Allen County makes jury duty high-tech

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - Allen County has gone high-tech, installing a first-of-its-kind mobile messaging application to communicate with jurors and potential jurors.

Officials with Allen Superior Court said Allen County’s jury system now features what is believed to be the country’s first texting/ email application for jury management software to use natural language processing, or NLP.

NLP is the ability of software systems to recognize and interpret the meaning of human text and speech.

Officials said this advanced texting and email capability, which was launched just over a month ago, can be used with any smart phone.

In addition to sending standard juror reporting confirmation/ cancellation alerts, officials said jurors can text or email inquiries like “Where do I park?”, “When do I report?”, and “How do I get there?” and get back accurate responses.

They can also request weather reports and traffic conditions and link to Google Maps for GPS navigation, according to county leaders.

Because local courts collaborated with Judicial Systems, Inc. on the final development and beta testing of this new application, it was installed at no cost to Allen County.