ICTpost Governance Bureau
All the courts across India need to have a data centre connected through broadband connectivity with G2G e-Governance application
Computerisation of courts was initiated during the latter part of 1980s in association with the National Informatics Centre (NIC). During the last two decades, the Supreme Court of India, the high courts, city courts, district courts, sub-district courts and fast track courts have witnessed ‘informatisation’ in their administrative and management process, and have ushered in ‘transparency’ to the ‘common public’ to a certain extent.
While India has introduced significant economic reforms since 1991, it still faces significant institutional constraints in higher growth. These include legal and judicial systems that do not provide an adequate structure of incentives and deterents for a market-based economy to function. Globalisation also requires a legal system that conforms to global norms. “Post-1991, there has been a more explicit recognition that without a legal system that conforms to global norms, market-oriented reforms will not work,” according to Bibek Debroy, the noted Indian economist.
Research information systems evidently show that India suffers from a dire shortage of officers and delivery staff (police, judges, teachers, paramedics and doctors, and maintenance staff), combined with a vast excess of Class-III and Class-IV categories of workers (clerks, messengers and peons). The Class-III and Class-IV workers account for 90 percent of all government staff. This shows that Indian government has the wrong size in all directions. According to the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business – Database Report’, it takes 89 days to start a small business in India, while it takes only 2 days in Australia or in Canada. Thus India ranks low – ranks 134 out of 175 countries- as per the World Bank. In spite of this, India is emerging as an ‘economic and knowledge superpower’ and in less than a decade, it has emerged as the ‘electronic back office of the world’. Knowledge economy is dominated by Information, Communication and Technology (ICT).
The law reforms is a vast and complex subject, which embraces legislative reforms, judicial reforms and most importantly reforming the mindset of the judiciary- judges, magistrates and other adjudicators who form the core of a judiciary, as well as the support personnel who keep the system running smoothly. The Indian judicial system faces diverse problems of this nature: (a) slow disposal of cases leading to delays as well as accumulation of backlog and (b) very low rate of prosecution in criminal cases.
India has one of the highest numbers of pending cases in the world, due to lack of adequate infrastructure. India is said to possess one of the fairest legal systems in the world. Measures like re-engineering the processes, technology adoption, judicious exploiting and harnessing of available talents and expertise will help achieve the goal of judicial reforms in India.
Automation and Networking of Judicial Institutions
Since the 121st Report of the Law Commission of India (July 1987), which has devoted a whole chapter to ‘Technological Advances and its Use in the Context of Judicial Appointments’, the country has witnessed a lot of progress in ‘mainstreaming ICT in judicial administration and management’, through the efforts of National Informatics Centre (NIC).
The Government of India launched its ‘ICT Enablement for Indian Judiciary’ programme in 2005, on the basis of the recommendations of the e-Committee of the Supreme Court of India, which submitted its report titled ‘National Policy and Action Plan’ for implementation of Information and Communication Technology in the Indian Judiciary. The issue of legal enablement is being addressed by the Working Group on e-Governance Standards, constituted by the NIC, for the National e-Governance Programme (NeGP) of the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
All the courts across the country need to have a data centre connected through the high bandwidth broadband connectivity with G2G (government to government) e-Governance application with interoperable messaging system in a secured environment. This will ensure detection of certain litigants filing cases in multiple courts on the same subject. This system should have connectivity to citizens (G2C – government to citizen), businesses (G2B – government to business), and employees (G2E – government to employee) for a speedy delivery of justice. From the time the case is registered (i.e. in police station), till it is disposed off with final judgment, the entire processing must take place electronically, as envisioned by the former President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. That means that there shall be a Value-Chain Model (VCM) linking police stations, jails, and all courts across the country through e-Form technology architecture as given in the figure above.
e-Forms based on open standards are necessary for increased interoperability, faster time to market and reduced development costs, reusable components and multi-platform support. e-Form + e-Document + Workflow + Web services, over Intranet / Internet / Extranet / e-Mail, form a complete business process. This e-Form should also be accessible to people with disability.
Initiatives such as issuance of digital signature and legal acceptance of electronically submitted documents may create a correct ground for implementation of e-Form technology. The e-Forms may be accessed through post offices and CSCs (Community Service Centers), information kiosks, internet cafes, etc. Hybrid models may be introduced for seamless switching between modes using paper-based and electronic based forms to increase the comfort level of user. Awareness programmes may be carried out to educate the user for technology. e-Form is a solution to share knowledge globally and to bridge ‘paper-digital divide’ in e-Governance / e-Government programme, which will result in:
Increase visibility to the status of on-line forms submission;
Enhance access to crucial, relevant government department information;
Improved government compliance
Address compliance concerns of the governments (central, state and local bodies)
Reduce costs through improved automation of information collection, retrieval and storage
Reduce error introduced through hand-processing of paper forms
More easily shared information
Fewer resources spent on administration of information and data;
Improve multi-agency communication and collaboration;
Reduce costs by requiring fewer people to process paper-based forms.
Integration with back-end systems and processes;
Encourage development, delivery and take-up of new services
Encourage Private-Public-Partnership (PPP) model
Achieve data interoperability
Higher productivity
The Court modernisation programme, as categorised below, requires adoption of e-Form technology, to usher in profound impact on return on investment in terms of people, process and knowledge:-
Court case management;
Workflow charts;
Document management/imaging;
Office automation;
Internet access; and
Electronic case filing.
Recommendations
Design and development of Indian Court Operating System (ICOS) to be made functional in all 22 constitutionally recognised Indian languages;
Digital preservation and Information life cycle management policy;
Judicial library automation and networking through e-Granthalaya software;
Submission of information using e-Forms technology within the Legal System (Client – Police – Jail – Court – Lawyer – Government)
e-Court to be equipped with e-Form, e-Document, workflow management, portals based on framework architecture and digital signature;
Knowledge portals (judges, lawyers, cases, judgments, research information systems, judicial commissions reports) using W3C standards;
Court network to be a dedicated giga bit network facilitating data, video, and audio transfer; video conferencing from any node to node for all stakeholders of the legal proceedings;
All the courts (supreme court, high courts and district courts) across the country need to have a data centre connected through the high bandwidth broadband connectivity with G2G (government to government) e-Governance application with interoperable messaging system in a secured environment;
Legal enablement of ICT systems for consumer protection;
Adoption of expert systems and knowledge bases for all rules and procedures; application of text based data mining tools to facilitate “knowledge discovery” in advancing judgment delivery;
Establishment of a ‘Centre of Excellence on Judicial Informatics Research and Training’;
Change in curriculum of graduate and post-graduate law studies by introducing computer science and technology and information science and technology;