e-Justice as an opportunity to enhance justice system effectiveness

I. Overview

CEPEJ launches the next review of functioning of all Council of Europe member states justice systems. Greater these days interest in evaluation studies stems from several reasons. In the recession in economies many finance ministers seek budgetary savings also among the justice systems expenditures. Ministers of justice analyze numbers of law courts, judges and cases, and also courts’ proceedings durations. All want to streamline the administration of justice processes in an unprecedented scale (partly due to the recession). e-Justice is becoming discussed as a necessary tool in improving the efficiency of justice. Rightly, since prompt decisions in litigious cases, and instant ones in non-litigious ones, as well as shortened registration procedures are among the factors that foster the economic growth. And, as far as criminal cases are concerned, efficient proceeding and sentencing is an element of both general prevention, and sense of justice.
One of the important issues connected with the effectiveness of administration of justice is that of electronic data processing (EDP) implementation. Proper computerization, appropriate software, and their proper use and maintenance enables the courts’ and public prosecutors’ procedures to be speed-up.  

II. Procedures

The Ministry of Justice has established procedures and timeframes only for the courts in the Republic of Albania district courts, appeal courts and the High Supreme Court. But the mechanisms of data collecting still fails in some parts. Some courts are not replying in time and some data are not presented in the format required.

According to the law No. 8737 of 12 February 2001 “On the organisation and functioning of the Prosecutor’s Office in the Republic of Albania” the Prosecutor’s Office is obliged to send the data to the Ministry of Justice. Anyway they have sent the data in the Ministry but they are not doing it in a procedure and a timeframe required by the ministry. The Ministry of Justice should have agreement with the General Prosecution Office to establish procedures and mechanisms to set a clear allocation of responsibilities and mechanisms.

The Ministry of Justice should guarantee a fair and transparent system. It should have established a mechanism of monitoring of the proper application of the rules for collecting, processing and analysing data. This rules should be applied to all stakeholders that provides judicial statistics.

There are to many requests for statistics which unduly overload court staff. Too many organisations, public institutions and private ones, are requiring judicial statistics. There is a need for training court staff for performing the judicial statistics in order to strengthen their capacities and skills in data collection.

The Ministry of Justice collects a broad range of statistical data in criminal cases, civil cases, prosecutions cases and enforcement cases. The first step of computerization of all Albanian Courts is done with the automation of the civil cases in the Civil Case Management Information System (CCMIS). As of this, the focus on producing statistics automatically by an electronical system has to be centralised at the civil cases.

Collection of statistical data by the courts: The Civil CMIS System allows the courts to collect data of civil cases electronically by the statistic function of the System. The reports just have to be used to fill out the statistical forms. Therefore it is recommended to use already the System for the civil statistics as soon as it is available for all Albanian Courts. But the Ministry of Justice still can not process the data collected in a automated way. This process will facilitate the work that the staff in the ministry is doing it manually.

III. Accountability of data

The Ministry of Justice should ensure professionalism and ethics of the persons entrusted with data processing and their independence in order that other political or administrative bodies or institutions as well as private bodies guarantee the accountability of data. In Albania the court staff is appointed by the Head of Court, but the Ministry of Justice should establish clear rule and criteria on hiring court staff. These persons should have the appropriate skills and should guarantee the adequate level of independence so that an accountable and high quality scientific work can be delivered.

To improve the mechanism of data collection and analysis the Ministry of Justice should ensure that this process is undertaken in a transparent way. The main results should not only be delivered to all direct stakeholders of justice administration but also to all persons involved in the functioning of the judicial system.

Data and their analysis should be presented so as to be easily comprehensible in order to contribute to the transparency and acceptance of the whole system by all the persons concerned, and guarantee the fairness in the information presented.

There is a yearly publication of the data collected by the Ministry of Justice. Structure of the annual statistical yearbook. The statistical data shall be represented in a way which makes it easy to find the searched data. The actual annual statistical yearbook does not give always overviews in which you can easily find general data about the courts. It shows details and then further on gives the overviews about all courts. It is recommended to have first a general overview for all courts with the caseload at the beginning of each chapter (incoming, old stock, finished cases, new stock, backlog, duration of cases for each Court).

In order to have appropriate steps for collecting and processing judicial statistics the Ministry of Justice should have dialogue with the organisations representing the legal and judicial professions, researchers and, as appropriate, other organisations with an interest in the matter so as to guarantee a broad consensus on the information collected and communicated.

Form sheets for collection of data: in order to unify the collected data for all courts it is recommended for the courts to use the form sheets prepared by the Ministry of Justice for the collection of the annual statistical data. The forms shall be published on the webpage of the Ministry of Justice.

IV. Recommendations

All data regarding performance and quality of the judicial system should be collected and presented through a compatible and consistent methodology applicable to all the branches and bodies of the judiciary so as to be able to evaluate the efficiency of the means allocated to them.

In order to strengthen the efficiency and quality of justice the Ministry of Justice should implement the CEPEJ “Guidelines on Judicial Statistics”, and in particular the Time Management Checklist , the Checklist for promoting the quality of justice and the courts and the SATURN Guidelines on judicial time management , as well as the peer evaluation process and judicial statistics that has been implemented since 2008.

The Ministry of Justice is not monitoring the breaches of Article 6 of the European Convention on human Rights. The detailed up-to-date statistics on national cases before the European Court of Human Rights concerning the various rights protected by Article 6 are a key tool for evaluating and managing the follow-up to be given to the European Court of Human Rights judgements, in particular for the purpose of remedying situations which breach the convention. The Ministry of Justice should maintain statistics on national cases concerning Article 6 ECHR so that Court judgments are appropriately executed and further breaches prevented.
 

Beata GRUSZCZYŃSKA
Criminologist
Chair of Criminology and Criminal Policy at Warsaw University, Head of Criminal Statistics and Research Division at Institute of Justice in Poland and member of the CEPEJ's working group

Collection of judicial statistics: organising the national data collection system on the basis of the CEPEJ instruments

Each court in the Council of Europe member states has a duty to deliver its judgments within a reasonable time and with optimum quality. Statistics are instruments whereby the caseload of a court can be effectively managed. The CEPEJ has laid down statistical standards.

Essentially it is a matter of each court, whether or not computerised, being able to produce the following elementary data:

• number of proceedings backlogged at the start of the monitored period
• number of new proceedings initiated
• number of proceedings resolved
• number of proceedings backlogged at the end of the monitored period.

It is also necessary for each court to know its staff numbers (judges, clerks, administrative and other staff) in full-time equivalent having assisted in the handling of proceedings during the monitored period.

On the basis of the elementary figures mentioned above, various useful indicators can be calculated, in particular:

• Clearance rate (CR indicator): relationship between the new cases and completed cases within a period, in percentage.

• Case turnover ratio: relationship between the number of resolved cases and the number of unresolved cases at the end of the monitored period. This requires a calculation of the number of times during the year (or other observed period) that the cases of a given standardised type are turned over or resolved.

• Disposition time (DT indicator) : The ratio measures how quickly a court completes the received cases and provides further insight into how it manages its flow of cases.
The above-mentioned guidelines give detailed information on the method for working out these indicators (see section 5 of Appendix I to the guidelines).

Finally, the CEPEJ has selected the following four types of case: litigious divorce, dismissal, robbery and intentional homicide. These are cases that occur in the great majority of European states, having an immediate impact on the citizens in their daily lives and a common definition at European level:

• Litigious divorce cases: i.e. the dissolution of a marriage between two persons, by the judgement of a court of a competent jurisdiction. Do not include divorce governed by an agreement between the parties concerning the separation of the spouses and all its consequences (procedure of mutual consent, even if handled by the court) or by an administrative procedure.

• Employment dismissal cases: cases concerning the termination of an employment contract at the behest of the employer (working in the private sector). It does not include dismissals of public officials, following a disciplinary procedure for instance.

• Robbery is stealing from a person with use or threat of force. If possible these figures should include: muggings (bag-snatching, armed theft, etc) and exclude pick-pocketing, extortion and blackmail (according to the definition of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice). The data should not include attempts.

• Intentional homicide is defined as the intentional killing of a person. Where possible the figures should include: assault leading to death, euthanasia, infanticide and exclude suicide assistance (according to the definition of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice). The data should not include attempts.

Judicial statistics officers are invited to incorporate the four above-mentioned types of cases into the existing statistics as they correspond to the European standards and will be consistently called for in the years ahead, particularly in the CEPEJ’s statistical tables.

Jacques Bühler

Doctor of Law
Chair of the Steering group of the SATURN Centre (judicial time management) of the CEPEJ 

Differences in the data collection procedure between criminal and civil justice data

In the judicial data collection some of the requirements and organisational rules for the information management seem to be quite the same both in criminal and in civil matter, mostly if the collection is assisted by a computerized database⁽¹⁾.

The similarities can be found in the following items:

- the need to respond to one of the main objective of a trial: rendering available and transparent to the external users as much as possible of the trial workflow and decisional process of the judge/court, in the due respect of the specific national law and under the guideline of the European Convention on Human Rights, article 6;

- the aim of improving efficiency of courts in the data management, helping internal users in their daily tasks;

- the general security characteristics katevery IT system should respect, according to the European and international legal charts, directives and recommendations:

o availability
o authentication
o integrity
o confidentiality⁽²⁾;

- the capability of giving information for the evaluation of the performance of the courts and of the public prosecutor offices.

About this last item, it can be recalled an important document from the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), instituted within the Council of Europe:

- the Time management checklist of indicators for the analysis of lengths of proceedings in the Justice system⁽³⁾.

Each of the six standards elaborated by CEPEJ sends to the provision of adequate IT systems, which go through every step of the trial and register every relevant information about the trial workflow.
Another important point must be focused and is common and shared by the data collection in both the matters (criminal and civil subjects):

- the use of data in statistics is anonymous, so that, if anonymity is effective, there is usually no question about protection of individuals in the use of the information subsequent to the trial phases.

On the other hand, differences (between collecting data in criminal or in civil matters) could derive from some specific aims of data collection and elaboration:

- if the analysis is oriented to social investigation, the sociological use of the data (for instance, to understand certain social phenomena, as drugs diffusion, organised crimes, percentage of serious crimes, pedopornography) affects the style and content of the research and request a richer collection and much more details about the circumstances of the criminal facts (in some cases this is valid even in the civil area) - while the evaluation of judicial systems, as mentioned above, is more focused on the workflow, on the eventual bottlenecks of the procedures, so that the timing of every operation or subphase of the trial become crucial -.

Finally, peculiar differences in the data collection between criminal and civil justice information come from the following elements:

- necessity to protect investigations, so that, in criminal matter, all the conventions and directives about data protection foresee exceptions for the data involved in research about criminal facts ;

- consequent capability of the civil data of being known by a larger number or subject, with the possibility of remote access (adopting secure authentication credentials).

The development, all over Europe, of IT systems oriented in offering to the legal practitioners information about their cases sets new problems, about security of the technological platform, about the common sharing of the data and the differences between the judicial systems, with difficulties in translating, interpreting and comparing the cases.

A lot of the path has been made, but a strong impulse to standardize at least parts of the judicial systems, and consequently their data management applications, should be a strong objective in the next future for the countries belonging to the Council of Europe.
__________________

⁽¹⁾ Most of the judicial systems all over Europe are helped, more or less, by IT systems, particularly for the data management. This brief article is focused on computerized data collections.

⁽²⁾ According to the UE Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions (Brussels, 6/6/2001, COM(2001)298), that can be seen as a development from article 7 of the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to automatic processing of personal data (Strasbourg, 28/1/1981). The main principles of this Convention have been also developed and inspired the subsequent EU Directives about personal data processing, particularly Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.

⁽³⁾ See CEPEJ(2005)1 on www.coe.int/CEPEJ.

Daniela INTRAVAIA
IT court manager, Italian Ministry of Justice, Milan

The role of the Registrar in the data collection procedure

The role of the Registrar in the data collection procedure is closely connected with the court automatisation. This is reflected both in the field of non-statistical, as well as in the field of statistical data collection.

As far as the area of non-statistical data is concerned, we had to face a double collection of data in the past. This was, first, the data collection by the lawyer or the notary for his own procedure; this was, second, the data collection by the Registrar for the court proceedings. Therefore, it is justified to speak and discover a waste of human resources. To collect date in the same way twice, does not make any sense. During the so-called transition phase it just happened to arrive that the Registrar had to make the media transfer of paper documents into electronic documents, while constructing the database. An example for the media transfer during the transition phase is Article 298 A German Code of Civil Procedure (= ZPO). Today, however, as a standardized collecting procedure, it is common practise to make structured data available for the Registrar and the court proceedings. These non-statistical data, made available, are usually based on XML. Let me just refer, for instance, to a special dataset XJustiz in German court proceedings (see www.xjustiz.de). Thus, an automatic upload of such non-statistical data can take place (name, address, date of birth, residence etc.), thus saving not only human resources, but also speeding up the court proceedings in the beginning and providing a higher level of workflow. Therefore, it is justified to speak about a genuine evaluation process in this regard.

However, as far as the area of statistical data is concerned, which are also sometimes the starting points for some questions in the CEPEJ-Report, we had to realize date in the initial stage of the courts. It is the very own duty of the Registrar to collect, check and provide such data. As a result, the Registrar can be mentioned as some kind of a guarantor for such data. Of course, it is quite understandable, that the Registrar can not refer to any data. In fact, he had to collect these data for the very first time and only for the court databases. The automatisation of court proceedings does not have any effects on the work of the Registrar, as far as the collection of the statistical data is concerned. Rather, the role of the Registrar is still the same as before, namely establishing the coherence of data and providing the quality of data. Of course, this does not happen without any further checks on the data, provided by the Registrar. During the court proceedings, there are many possibilities to verify and check the data, in case by judge, rechtspfleger, greffier and by registrar. This is also due to the fact, because the Registrar is not only acting at the beginning of the court proceedings. In fact, the files are normally accompanied by Registrar to the end of the proceeding. However, a high level of fluctuation and turnover can be the source of mistakes and errors. The role of the Registrar is to capture statistically the case, to manage the database, to classify the case and to fix the data about the beginning and the end of the court proceedings. All relevant tabs in databases provide for such data. It is due to the work of the Registrar that all judicial functionaries can check on the status of the court proceedings at any time. The CEPEJ Report picks up on various points the data about the beginning and the end of the court proceedings. This is the reason why it is able to make statements about the average duration of court proceedings in the different member countries. The Registrar provides therefore the basis for statistical observations about the backlog of cases and pending cases. In this regard, the Registrar is just in line with the aims of the CEPEJ Report: providing reliable data, establishing the coherence and quality of data, although at a different level, close to the files at the court. The Registrar is aware about being a guarantor within the data collection procedure.

Harald WILSCH
Diploma Rechtspfleger (FH) at the Local Court of Munich, Bavaria
Treasurer of the European Union of Rechtspfleger (E.U.R.)

The mechanisms of data collection in countries in transition : the example of Albania 

I. Overview

Albania is a country where the economic development is ongoing and a lot of reforms are ongoing as well. Albania is a country where a judicial reform is underway. Therefore we do have some obstacles in data collection and the judicial statistics performance. This is a whole new process for the court administrators and for the staff working in the Ministry of Justice dealing with the preparation of unified statistical service in the field of justice. The aim of judicial statistics is to facilitate the efficient functioning of a judicial system and contribute to the steering of public policies of justice. Therefore judicial statistics should enable policy makers and judicial practitioners to get relevant information on court performance and quality of the judicial system, namely the workload of courts and judges, the necessary duration for handling this workload, the quality of courts' outputs and the amount of human and financial resources to be allocated to the system to resolve the incoming workload.

Albania, like each other member state, has specific statistical institutional arrangements in order to collect, coordinate, aggregate and process the information from various statistic providers needed for evaluating the functioning and measuring the activity of courts, prosecution services, administrative services within the judicial system and any other bodies with a role in judicial activities.

In the performance of its activity, the Ministry of Justice has the purpose of seeking respect for the Constitution and the laws, the realization and protection of dignity, fundamental human rights and freedoms and of contributing to the prevention of violations of law, in conformity with and in the service of the requirements of the democratic development and European integration of the Republic of Albania.

In compliance with law, the Ministry of Justice supports, co-operates and coordinates its activity with that of the institutions of the judicial power and with the prosecutor’s office, respecting the principle of the separation of powers and the independence of the judicial power and the prosecutor’s office. The Ministry of Justice exercises its activity in the directing the unified statistical service in the field of justice.

II. Procedures

The Ministry of Justice has established procedures and timeframes only for the courts in the Republic of Albania district courts, appeal courts and the High Supreme Court. But the mechanisms of data collecting still fails in some parts. Some courts are not replying in time and some data are not presented in the format required.

According to the law No. 8737 of 12 February 2001 “On the organisation and functioning of the Prosecutor’s Office⁽¹⁾ in the Republic of Albania” the Prosecutor’s Office is obliged to send the data to the Ministry of Justice. Anyway they have sent the data in the Ministry but they are not doing it in a procedure and a timeframe required by the ministry. The Ministry of Justice should have agreement with the General Prosecution Office to establish procedures and mechanisms to set a clear allocation of responsibilities and mechanisms.

The Ministry of Justice should guarantee a fair and transparent system. It should have established a mechanism of monitoring of the proper application of the rules for collecting, processing and analysing data. This rules should be applied to all stakeholders that provides judicial statistics.

There are to many requests for statistics which unduly overload court staff. Too many organisations, public institutions and private ones, are requiring judicial statistics. There is a need for training court staff for performing the judicial statistics in order to strengthen their capacities and skills in data collection.

The Ministry of Justice collects a broad range of statistical data in criminal cases, civil cases, prosecutions cases and enforcement cases. The first step of computerization of all Albanian Courts is done with the automation of the civil cases in the Civil Case Management Information System (CCMIS). As of this, the focus on producing statistics automatically by an electronical system has to be centralised at the civil cases.

Collection of statistical data by the courts: The Civil CMIS System allows the courts to collect data of civil cases electronically by the statistic function of the System. The reports just have to be used to fill out the statistical forms. Therefore it is recommended to use already the System for the civil statistics as soon as it is available for all Albanian Courts. But the Ministry of Justice still can not process the data collected in a automated way. This process will facilitate the work that the staff in the ministry is doing it manually.

III. Accountability of data

The Ministry of Justice should ensure professionalism and ethics of the persons entrusted with data processing and their independence in order that other political or administrative bodies or institutions as well as private bodies guarantee the accountability of data. In Albania the court staff is appointed by the Head of Court, but the Ministry of Justice should establish clear rule and criteria on hiring court staff. These persons should have the appropriate skills and should guarantee the adequate level of independence so that an accountable and high quality scientific work can be delivered.

To improve the mechanism of data collection and analysis the Ministry of Justice should ensure that this process is undertaken in a transparent way. The main results should not only be delivered to all direct stakeholders of justice administration but also to all persons involved in the functioning of the judicial system.

Data and their analysis should be presented so as to be easily comprehensible in order to contribute to the transparency and acceptance of the whole system by all the persons concerned, and guarantee the fairness in the information presented.

There is a yearly publication of the data collected by the Ministry of Justice. Structure of the annual statistical yearbook. The statistical data shall be represented in a way which makes it easy to find the searched data. The actual annual statistical yearbook does not give always overviews in which you can easily find general data about the courts. It shows details and then further on gives the overviews about all courts. It is recommended to have first a general overview for all courts with the caseload at the beginning of each chapter (incoming, old stock, finished cases, new stock, backlog, duration of cases for each Court).

In order to have appropriate steps for collecting and processing judicial statistics the Ministry of Justice should have dialogue with the organisations representing the legal and judicial professions, researchers and, as appropriate, other organisations with an interest in the matter so as to guarantee a broad consensus on the information collected and communicated.

Form sheets for collection of data: in order to unify the collected data for all courts it is recommended for the courts to use the form sheets prepared by the Ministry of Justice for the collection of the annual statistical data. The forms shall be published on the webpage of the Ministry of Justice.


IV. Recommendations

All data regarding performance and quality of the judicial system should be collected and presented through a compatible and consistent methodology applicable to all the branches and bodies of the judiciary so as to be able to evaluate the efficiency of the means allocated to them.

In order to strengthen the efficiency and quality of justice the Ministry of Justice should implement the CEPEJ “Guidelines on Judicial Statistics”, and in particular the Time Management Checklist⁽²⁾, the Checklist for promoting the quality of justice and the courts⁽³⁾ and the SATURN Guidelines on judicial time management⁽⁴⁾, as well as the peer evaluation process and judicial statistics that has been implemented since 2008.

The Ministry of Justice is not monitoring the breaches of Article 6 of the European Convention on human Rights. The detailed up-to-date statistics on national cases before the European Court of Human Rights concerning the various rights protected by Article 6 are a key tool for evaluating and managing the follow-up to be given to the European Court of Human Rights judgements, in particular for the purpose of remedying situations which breach the convention. The Ministry of Justice should maintain statistics on national cases concerning Article 6 ECHR so that Court judgments are appropriately executed and further breaches prevented.

__________________

⁽¹⁾ General Prosecution Office is an independent institution according to the Constitution of the Republic of Albania.

⁽²⁾ CEPEJ(2005)12Rev.

⁽³⁾ CEPEJ(2008)2.

⁽⁴⁾ CEPEJ(2008)8.

Reported by Rezana Balla,
Ministry of Justice, Albania