eVoucher Overview

The Criminal Justice Act (CJA) eVoucher System is a web-based application that provides counsel, expert service providers, court staff, federal defender office staff, and judges with the ability to electronically create and process CJA vouchers and documents. In addition, it allows courts and federal defender offices to manage CJA panels, representations, counsel appointments and representation costs. The application includes a payment interface program that automatically creates vendor and payment files that are submitted and processed by the Judiciary Integrated Financial Management System (JIFMS) on a nightly basis. In turn, JIFMS returns payment status information that is received and stored in eVoucher. All district and appellate courts are live and on the same version of eVoucher.

CJA eVoucher is used by the Judiciary to process and approve CJA vouchers and associated documents related to the representation of indigent defendants. National and budget reporting along with case management information is collected by and available from eVoucher. Personal and financial information is contained in eVoucher. eVoucher is a secure, web-based application with role-based access control, where users are granted specific permissions through roles that have defined rights assigned to them.

The information provided in this guide promotes common business practices to be implemented across the Judiciary and documents the systemic business process changes and policies in eVoucher. These policies will need to be reviewed and updated on an annual basis or when there is a substantial change in security guidance.

Referenced Documentation

The following documents were used as references in developing this guide:

• CJA 6.1.5 Security Manual
• CJA eVoucher System Security Plan (SSP)
• JIFMS Security Procedure Guide for Courts
• Guide to Judiciary Policy, Volume 11: Internal Controls, Chapter 1: Overview
• Guide to Judiciary Policy, Volume 11: Internal Controls, Chapter 2: Financial Management
• Guide to Judiciary Policy, Volume 11: Internal Controls, Chapter 6: Information Systems and Security
• Guide to Judiciary Policy, Volume 13: Finance and Budget, Chapter 4: Disbursing Appropriated Funds
• Guide to Judiciary Policy, Volume 15: Information Technology, Chapter 3: IT Security

Terminology and Definitions

Below is a table of terminology and definition of terms and abbreviations used in this guide in reference to eVoucher.

Administrative Office of the United States Courts - eVoucher (Last Updated January 2022)