1 LEFIS CONFERENCE ZARAGOZA 30.8-1 September 2004 CONCERNING THE USE OF INFORMATION AND...

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LEFIS CONFERENCE ZARAGOZA 30.8-1 September 2004

CONCERNING THE USE OF INFORMATIONAND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM. SOME COMMENTS

ON THE CASE STUDY - ROMANIA

Fernando Galindo Nicolae CostakeUniversity of Zaragoza Consultant (CMC)Director of LEFIS Project Participant to LEFIS project cfa @ unizar. posta. Es ncke @ starnets. ro

Presented by Sorin Barbulea University Politehnica of Bucharest sorbaus @ yahoo. com

August 2004 Zaragoza and Bucharest

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ROMANIAN TEAM for LEFIS

Nicolae Costake ncke @ starnets.ro (CMC),

Sergiu Iliescu sergiu.iliescu @ xnet.ro,

Patricia Arsene parsene@ yahoo.com,

Sorin Barbulea sorbaus@ yahoo.com (University Politechnica Bucharest),

Rares Vasilescu rares@ indaco.ro (Indaco)

August 2004 Bucharest, Romania

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Content

1. Statement of the problem

2. Case study Romania

3. System analysis of the Judicial Information System (JIS) within the Socio-Economic System (SES)

4. Options in the development of JIS

5. Conclusion: a Draft Roadmap towards the integrated JIS


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1. Statement of the problem. a) Major trends in the societal management:

(i) Move e-Government => e-Governance

(ii) Move insular informatization => integrated informatization within the 3 Authorities

(iii) The comprehensive reengineering of the Judiciary: informatization of activities in Courts & Prosecutor’s Offices but still far from integrated national (and international) JIS => possibility of imbalances between democratic principles and new technology

b) In the CE-EC judicial reforms have & are taken place => interesting limit situations => Study of integrated JIS makes sense

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2. Some information about Case Study Romania (1)

• General: (I) re-start economic growth, privatizations, but still: - insufficient administrative capacity and - still corruption; - strict planning for accession to EU- monitored

• Regarding the Judicial System (JS): - subject to a high legislative flow: Indicator 1990 2003 => Rising importanceNo of laws / similar 450 1550 of legislative dataRatio govt.ordinances / laws 0 0.4 bases withGovnt decrees 1300 1300 advancedOrders &norms of the MoF 10 220 features 1934-1937 1938-1944 1945-1947 1948-1989 1990-2003 Average no/100 working 6 10 11 50 370 days (5/w)

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2. Some information about Case Study Romania (2)

The Romanian Judicial Reform: - Comprehensive Legislative package end June- start July 2004: organization of the Judiciary; statute of magistrates; Superior Magistrate’s Council (SMC) ; international cooperation in penal matters; new Penal Code etc.

Examples of new provisions: SMC – autonomous institution, with rights for nomination, promotion, transfer, suspension, punishment and protection of magistrates Establishment of specialized tribunals for matters such as: family and minors, commerce, labor & social security, fiscal, administrative Random allocation of cases to judges using computers De-militarization of civil servants working in penitentiaries First instance judgement by two judges (instead of one) The position of manager for financial & administrative problems

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3. Some information about Case Study Romania

• Informatization of the JS:

An integrated case and documents management information system is in roll-out phase (ECRIS, presented in Wroclaw)

LESSONS:

- Reforms are essentially top-down societal processes, for which international requirement and support (such as by the EU) can be very important.

- The inertia of the Judicial System, can be considerable. The consequence is the need for management of change.

- Management of change needs also training. The Institute for Magistrate’s Training whose creation was supported by PHARE, is certainly a success.

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A short Comment (a)

The performance of the Judicial System should be defined in quantitative terms, calculated and periodically analysed.

Two possible examples are suggested:

(i) Uniformity(equality) applying law;

(ii) Average duration of a case investigation and judgement per categories of cases.

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A short Comment (b)

The use of advanced and integrated ICT systems is essential. This implies the move from the information processing to knowlege processing.

This needs a strategy, embedded in a e-Governance national strategy. Communications within the Judicial System and with the relevant institutions of the Executive and the Legislative Authorities as well as with the media and the public should be assured.

Another requirement of rising importance is that of compatibility and interoperability of the national Judicial Information Systems.

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4. The full success of Reform of the Judiciary System

• Implies coordination with a Reform of the Legislative Authority (to reduce the flow of normative acts and increase their quality for minimizing modifications) and with the Reform of the Executive Authority (to assure the necessary informational support and to implement the judicial decisions).

• The informatization of the Judiciary was in general well received by the magistrates, because it responded to a recognized need for people confronted with the problems of the real world.

• Even if technicaly well organized and even if computerized in the sense of text processing and perhaps some Internet access, the Judicial Information System based on “paper & technology”, cannot meet the requirements to raise performance needed to face effectively the problems of the transition to a free–market society based on competition, democracy and Law.

• The need is to integrate information from different organizations, in order te serve them effectvely. The support of a program management unit near the prime minister or another high ranked person is necessary.

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Possible consequences could be e.g.:

• The co-ordination of the informatization programs. of the two Authorities, in order to achieve compatibility and interoperability in some specific fields.

• A set of common technical standards

• A common knowledge base containing definition of concepts (indicating also synonyms and antonyms) and descriptions of administrative-like procedures

• An agreed structure of the content of normative acts, (UI- unique Identifier; NA- normative act). It is a slightly modified version of the proposal presented at the LEFIS Wroclaw Workshop

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5. CONCLUSIONS: A DRAFT ROADMAP TOWARDS THE INTEGRATED JIS

The proposed steps are:

• Establishment of a steering committee and a program management unit for the JIS.

• High level system analysis and vision of the JIS, including the links with the other Authorities and the operational subsystem of the SES ( public and organisations).

• Strategic planning. The expected result is a definition of a general architecture

• Procurements (system analysis, business requirements, tender documentation) per project, followed by pilot implementation and roll-out)

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The sequence of objectives could be:

• establishment of the administration department for information system administration and assurance of the metadata;

• creation and implementation of the integrated case and document management information system including the interfaces to other information systems;

• in parallel: creation and implementation of the internal core information system of the judicial units;

• in parallel: creation and implementation of the management information system of the Judicial System;

• creation and implementation of the JIS’s warehouse and calculation of performance.

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The Romanian Team thanks you for your attention!

1 LEFIS CONFERENCE ZARAGOZA 30.8-1 September 2004 CONCERNING THE USE OF INFORMATION AND...

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