Cherokee County's solicitor general is focused on efficiency and technological improvements this year.

David Cannon Jr. said his office has just changed case management systems. The new system will allow prosecutors to access their case files from anywhere on any device that has Internet access.

"It has better tools for us to manage our cases and to track people associated with other files," he said.

He said the way the office requests and receives information from other agencies is "horribly inefficient."

"We are working right now with Woodstock and Holly Springs to get direct access to the case systems so we can get reports directly," he said of the city police departments.

Ideally, he said, they would be able to "look it up and print it out as we do with the (Cherokee Sheriff's Office) system."

The solicitor's office received 3,200 total misdemeanor and domestic violence cases last year, an increase from 2,146 in 2008.

Traffic cases decreased during the period, dropping from 11,711 in 2008 to 9,647 last year.

Cannon is also working on reducing the office's reliance on paper. His plan is to ultimately move away from paper files and use laptop computers or similar devices in the court to access files.

"This will be very hard to accomplish because the criminal justice system creates massive amounts of paper and prosecutors and assistants love their files," he said. "But we spend countless man hours searching for, retrieving and moving files."

Last year, Cannon gave portable hard drives to the sheriff's office and each city police department for them to use to store information from DUI arrests.

"This is cheaper, faster and greener than burning a DVD for each case," he said.

Requests for Cherokee 911 emergency phone call recordings also were made more efficient last year by the solicitor's office.

Cannon worked with E-911 Director Chris Collett and Records Coordinator Vicki Kull to set up a new system.

Now, instead of burning 911 phone calls to a disc for the solicitor's office, she can save the recordings to a file in their computer system that the solicitor and his staff also can access from their office

"It has made my job a lot easier," Mrs. Kull said about the amount of time the new system saves her. "It has been good for both of us."