August 24, 2010

Mr. Ed Huntley

Chief Legal Counsel

Illinois Department of Corrections

Springfield, Illinois

Dear Ed:

The United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois invites the Illinois Department of Corrections and, specifically, the Danville, IL River, and Western IL Correctional Centers, to participate in an e-filing program previously developed and piloted with the Pontiac Correctional Center. The project was designed to reduce the cost of processing court filings made by prisoners in civil cases filed in Federal Court. This program has proven to significantly reduce the expenditures for paper, envelopes, copier supplies and postage during the three plus years the Pontiac Correctional Center has been e-filing under these procedures. Furthermore, it will substantially reduce the amount of staff time spent on prisoner court filings, for both the Correctional Center staff and the Court. I have attached the documentation from the pilot program in Pontiac if you wish to share with personnel at the above named facilities.

As has been discussed in the past, I know the IDOC is very interested in expanding this program to Tamms and Menard Correctional Centers located in the Southern District and Stateville Correctional Center located in the Northern District. I am sending a copy of this proposal to the Clerks of Court in the Northern District of Illinois and the Southern District of Illinois. Hopefully, we will be able to expand the program to those facilities in the near future. We still intend to allow IDOC to use the equipment we have provided to file documents in both the SDIL and NDIL courts. The Pontiac Correctional Center is successfully filing in both the CDIL and SDIL presently.

Please contact me by e-mail or at 217-492-4707 to let me know whether the Illinois Department of Corrections is willing to participate in the expansion of this program. We have recently provided Pontiac with a digital sender to replace the stand alone PC and scanner. The digital sender seems to be working well and would be provided by the Court to the additional facilities.

As the Court is ready to move forward with this project, a response to the proposal within the next two weeks would be appreciated. We need to purchase the additional digital senders before the end of our fiscal year on September 30. If you agree to this expansion, I would propose having a conference call with court staff, legal counsel and library staff from the above facilities and Pontiac, and in the near future.

Sincerely,

s/ Pam Robinson

Pamela E. Robinson

Clerk of Court

Attachments

cc:	Chief Judge Michael P. McCuskey

Judge Harold A. Baker

Michael Dobbins, Clerk of Court, Northern District of IL

Nancy Rosenstengel, Clerk of Court, Southern District of IL

Michael Meyer, NDIL Pro se Law Clerk

Christopher Higgerson, Illinois Attorney General's Office

Herbert Quinde, IDOC

Michelle Clark, IDOC Pontiac

Paula Rich, IDOC Pontiac

Ken Wells

Jeff Gustafson

Marleen Cooke