer’s desktop. To dictate information regarding a particular legal case, a lawyer or legal assistant can use a handheld Philips, Grundig or Olympus professional recording device that is compatible with Thax’s software. Back at the desktop, the worker employs RFID to identify the physical folder for that case, then uploads the audio file to the computer.
Without the use of RFID to identify the specific folder related to the dictated file, the employee would only be able to transfer the dictated file into a generic folder holding numerous audio files, then later resave the dictation file to the proper computer folder with other relevant case materials. When RFID is used to identify a legal case’s physical folder, however, the audio file is transferred directly into the proper electronic case folder, eliminating the potential for electronic misfiling, while also helping the worker reduce the time spent searching for the proper dictation file.
At present, Detmold tags about 5,000 paper folders and files, then recycles the RFID labels by emptying folders and reusing them, or by moving RFID-tagged paper documents to a different folder. Manufactured and sold by RAKO Security Label, the labels function at 13.56 MHz and include NXP Semiconductors‘ Icode chips, which comply with the ISO 15693 standard.
As a result of the tender, at least 600 workstations will be outfitted with the digital dictation system this year. In addition, the courts have the option to use RFID within this system to associate the dictation files with the other electronic files. Some 170 desktops with this capability were set up at the county court in Recklinghausen earlier this month. In a second project phase, expected to commence next year, the number of desktops with RFID-supported organization for dictation files could reach 15,000 in courts throughout the state.
Marc Bartsch, a founder of Thax, declines to reveal the cost of the Findentity system, or that of the optional RFID dictation module. His company, he says, has also developed a module for converting BlackBerry handheld computers into dictation devices. Thax is now taking this one step further by developing a system for linking the tag ID numbers of physical folders and documents with the digital dictation files that are made on the BlackBerry device and uploaded to a desktop computer.
To do this, a mobile RFID reader is required to read the ID number of the folder or document tag, as well as transmit the ID to the BlackBerry via a Bluetooth connection. “Unfortunately,” Bartsch says, “there is presently no way to give a BlackBerry smart phone a direct RFID function, so a separate mobile RFID reader is to be used.”