A report from Ideas42 and UChicago Urban Crimes Lab has a report, “Using Behavioral Science to Improve Criminal Justice Outcomes: Preventing Failures to Appear in Court.” It is by Brice Cooke, Binta Zahra Diop, Alissa Fishbane, Jonathan Hayes, Aurelie Ouss, and Anuj Shah, in January 2018. It profiles work done in NYC to reduce FTAs with text message reminders.
Court texting programs overview in Boston Globe
Matt Rocheleau at the Boston Globe profiled court texting programs going on around the country, for defendants, jurors, and probationers. The texting concept, which experts say is both low-cost and fairly easy to implement, has proven effective at getting more people to show up to court in places like New York, New Jersey, Oregon, California, and Minnesota, thereby helping to avoid what can … Read More
Court date reminder text messages for defendants in Wisconsin
A report from Madison, Wisconsin — “Court date reminder text messages may be reducing failure to appear rates — describes a new implementation of court reminders in criminal court in Dane County, as well as in Sauk and Ozaukee Counties. It’s an opt-in program for people with upcoming criminal court dates, to get reminders so that they appear for upcoming … Read More
Sketching out support for our court users on Wise messenger
As we’ve tested Wise Messenger more for work with courts and legal aid, we have realized the importance of supporting admins in learning a new tool that might not have a direct equivalent with their work with software before. We started sketching out some ways to support our users — and will be testing them out soon!
RSVP for legal clinic through text messaging
In one of our other use cases, we are building an automated RSVP tool for legal clinics. It lets people organizing a social service event to advertise it with a text message phone number as the RSVP method. People can text the automated line, to say if they will come, and ask for certain kinds of help — directions, child … Read More
Text Messaging Pilot for court process reminders in Orange County
We started our first official pilot this autumn with the Self-Help Services division of the Orange County Superior Court. We are sending coaching messages for people who have filed for divorce. It is a randomized control pilot, in which we are sending messages out to a randomized selection of people who have opted in to participate in a pilot of … Read More
Pre-Pilot check-in
We were excited to have one of our final pre-pilot meetings today with our pilot partner, the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley. We have a coded-up version of our web app, to enroll litigants in a program to receive messages, create templates and schedules for messages, and review what messages are in the queue to be sent and what have … Read More
Best practices for writing govt text messages
These are a shortlist of guidelines for people who are writing the content for text messages to be sent out to citizens. They are from the open-source project Promptly, from Code For America. 1) CDC’s Guide to Writing for Social Media 2012 (click here), Summarized into “General Rules” by Mobile Commons Writer Stephen Fishbach (click here) Be Clear and Concise … Read More
How a govt worker can use a messaging system to send text reminders
These instructions are from the open-source Code for America project Promptly, to allow a government user to easily send messages to clients or potential clients. It was written in December 2013. For Users Schedule a reminder A reminder in Promptly is a specific text message sent to a group of phone numbers at a specific time in the future. To … Read More
Promptly for food stamp enrollment messages
Promptly is a messaging app built by a team of Code for America fellows with SF Health & Human Services, to help keep people enrolled for foodstamps by sending them reminders when they are about to lose their status. You can see more about it on the company Postcode’s site.
TextMyBus for Detroit Transit Info
TextMyBus is a Code for America project with the Detroit government to get messages about the bus arriving through simple texts. Get real-time bus arrival information in Detroit. Source: TextMyBus – Detroit Transit Info
How to use Twilio to send messages
Here’s a guide from Smart Chicago about how to use Twilio to send messages to your users or clients, to better manage their engagement. Twilio is a cloud communications platform that allows web apps to make and receive phone calls and SMS text messages. You’ve probably used Twilio at some point even if you’re weren’t aware of it. If you’ve … Read More
Using SMS for doctor-patient asthma care
A paper from the world of Human Computer Interaction about how SMS systems can be used to improve health outcomes and doctor-patient relationships. Effective communication between health professionals and patients positively influences chronic health management, as does increased patient awareness of their symptoms and general knowledge of the condition. In this study, we leverage the use of mobile phones … Read More
Using automated voice calls to improve adherence to iron supplements during pregnancy
This research paper from Microsoft India look at a parallel challenge – -how to get women going through pregnancy to follow good healthy behavior, like taking iron supplements. The researchers used an automated system of voice calls to encourage healthy behavior. The paper summarizes their findings. For years, researchers have explored the use of mobile phone reminders to improve adherence … Read More
Priorities for building out a pilot
We are close to defining exactly how our first court messaging pilot will operate. The implementation has to work with the existing case management system that our partner group uses. As such, we’ve had to really think whether we want to build in a messaging function into their current system, or go ahead with our initial vision of a messaging … Read More
First tech prototype of Court Messaging
Today we had our first on-site test of our barebones tech prototype — that lets a court official or attorney send a quick text message to their client/litigant. The tech part worked easily — now the question is how to integrate this tech into the experts’ current workflows as easily & seamlessesly as possible, while also giving them choice about … Read More
Sense Health
Sense Health helps healthcare organizations engage patient populations through mobile communication. Sense Health is a messaging app that comes from the world of client-care in medicine & hospitals but it has a great potential for legal services & facilitating better communication between courts and users, and attorneys and clients. How could we facilitate not only ability to show up at … Read More
MightyText tool to send SMS From Computer or Tablet
MightyText is a message-sending tool to send SMS From Computer or Tablet. It gives you a phone-, tablet-, or desktop-based platform that lets you send text messages to others’ phones. It’s not necessarily about automating messages, but it allows for easy text sending & management.
TextIt, a visual platform for interactive messaging
TextIt is a tool to visually build interactive SMS Applications. At the core of TextIt lies our exclusive Flow engine. With Flows, anybody create an engaging SMS or voice application without the need of a programmer or expensive consulting company. Get a new phone number your customers can text or call to in minutes and build your app today, no … Read More
CareMessage for patient engagement
CareMessage is a health-oriented SMS messaging platform that offers its client a way to send high-quality interactive (but automated) content to their patients, toe educate and support them during a chronic disease. It is a paid model, and its priority seems to be on the content modules it has crafted and offers its clients. It has created interactive flows about … Read More
FrontlineSMS open-source messaging platform
FrontlineSMS is a free & open-source application to send out SMS messages to your audience. You can run the admin app on your desktop, it’s free software to use. From your desktop, you can send out SMS messages like you would emails. Once you have downloaded our software, you will need to connect a compatible device to use it. You … Read More
Remind messaging platform
Remind is a messaging platform intended for teachers to send out messages to students & parents to coordinate classwork. Teachers simply sign up, create a class, add students, and start messaging. Students and parents opt-in to join classes via a unique class code. Once classes are set up, teachers can connect with their classes, and get instant feedback on their … Read More
Development roadmap for court messaging system
Create a very streamlined, basic reminder system that is aimed at litigants with upcoming court dates It could be with the court staff entering in the information or it could be with the litigant entering in the information via SMS Do this on the platform that can expand later on to allow for more behaviors, Like: Interactive flows like on the … Read More
Our design questions about our main users
From early in our design process, here are the questions that need to be answered so that we can build a great system: About the End User: Will the end user want to receive alerts on a smartphone or a dumb phone? What kind of content do they want to receive? In what stages? Do they want to ask questions … Read More