Officials satisfied with e-filing launch.

Except for an expected difficulty in responding to help desk calls, the April 1 start of mandatory electronic filing for civil trial cases saw few hitches.

"From the view that I've had, this has been a very successful launch and ... I think that we will find that shown by the numbers," said Putnam County Clerk of Court Tim Smith, chair of the Florida Courts E-Filing Authority, which oversees the statewide portal through which e-filing is done.

The authority's governing board met April 11 to review the start of mandatory e-filing for civil trial courts and the Supreme Court, and to work on future efforts.

That includes mandatory e-filing in criminal cases on October 1. The authority hopes to add automatic electronic document service in August.

Melvin Cox, who oversees the portal development for the authority, reported that on April 1, the portal handled 20,590 filings covering 31,749 documents.

By April, 4, the number of filings rose to 28,553, and hit almost 32,000 filings by April 9, according to the most recent information available for the meeting.

At that pace, April will see more than 500,000 filings totaling almost a million documents, Cox said, or more than for all of 2012 when e-filing was being set up and was voluntary.

Annually, that would add up to 6.75 million civil filings and around 10.9 million documents.

That compares with an expected 5 million filings, but Cox said the system can handle the extra load.

At an earlier meeting, he reported to the authority that the portal can handle a total of 18 to 19 million filings a year, which will include both civil and criminal cases.

"We're very pleased the portal is handling that kind of volume and is distributing the cases to the counties," he said.

"Basically, the portal is still operating very well and from a technical standpoint well under full capacity, which we're very happy with."

Although the portal is always available for filing, Cox said most filings come during normal weekday working hours, with the highest numbers coming between 3 and 5 p.m. At the busiest times, he said, the portal handled more than 3,500 filings an hour and a few times topped 100 per minute.

Overall, the portal has plenty of memory and operated at around 21 percent of capacity, Cox said.

The biggest problem was with the help desk, which was expected.

Cox noted there are only a limited number of employees for the help desk, with other people assisting as they can. The authority has requested an...

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