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Writer's pictureMike Harlow

Mastering the stormy seas of service and disclosure

Updated: Nov 16, 2023

Introduction

In this article we are going to explore system and process innovation in the very complex dispute resolution domain of "service and disclosure".

For this article we will define “service” as the formal process of notifying an opposing party named in a dispute with the legal documents and process information required by rules of procedure, and “disclosure” as providing opposing parties with the same information, evidence and facts that support claims and allegations that is being provided to the organization responsible for achieving resolution.

Ok, reading that back the definition sounds a bit formal so I'll try it again in simpler terms. "Service" is letting someone know they have been named in a dispute and the process they must follow to defend themselves, and "disclosure" is providing the same information and evidence to everyone involved in the dispute.

While it may not be obvious from these statements, service and disclosure are critical components of a fair, just, and transparent legal process. In case you are wondering why they are so crucial, let's take a moment to explore their importance.

Imagine that someone was making significant legal claims and allegations of wrongdoing against you, and the following actions were allowed.

What if people were allowed to...

...start a secret accusation process against you: Imagine if someone could engage you in a legal process with serious allegations and implications to you and your wellbeing, without notifying you of what they are accusing you of, and without providing any information on the actions you are allowed to take to defend yourself from their accusations.

...withhold important information, but only from you: Imagine if someone could hide damning information from you while showing this information to an authority that is deciding your fate. This would put you at a significant information disadvantage and limit your ability to provide your own information to disprove false, misleading or exaggerated claims.

...provide misinformation, but only to you: Imagine if someone could provide you with different or misleading information than the information they are providing to a legal authority, causing you to respond in ways that make you appear disorganized and unreliable.

...ambush you when there is no time left to respond: Imagine if someone could wait until the last minute of a time-limited process to provide you with important information, completely surprising you with the information and leaving you with no time to prepare an adequate response and defend yourself.

Can you see how the above actions, if allowed, would make it impossible to have a fair, just, and transparent legal process? How these actions could turn a fair legal processes into a 'witch trial'?

Maybe these examples remind you of times in your life where someone took actions like these and how blatantly self-serving and unfair they felt?

Service and disclosure are not only important foundationally, but have a lot of complex process considerations. Some of these process complexities include:

  • Different resolution organizations have different approaches to service, with some organizations handling initial service tasks internally and other organizations requiring applicants (and respondents) to perform service tasks themselves.

  • Organizations have defined methods of service that are allowed (e.g. registered mail, in person) and these methods are often different across resolution organizations.

  • Specific service methods have their own rules and processes that must be followed, and that many disputants will not be familiar with them.

  • Different service methods require different proof (or evidence) of service.

  • Many organizations have service deadlines by which you must have served at least one respondent, or your dispute file will not continue and you will need to reapply.

  • Some respondents work really hard to avoid being served which can result in the need for substituted or alternative service methods to be applied for and approved.

  • Sometimes a critical service information for a respondent may be unknown, like their mailing address and this can severely limit standard service options (in person, registered mail).

  • Modern communication channels that people would like to use for service have inherent delivery problems (e.g. emails go to spam folders, text messages fail silently, neither has reliable confirmation of receipt mechanisms).

  • Serving a business (incorporation) can often have different service rules than serving individuals.

  • Respondents can dispute your proof of service and say that they were not served, creating service uncertainty that must be resolved.

  • Dispute notices and evidence often include sensitive and private information that should not be served to anyone that is not included in the dispute or it would be considered a private information breach.

This is complex stuff.

I'm not trying to explode any heads, but for those that have read our article on digital evidence, disclosure incorporates the very complex domain of digital evidence, which compounds it's complexity even further (making effective disclosure solutions dependent on having effective evidence solutions in place).

As our approach for complex problems domains like this is so important, I would like to remind everyone that you can help avoid painful, demotivating and costly project failures by keeping the following in mind:

  • You are always choosing to pay now or pay more later in complex domains: Innovation and effective solution design in complex domains demands sufficient up-front investment and the application of proven evidence-based methods. When defining solutions for a complex domain, you will be making a choice whether you are aware of it or not - you will either make the necessary up-front investments to gain sufficient clarity, or pay more later in missed opportunities, painful setbacks, unexpected issues, and costly mistakes.

  • You are going to have to be relentless in your identification and elimination of human bias and narrow decision making: Far too often, our mental blind spots lead us to favor safe, oversimplified, trendy and silver bullet solutions. The real world is a brutal critic that doesn't care about our naïve optimism or agendas and will coldly expose all flaws in solutions that do not align with the harsh realities of a problem space.

I would like to point out that it took 42 individual and complex systems capabilities to create this highly transformative and innovative solution. Not only was there no silver bullet or magical solution available here, but these 42 capabilities had to be supported by highly intentional secondary systems (like our digital evidence solutions).

Unlike our other articles that have general solution and design applications, this particular article is going to be most relevant to the dispute resolution sector. While this article may include approach insights that could apply to other projects and initiatives, we think this information will be most useful to those transforming their dispute resolution services.

Let’s dive in.

What are the innovative features that made up our service and disclosure solution?

Before diving into our service and disclosure design process, let's review a list of the features and innovations in DMS that resulted from our comprehensive design process. By reviewing this list of delivered features first, it will provide you with greater context for our detailed bottom-up domain analysis.

Our open-source DMS includes 42 service and disclosure capabilities. Like our digital evidence innovations, these are not ideas, but are production solutions that have been proven and refined through over 20,000+ annual multi-party disputes with 80,000 citizen users and are based on a wide range of resolution processes.

As there are far too many complex features here to describe visually (e.g. with screenshots or process diagrams), you can contact us through the form on our web site to book a live discussion and demonstration where we can show you exactly how we designed these solutions and how they work.

Some of the 42 powerful capabilities in our service and disclosure innovation. Contact us for a a demo.

Note: as you can see, there was no single silver bullet solution here. Like most complex problem domains, the transformative and innovative outcomes we achieved could only be enabled by a broad set of individual solutions that each addressed a different and important aspect of the complexity. An indication of the real complexity here is that it required 2x the capabilities of our digital evidence solutions.

01. Effortless 1-click generation and automatic email delivery of dispute notices, complete with pdf guides for both applicants and respondents

02. Instant service record creation for every respondent on generated notices to enable seamless service tracking, automation, and business intelligence

03. Integrated real-time registered mail delivery tracking (third party) with in-system status updates and automated delivery verification

04. Ability to customize auto- generated dispute notices to cater to identified requirements or special needs of dispute participants (including special instructions)

05. User-friendly and fully guided online proof of service submission systems - tailored to each service method and that enforce associated service rules for each method

06. Automatically calculated service deadlines that consider and adapt to dispute file characteristics, associated urgency and assigned resolution process

07. Real-time notification and routing of disputants to submit substituted service requests where necessary service information is missing (e.g. do not have respondent mail address)

08. Automatic user notification and redirection to substituted service requests where missing respondent information is available for standard service (e.g. unknown mailing address)

09. Automatic detection of service states, party roles and dispute statuses that display and hide service submission features based on configurable rules

10. Systems-based enforcement of service deadlines, with fully automated dispute file abandonment for no service including unbooking of scheduled events and party notifications

11. Full ability to re-instate any dispute that was automatically abandoned by the system due to non-service by deadlines, to allow for special circumstances outside a disputants control

12. Automatic detection and prioritization of the latest notice on dispute files with multiple notices to create a clear focus on current required service activities

13. Separate generation and processes for notices that must be served from those that do not need to be served (e.g. notices of adjournment)

14. Full ability to regenerate or replace any notice in order to address changes to resolution processes since the original notice was generated (e.g. rescheduling) with archiving of replaced notices

15. Full auditing and traceable histories for all modifications to service records made by disputants or resolution staff, including the archiving of proof of service files

16. Automatic and configurable reminders and notifications that ensure disputants have notice service and evidence service deadlines clearly communicated

17. Resolution staff ability to confirm, refute or replace any service record provided by disputants to correct service issues, with full auditing and visual indication

18. 1-click ability for resolution staff feature to quickly set all service records to acknowledged served where disputants acknowledge receipt in resolution sessions

19. Full delineation of parties, agents, advocates and supporting resources in service views with ability for non-parties to indicate or provide service on behalf of parties

20. Automated dispute status controls that hold the file for service and then automatically advance the file for resolution once the service requirements have been met

21. Comprehensive reporting on service, service deadlines, and the impacts of non-service to ensure that processes and systems balance fairness, access and efficiency

22. Automatic escalation and prioritization of substituted service requests during periods constrained by service deadlines to allow expedited access to alternative service methods

23. Automatic system cleanup of notice and evidence service records when the associated participants are removed from the dispute file

24. 1-click ability for resolution staff to set evidence packages as not served and evidence as not considered with views configurable to show only served and considered evidence

25. Configurable method-specific deemed service periods with automatic calculation and setting of deemed service dates where respondent confirmation is unavailable

26. Ability to generate new service deadlines and to allow time extensions where special disputant circumstances warrant the granting of additional service time

27. Automatic rules-based hiding of respondent dispute access and submission channels until after service has been confirmed and submissions are allowed

28. Automatic detection of dispute file amendments after the original notice was generated with auto-generated respondent service records for the amendments

29. Intelligent rules based notifications systems that only sent notifications and reminders to parties after they have been initially served

30. Ability for service information to be entered by dispute participants or resolution staff for full process flexibility around internal or external service information entry

31. Ability to generate combined or individual notices to maximize service efficiency on disputes varying volumes of respondents

32. Auto-splitting of generated notices into PDF files with a configurable maximum size (eg. 20MB) to ensure compatibility with email attachment size limits

33. Distinctive and highly visible substituted service indicators on the dispute file and participants to indicate requested and granted substituted service

34. Defined substituted service options based on methods and conditions that have been historically allowed (e.g. Facebook with recent posting proof and the username being served)

35. Full tracking of the delivery of dispute notices to applicants with method, time and who delivered the notices including delivery by the resolution organization itself

36. Fully automated dispute file warnings that detect when resolution staff have missed actions associated to the completion of internal service information

​37. Automated insertion of service information into generated agreements decisions with automatic checks for data completeness when documents are generated

38. Full ability to run reports, conduct analysis and make business decisions based on service data (e.g. dismissals for non service, service method statistics, service verification statistics)

39. Automated movement of disputes into a status for substituted service approval where a substituted service request has been submitted and service is required for the dispute to continue

40. Automated address verifications to ensure that service methods dependent on the address of the respondent are using a legitimate validated address

41. ​Automatic creation and email of evidence submission receipts with instructions for serving the respondents that include links to service rules and instructions

42. Automatic creation and enforcement of different service rules depending on the phase of service that a multi-phase dispute is currently associated to

How did we approach this complex domain definition?

While our approach to complex domains is important, I am going to save you some reading time here and include a summary of our recommendations. For a detailed description of these recommendations see our article on digital evidence.

  1. Use general problem, fact, risk and use case statements and not agile "ability to" statements to keep a broader focus on the entire problem space.

  2. Always document at a detailed level and avoid generalizations and summaries that will mask important information.

  3. Make sure your sessions engage a full-spectrum group of highly experienced experts that fully represent the problem space and that your sessions are led by a strong and experienced facilitator that can manage these senior resources and complex discussions.

  4. Start your engagements with a seeded list of relevant consideration examples to maximize participation, contributions and the value realized from these costly group sessions.

  5. Continually use your complex domain definition to bring everyone to high levels of shared understanding and revisit your documentation often to keep everyone in a mindset of 'all things considered'.

  6. Avoid the natural group focus on only the 'exciting' opportunities by pointing out that complex solutions require a 'Staircase' approach that starts with a highly planned foundational release that is sequentially extended. This staged building of the solution, like building anything complex, will need to address a lot of of the more mundane considerations before you will achieve the 'exciting' ones.

  7. Pay close attention to the human biases that will naturally appear in group sessions and work to efficiently eliminate them as they arise. These include cognitive dissonance, the Dunning Kruger effect, confirmation bias, anchoring bias, availability heuristic, status quo bias, recency bias, group think, sunk costs, loss aversion, emotionality, and authority bias.

What was our definition of the complex Service and Disclosure domain?

The following 79 considerations make up our domain definition for service and disclosure. As you can see, this domain has a lot of problems, process, risk and use case statements that we had to address with our solutions.

In reviewing this long list, maybe you can think of some missed considerations that are specific to your service and disclosure and could further improve our solutions?

Note, I gave each of these items a unique code for mapping these statements to the DMS features to ensure our designs addressed them all (they are referenced and mapped in the DMS design section of this article).

Information Taxonomy Considerations

  • IT01: In dispute files, there's a distinct separation between applicants and respondents and their respective service responsibilities

  • IT02: Disputes include agents, advocates and support resources that often participate in the submission of information and associated service and disclosure activities on behalf of the parties

  • IT03: Disputes can include notices, amendments, information and evidence that are associated to a specific side of a dispute (applicant/respondent) and that create a logical foundation for identifying the opposing party in the dispute that must be served

  • IT04: When the outcome of a dispute is questioned and a review hearing for the outcome is granted, this is often initiated by a respondent, which results in a notice that has its standard service rules reversed (the respondent becomes the applicant for the review hearing)

  • IT05: Disputes include agents, advocates and support resources that often participate in the submission of information and associated service and disclosure activities

  • IT06: Disputes have specific statuses and states that are directly related to disputant allowed service actions, submissions and systems access.

  • IT07: Any modifications to service records, whether by disputants or staff, must be logged and include a fully traceable history

  • IT08: All respondents of any dispute notice generated by the resolution organization must include service tracking for all respondent parties on the dispute (or their representatives)

  • IT09: Any evidence package received by the resolution organization must include service tracking for all respondent parties on the dispute (or their representatives)

  • IT10: Disputes have different processes, urgencies and matters that are, in combination, critical to the accurate detection and application of associated service and disclosure rules

  • IT11: All changes to processes must be tracked so that associated changes to service and disclosure rules can be supported by systems data

  • IT12: All changes to foundational information (party names, addresses, claims/issues) that is provided in notices must be tracked and served as amendments to the associated notice

  • IT13: All service information that is provided by disputants must include the date/time, method, who was served, and proof of the stated service method

  • IT14: Some applicants will serve using more than one allowed method to ensure that they meet service requirements

  • IT15: Disputants may need to add additional information to their service and disclosure information in order to describe unique action or special circumstances that should be considered

  • IT16: Resolution staff may need to add internal comments or information to service records to describe special circumstances or considerations

  • IT17: Resolution staff my replace disputant provided service information with service information that was corrected from findings in resolution sessions

  • IT18: Service is commonly performed based on a street address, which makes the street address accuracy very important

  • IT19: The legal name of an incorporated business that is being served is a critical element of the service, it is important the legal business name is correct in notices.

User Experience Considerations

  • UE01: Some disputes have very high volumes of participants that must be served (e.g. all tenants in a building, all strata owners in a building)

  • UE02: Some disputes have participants at the same address or that share a legal obligation and can be served with a single service action

  • UE03: In some cases, respondents living in the same address may be considered served by a single service action (e.g. posting on door)

  • UE04: Some resolution organizations have commonly granted (repetitively requested and commonly approved) substituted service methods (e.g. Facebook is allowed with proof of recent respondent activity and provision of the username being served)

  • UE05: Respondents shouldn't receive dispute notifications before being properly served to avoid procedural complications

  • UE06: Service can have multiple methods (e.g. in person, registered mail, posted on door, email, fax) and each method has its own rules that will be unfamiliar to new disputants

  • UE07: Disputants that are serving by registered mail will have tracking numbers and the ability to prove delivery, but they may not be delivered at the time this information was provided to the resolution organization, and users often make mistakes when entering these tracking numbers

  • UE08: Disputants should not apply for substituted service until they have first confirmed that they cannot serve using allowed methods

  • UE09: Disputants might need to correct inaccuracies in their provided service information

  • UE10: Disputants may decide that they want to continue with their dispute file when some respondents have been served and others have not (excluding the not served from the resolution process)

  • UE11: Respondents of served notice and evidence are often not familiar with dispute resolution processes and rules and will need support and information to effectively and efficiently engage in the process

  • UE12: Disputants may not be aware of or forget about service deadlines, which creates complications and inefficiencies in resolution processes.

  • UE13: Applicants can serve parties by their deadlines but forget to provide this information to the resolution organization before the deadline

  • UE14: Disputants may not realize that not having critical respondent information (e.g. their address) is a significant barrier to service that they can only resolve through a substituted (alternative) service request

  • UE15: Applicants might only realize the need for a substituted (alternate) service method when nearing their service deadline and there is very little time to submit and have this request granted

  • UE16: Applicants may indicate evidence that they will provide later in their initial applications, and until this information is provided it should not be included in generated notice or have any associated service requirements

  • UE17: Notice delivery emails and reminder emails that are sent by automated systems may be routed to a users junk folder until they trust the sender

Staff Efficiency Considerations

  • SE01: The process of generating and delivering initial dispute notice is highly repetitive and rarely requires special information to be inserted or modified by resolution staff, which allows full automation of this complex multistep process

  • SE02: Special needs or processes require customized generated notices that include special instructions for applicants and respondents

  • SE03: The latest notice and any associated amendments of this notice are the service priority on dispute files

  • SE04: In some cases, notices that have already been provided to the applicant may need to be modified or replaced (e.g. a required rescheduling)

  • SE05: There are clear rules around who needs to be served notices and to have submitted evidence disclosed

  • SE06: Service by registered mail can be obtained from online delivery systems, and these systems can often be integrated with external systems to automate these validations. These systems can validate tracking numbers, delivery addresses and delivery statuses

  • SE07: Some notices must be served and their service must be managed, and some notices are not served and do not require service management (e.g. notices of adjournment)

  • SE08: Resolution staff must verify service information provided by disputants, and this can result in confirmation, refutation or replacement of service information.

  • SE09: Resolution staff may need to reset service records to allow disputants to resubmit corrected service information or to move a dispute back into a service provision holding state

  • SE10: In oral hearings (phone, in person, virtual sessions), parties can collectively acknowledge or refute service, providing information that spans multiple records and views that would be time-consuming to enter individually

  • SE11: Applicants can make foundational changes (amendments) to their dispute file after the original notice has been served, which results in the changes needing to be identified and served

  • SE12: Resolution staff responsible for substituted service decisions need to be fully aware of all outstanding substituted service requests

  • SE13: It is important for resolution staff to be able to quickly and visibly identify any disputants with granted substituted service requests.

  • SE14: For process efficiency, resolution staff should be able quickly discern which notices and evidence packages have been served including their service methods / proof from internal system views

  • SE15: Agreements and decisions contain service and disclosure information, and highlight issues with service and disclosure

  • SE16: Disputes that are missing respondent information that is critical to service should not proceed with generated notice and service deadlines until these known service limitations are addressed.

  • SE17: Legal business names are a critical component of service and should be validated

  • SE18: Applicants that realize that they are unable to serve, or through service actions determine they no longer need their dispute resolved should be able to quickly withdrawn their dispute and have all associated work and scheduled sessions cleared

  • SE19: Disputes can be dismissed when all disputants do not appear in resolution sessions causing the applicant to submit a new application

  • SE20: Resolution staff can make mistakes and forget to generate and provide notice, process substituted service requests, mark service records as delivered, etc. - and this information can be critical to processes, reporting and systems automation.

General Process Considerations

  • GP01: Some parties are represented by legal agents with authority to serve and be served on behalf of the parties

  • GP02: Some applicants will chose to continue with their dispute even if all respondents are not served while other applicants will only want to continue when everyone is served

  • GP03: Respondents should not be able to submit their information and evidence into a dispute file until they have been served

  • GP04: Some disputes are not suitable for hard service deadlines due to the matters being resolved or the tight timelines of associated resolution processes

  • GP05: Disputes with unmet service deadlines should no longer be processed by the resolution organization and all the work or scheduled events associated with these dispute files should be automatically cleared from resolution staff

  • GP06: Some dispute notices require service while others do not (e.g. notices of adjournment)

  • GP07: In the case of special allowed circumstances or unavoidable external issues, disputes that have missed service deadlines may need to have their original dispute file reinstated

  • GP08: Different service methods have their own deemed service durations, which should be adopted as the service date when the provided date of service cannot be validated

  • GP09: For some disputes with a large number of respondents, notices can be grouped for greater efficiency of service based on commonalities like shared addresses or shared legal representation

  • GP10: Disputes have different urgencies, processes and timeframes that naturally have different deadlines and rules for service that must be highly visible and tightly managed by the resolution organization

  • GP11: Depending on a disputes urgency, process, or deadlines, the auto-generated notices will contain different content, information and instructions. The auto-generated emails that deliver these notices will also contain different content, information and instructions.

  • GP12: To make measurable and data-driven enhancements in the process, there's a need for reliable service data and a high degree of clarity on how service impacts resolution outcomes, service access and process efficiency

Technical & Systems Considerations

  • TS01: Service deadlines and the disputes characteristics that determined dispute files with service deadlines can change over time and should be configurable

  • TS02: All emails that deliver notices or remind users of service and disclosure deadlines will change over time and should be able to be based on templates that can quickly modified to address changes to acts, legislations, rules and processes

  • TS03: Allowed methods of service and their corresponding rules may change and must be adjustable

  • TS04: The content of generated notices will be improved and changed over time and should be based on configurable templates

  • TS05: In most cases, only the latest notice and amendments on a dispute file are important to current service actions

  • TS06: External systems for disputant submissions into a dispute file should be accessible only under specific conditions and these must be highly controlled and configurable

  • TS07: Certain email inboxes have a maximum attachment limit (e.g., 10MB), and exceeding this will result in the email being rejected by the mail server

  • TS08: Dispute notifications and reminders should not be sent to respondents until they have been served

  • TS09: Applicant activities associated with notice should not be available until that notice is known to have been provided / delivered to the applicant

  • TS10: While the initial dispute notices may include evidence provided in the initial application, subsequent evidence submissions generally represent separate information sets that will have their own service requirements.

  • TS11: External users and internal resolution staff must be able to add, edit and remove service information under different logins and through different systems


Did we uncover any general rules, goals or foundational observations?
  • Disputant information quality, quantity and organization are critical foundational goals: The quality, quantity and organization of the information that is being served is more important to efficiency than the service actions themselves. Any dispute that is based on disorganized, overwhelming or irrelevant information and evidence will naturally result in highly inefficient responses from disputants and a very complex file for resolution staff to manage and resolve. Resolution organizations will realize huge benefits by designing systems that foster clean, organized and relevant dispute information submissions. Poorly organized and irrelevant information, even if served correctly, is still an efficiency nightmare.

  • Applicant service actions can help validate the priorities of disputants to better allocate an organizations limited funds: In a digital world with limited resources, it's essential to focus on those who genuinely need the service. While some organizations may need to handle the serving of documents on behalf of the respondents due to special considerations, for most disputes the action of the applicant having to serve the respondent can be used as a verification that they are committed to the process. By adding a deadline-based requirement for the applicant to serve, this can help the resolution organization focus their limited resources on dispute files where there is proof the applicants are motivated and engaged.

  • Initial service actions are an opportunity to promote and support early intervention and self-resolution: The act of an applicant serving a respondent is an important early intervention opportunity as this is an event where both parties become aware that a binding process has been initiated. The initial service of notice provides a new potential motivation (to avoid an externally determined outcome that you have little control over) and an opportunity (required interaction between parties) for the disputants to settle the matters themselves. This can be enhanced by providing early resolution information in notice packages, providing the ability to request a binding settlement agreement by the parties, and by making the dispute easy to withdraw. The parties will benefit from earlier resolution (cost, time, stress, preserved relationships, flexibility, control) and the organization will benefit by eliminating the costs associated to the provision of a full resolution service.

How did we describe the initial DMS design (initial solution definition)

The following is the list of our service and disclosure features that we designed and included in our open-source DMS solution. Beside each item is a list of the domain considerations that they address.

As you can see here, out of our full list of 79 considerations, we were able to successfully address 77.5 of them, or 98.1%. The comprehensive list of DMS features and input considerations from this process allowed us to group and sequence features into highly intentional phased releases. Our strength in planning and full coverage designs created fast initial adoption rates and rapid realization of intended organizational benefits like process transformation, workflow automation, and digital service innovation.

Our solution addressed 77.5 out of 79 identified considerations
We achieved 98.1% solution coverage!

We created the following categories for the components and features: DM = data model and information taxonomy, UI = user interfaces for submitting and managing service and disclosure, SYS = system or backend features that support service and disclosure management.

Identified DMS Feature

Considerations Addressed

DM: Allow all dispute participants to be associated by role of applicant or respondent to all claims and notices, and for all dispute participants to have roles that define their service requirements and contact information for service and information delivery

IT01, IT02, IT03, IT04, IT05, SE05, SE10, GP12

DM: Allow notices to be associated to scheduled events, generated documents, application evidence, service deadlines, delivery, and a (1..n) list of respondent service records

IT08, UE16, GP08, GP12

DM: Allow changes to foundational notice information to be stored as amendments and associated to an amendment notice associated to the parent notice that the changes apply to

IT12, SE11

DM: Allow all unique evidence submissions to be stored in a package that includes a (1..n) list of respondent service records

IT09, GP12

DM: Allow notice and evidence service records to include method, service dates, deemed dates, proof file uploads, (1..n), secondary method descriptions, external and internal comments and resolution staff confirmation

IT07, IT13, IT14, IT17, SE08, SE10, GP12

DM: Allow all notice and service records to have 1...n service histories so that all changes are fully auditable

IT07

DM: Allow notices to be generated and delivered that are not associated to service requirements

SE03, SE07, GP06, GP07

DM: Allow substituted service requests to be submitted and associated to specific respondents being served, the service rules associated to the dispute process and state, and for these requests to be managed and tracked

UE04, SE12, SE13, SE12

DM: Allow for dispute statuses and processes that are specific to service activities and deadlines (e.g. waiting proof of service, abandoned due to applicant service inaction), with full service histories

IT06, IT11, SE12, GP10, GP12

DM: Allow for disputant email addresses and mailing addresses to be indicated as verified through external systems and processes

IT18, UE07, UE17

UI: Build systems that alert and redirect users to substituted service requests submissions where critical respondent service information is missing

UE14

UI: Build automated notice generation, regeneration and email delivery systems that are based on configurable templates and rules (including calculated service deadlines) and that include templates for all defined use cases including grouped and separated notices and deliveries

UE01, UE16, SE01, SE04, GP09, GP10, GP11, TS01, TS02, TS03, TS04, TS05, TS07, TS10

UI: Build identification and prioritization systems that separate served notices from non-served notices, associate amendments to their parent notices and list notices so that the latest notice is the focus for service

SE03, SE07, SE14, GP06, GP07, TS05

UI: Build a system of highly visible alerts for substituted service requests including their status that are visible at the top of all internal views for a dispute file

SE12, SE13

​UI: Build customizable systems that allow content for generation and delivery emails to be modified as required

SE02

​UI: Build notice service submission systems for disputants that guide users through service information provision, are only visible when service is required, allow grouped service, or resolution to proceed with partial service

UE02, UE03, UE06, UE08, UE09, UE10, UE11, TS01, TS02, TS03, TS05, TS06, TS09, TS11

UI: Build substituted service submission systems for disputants that guide them through the application process, confirm existing methods cannot be used, offer commonly approved alternative methods, and create internal tasks for processing these requests

UE04, UE09

UI: Build a notice and service history view that shows all changes to service records, what the changes were, and who made them

UE09, SE09, TS11

UI: Build a highly visual and intuitive notice and evidence service recording system for resolution staff with the ability to enter new service information or confirm, refute or replace disputant provided service information - and that include automatically calculated deemed service dates

UE11, SE08, SE09, SE13, SE14, GP08, TS11

UI: Build bulk notice and service actions that allow multiple respondents to be marked served or not served through single workflow actions

UE02, SE10, TS11

UI: Build systems for the confirmation of disputant email addresses and the external validation of mailing addresses with visual indication when this information is verified

UE07

UI: Build external disputant systems that display notifications and alerts about service requirements, rules and deadlines that are visible upon login

UI12, UE13, GP10

UI: build systems that allow requests for special circumstance reinstatement of dispute files that have be abandoned because of missed service deadlines

UE13, GP07, TS09

UI: Build resolution staff dashboards, views and workflows that support the timely and prioritized processing of substituted service, reinstatement or other service related work including assignable tasks and workflow controls through assignment and statuses

UE15, SE12, SE13, T505

UI: build resolution staff systems that throw an alert when they have missed information in a workflow associated to notice generation and provision, service tracking and substituted service requests

SE20

SYS: Implement a service record generation and management system that creates and maintains respondent service records on all notices, amendments and evidence packages that require service.

IT01, IT02, IT05, IT08, IT09, UE01, UE05, UE10, UE12, GP01, GP12, TS01, TS02

SYS: Implement a notification system that is based on configurable rules, is aware of service rules, and can send autogenerated emails to disputants for events like initial service deadline reminders, notifications of missed deadlines, notifications of coming evidence deadlines, and notifications of requests for review hearings

UE05, UE12, GP03, GP04, GP06, GP10, GP12, TS01, TS02, TS03, TS04, TS08, TS09

SYS: Implement an automated dispute file abandonment system that removes all associated work and scheduled resolution sessions when service has not been provided by deadlines

GP05, GP10, GP12

SYS: Implement an automated dispute file advancement system that moves the file into the subsequence state of resolution and submissions when initial service has been met

GP12

SYS: Implement a PDF generation system that allows custom notices and other service documents to be created automatically from configurable templates

SE01, SE02

SYS: Implement an automated email delivery system that allows PDF notices, instructions and guides to be attached

SE01, TS02, TS07, TS08

SYS: Implement a system for the tracking of registered mail deliveries with status updates, delivery dates, and signatures

SE06

SYS: Implement as system for the verification of mailing addresses using integration with national address systems

UE07, IT18

SYS: Implement as system for email verification that includes the confirmation that emails are being received

UE17


What observations do we have in hindsight, and do any opportunities still remain?

It was a great achievement to hit 98.1% the identified considerations for this complex domain with our comprehensive solution. But no transformation project can every address everything that is uncovered and could be done. Projects naturally uncover new problems and opportunities when the necessary time, budget, and resources are no longer available to address them.

The following is a list of ideas and opportunities that we have not implemented at the time this article was created but believe would be valuable improvements to our solutions:

  • While we created a very strong taxonomy of required and recommended evidence for applicants, we did not create the same taxonomy and supporting systems for respondents. The simpler taxonomy and systems for respondents naturally results in lower quality of information and evidence submitted by them which can create unnecessary or unwanted response information from applicants (related to UE11).

  • In some cases, the matters being brought against a respondent are not suitable to hard service deadlines and complex service information submissions. These could be suitable to simpler indication systems like a text message system that asks applicants to respond to a simple 1 letter text answer like "Please indicate that you have served the respondents by responding to this text. Reply Y if you have served and N if you have not served yet" (related to GP04).

  • We did not include verification of provided addresses that are outside of the nation in which the resolution service is being provided. Disputes often include multi-national disputants, and where disputants fall outside of the resolution nation, we could improve service certainty by adding the verification of out of country addresses (related to IT18).

  • We did not include verification of business names in our current systems as it was not deemed a high enough priority to warrant the investment. Integrating business name verification could be very important to resolution organizations where the accuracy of these names are more important to service efficiency and outcomes than was determined in our project (related to IT19).

  • The act of a respondent receiving their notice is an opportunity for them to indicate if they intend to participate in the process and their initial positions (responses) to the claims and allegations in the notice. This information could be used to evaluate candidates for early intervention where parties are close to resolution or have communicated settlement options, or for disputes to be moved to asynchronous written processes where respondents indicate they will not be participating (this is an innovation opportunity to tied to our considerations above).

In closing

This complex domain definition worked extremely well for our project and resulted in a complete transformation of our clients highly manual service and disclosure systems and processes. This approach allowed us to identify, design and deliver a full suite of industry-leading solutions that fully addressed almost every aspect of this very complex problem space.

I hope this article helps you with your own complex domain analysis and has provided some innovative ideas for your own service and disclosure solutions. If you enjoyed this article, make sure you check out our designing the future blog.

Until our next article, keep on innovating and sharing those working solutions!

Mike Harlow

Solution Architect

Hive One Justice Systems, Hive One Collaborative Systems

©2023

Where can you get more information?

If you have questions specific to this article or would like to share your thoughts or ideas with us, you can reach us through the contact form on our web site.

If you are interested in the open source feature-rich DMS system that includes the innovations outlined in this article, visit the DMS section of our web site.

If you want to learn more about the service and disclosure domain, our approach or to see these solutions in action, we offer live sessions and lectures that provide much greater detail (including templates, analysis, and feature demonstrations). These sessions also allow breakout discussions around key areas of audience interest. To learn more about booking a live session, please contact us through our web site.

If you are an organization that is seeking analysis and design services to support your own explorations into a brighter transformed future, we provide the following services:

  • Current state analysis: where we evaluate your existing organizational processes and systems and provide a list of priority gaps, recommendations, opportunities, and solutions for real and achievable organizational improvement.

  • Future state design: where we leverage our extensive technology, design, creativity, and sector experience to engage in the "what is" and "what if" discussions that will provide you with a clear, compelling and achievable future state that you can use to plan your transformation.

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