Massachusetts, Northern Mariana Islands & Pennsylvania recognized for data reporting excellence

The Court Statistics Project (CSP) recently recognized the Massachusetts Appeals Court, Northern Mariana Islands Trial Court, and Pennsylvania Superior Court with its annual data reporting excellence award. 

"The CSP team continues to be impressed by the progress states are making with their data reporting," said Nicole Waters, project lead and NCSC director of data, analytics, and forecasting. "This year's honorees demonstrate both a longstanding commitment to data reporting and also newer efforts to improve the quality of the data publicly reported." 

Courts were selected based on their improvement of the quantity or quality of their reported caseload data using the following criteria:

• Number of case types reported
• Number of status categories, case characteristics, and manners of disposition reported
• Publishability/quality of data reported
• Improvements from past reporting years
• Sustained excellent reporting
• Overall support and investment in improving caseload reporting

This year's honorees and their accomplishments include: 

• Massachusetts Appeals Court: The court has made substantial progress over the past two years. In 2024, the court reported dispositions for the first time. Data comparability was also enhanced by reclassifying the justice docket's cases. Additionally, staff made significant progress in interpreting CSP guidelines to accurately map cases and clarify the court's case-type jurisdiction. Collaboration with IT and the trial court's department of research and planning led to the extraction of more detailed data from the case management system. As a result, publishability increased from 17% to 80% for incoming, outgoing, decided on the merits, disposed prior to decision, and from 0% to 64% for outcome categories. The appeals court also reported caseloads involving self-represented litigants for the first time, achieving a 60% publishability rate.
• Northern Mariana Islands Trial Court: Since becoming involved with CSP in 2020, the court has made notable strides in the publishability of data. Incoming case types increased from 67% to 98%, and outgoing and begin pending increased from 72% to 98%. The court has seen significant increases in publishability scores of cases involving jury trials, bench/non-jury trials, and non-trial dispositions due to the work of its data specialists.
• Pennsylvania Superior Court: In addition to consistently reporting annual data to the Court Statistics Project for more than a decade, the court made significant improvements in data quality, including providing publishable data for original proceedings and self-represented litigants and identifying two case types for which the court does not have jurisdiction. Their data team also worked to revise data submissions from previous reporting years to reflect the changes, demonstrating an enthusiastic commitment to reliable data reporting and high standards of data quality.