N3. Information technology
| 716. |
A fundamental feature of civil justice system
reforms involves greater proactivity on court's part in the management of litigation.
Information technology ("IT") has a potentially vital role to play if the court
is efficiently to keep track of the progress of cases and to exercise case management
according to firm time-tables. Lord Woolf referred to the United States experience of use
of IT in this regard :- |
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"I believe IT will
become a vital tool for judges in assuming the far greater responsibility for case
management which I am recommending. Experience in the United States has demonstrated the
successful role that IT can play in judicial case management. These systems allow judges,
wherever they may be located, to gain access to up-to-date information about the status of
individual cases. Case tracking is possible and, as part of this, for each case such
systems produce daily reminders, progress reports, lists of outstanding tasks and notice
of who has responsibility for further actions. In this way, information technology can
support judges in supervising and controlling cases, from their initial filing through to
their final disposal. With these tools and appropriate training, judges should be able to
fulfil the case management role more effectively, with the particular advantage of being
able to do so from wherever they may be working. ......"(Note 609) |
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| 717. |
As indicated above, the High Court has, since
1998, been operating a system of computerised administrative records. As Lord Woolf points
out :- |
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"There is a
considerable overlap between the information which is held in such case-flow management
systems and that stored in the more general, computerised court administration systems. As
well as holding information about the progress of judicial cases, these court systems can
also handle allocation of the resources within courts, including the scheduling of judges'
workloads and the listing of cases, including electronic diarising and the timetabling of
cases. As a valuable by-product, management information is created as well - about trends,
costs, delays and types of cases being processed. Computer-supported listing can therefore
be valuable not only in automating often unwieldy manual systems and so improving the
accuracy, accessibility and currency of the listing information but also, more ambitiously
and longer term, by gathering statistical information about the courts which should in
turn form the basis of decision support systems for listing officers, to help them reduce
the likelihood of excessive overbooking. |
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Court administration
systems also deal with accounting, generation of standard correspondence, orders and other
documentation. Looking ahead, the data held in case-flow management and court
administration systems can also be the source of the kind of information to which legal
advisers and the public should eventually have access. In the future, documentation will
not need to be reproduced and distributed to all parties but will instead be held in some
central system available for appropriate access by the parties. As a result, lawyers and
members of the public could themselves monitor the flow of their cases through some
additional module designed specifically to offer access to such progress and status
reports." (Note 610) |
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| 718. |
As Lord Woolf accepts, (Note
611) the potential of IT
applications to support civil justice system reforms spans both what is practicable in the
short term to meet the immediate needs of the system and what is appropriate for the
longer term. While a move to electronic filing and electronic document-sharing in cases
proceeding in the High Court will no doubt have to be addressed in due course, the
introduction of such facilities may for the present be viewed as long-term projects. What
appears to be worthy of immediate study is the development of the existing computerised
system to support possible reforms by accommodating not merely administrative support, but
also case-flow management, resource allocation and management statistics functions: Proposal
79. |
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| 719. |
Even this limited use of IT may involve
significant investment in hardware, software development and training for judges and court
staff. Such a use of resources is however likely to be cost-effective. This was
acknowledged by Lord Woolf who advocated both the qualitative and financial benefits of an
IT system as follows :- |
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"Many of the
benefits to be offered by more widespread use of IT in the justice system are essentially
qualitative in nature: such as increased access to justice, speedier recourse to the
courts, enhanced quality of judicial decision making and increases in substantive justice
(including fewer cases being decided in ignorance of earlier appellate rulings). That
said, savings are frequently possible. I would therefore expect one or more of the
following benefits to accrue in relation to the projects and initiatives I have advocated
here: |
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(a) |
cost control or cost
savings (perhaps in court time, participants' time or document management or
reproduction); |
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(b) |
enhanced performance of
judges (their productivity, quality, efficiency, consistency and effectiveness); |
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(c) |
keeping apace with
other jurisdictions and so maintaining our competitive position as a leading forum for the
resolution of disputes; |
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(d) |
reduction of wastage or
duplication of effort in respect of administration and management of documentation and of
cases; |
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(e) |
the provision of an
improved service to citizens; and |
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(f) |
the generation of
detailed, public information on the use of the civil justice system."(Note 612) |
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| 720. |
The longer term use of IT mentioned above
could be built upon such a system. Developments like the introduction of electronic filing
and paperless technology courts fit comfortably with a computerised case flow and case
load management system. With increasing use of internet-based applications, it will be
increasingly easy to connect with other computerised systems, including litigation support
systems being used and developed by lawyers in private practice. |
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| 721. |
Plainly, IT initiatives require broad
consultation to ensure the appropriateness and compatibility of any court scheme in
relation to the IT resources of court users. It is noteworthy that in England and Wales,
for instance, a consultation paper on "Modernising the Civil Courts"
(Note
613) was launched on 5 January
2001, reflecting part of the Lord Chancellor's Department's stated aim of meeting its
targets for electronic service delivery by 2005. |
Notes
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