IT in the Court and

why it is so much
“Fun”
Haemiwan Fathony
The Judicial Reform Team Office at the Supreme Court of Indonesia
Agenda

 Introduction

 IT Roles in the Court

 Understanding the Court Process
 Where Technology can Play?
 Why it is so much Fun?
 Traps & Challenges
Introduction
 IT in the Court
 From the court, legal profession and people at large
perspectives
 From the “geek” perspective


 Why it is so much “Fun”

 Challenging implementation
▪ Limited resources, geographical challenges, low IT
literacy issues
▪ “Piloting forever” syndrome
▪ Fail to address both the strategic and the very basic needs of the
Court
 A real life test-bed for some new technological
concepts
▪ But beware of geek’s trap 
IT Roles in the Court
 Major complaints to the court all over the world*:
 Court processes take too Internal
long process The very same
issues for every
Client service other organizations
 Courts are difficult to access
Integrity of the
 Judges are corrupt organization


 IT should give more focus on how to:

 Reduce case processing delays
 Create better access to the court
 Prevent/reduce corruption
▪ Transparent & accountable processes
will have court-wide organizational
▪ Improving impartiality andimpact
integrity in court and
judiciaries

* Taken from “Technology for Justice”, Dory Reiling (2009)

Understanding the Court
Process*

ent
achm
Impe hts
Registration

g
ispu tional ri

Legal questions on regulation under the Law

disputes

tes,
tu
lectio g consti
District Court
Court Hearings (1st instance court)

ns d
in
g La s regard
appeal

ws, E
n
Con l questio
High Court

flictin
Lega
Judgment Process
Cassation, PK

Constitutional Court Supreme Court

Delivery & Execution

So much technological opportunities and * This only depict the main processes within
challenges all over the processes! the Indonesian legal system
Where Technology can
Play
 Case processing,  Provision of information
access to court for justice seekers
 E-filing
services, prevent  Case recordings and
corruption managements
 Combined with
workflow and
content
management
technologies
 Courtroom technologies:
 Remote hearing
 Virtual courtroom
 Court room recording
and transcription
 Remote/mobile courts
 Etc…
Why it is so much “Fun”
 Challenging  Speech to text
Requirement technology
Management  Computer assisted
 Limited budget & criminal sentencing
resources  Knowledge and
 Geographical discovery in the
challenges legal database
 Low IT literacy
 Selecting, pre-
issues process and
 Possibility of BPR transform the data
needs  Data mining (rule
 Possibility of forcing induction,
others to change uncertain and
 Large scale data statistical, neural
networks)
The state of Indonesian
Courts*
 Basic case registration, in some courts
 Full case processing, in some other courts
 Transparency issue as the main driver**
 Publishing the court decisions
 Publishing the court status
 Court fee information
 Complaint management
 Will move on to accelerate court processes
 The need of process reengineering has been
identified
 Still struggling to face the classical challenges of
IT implementations
 See the traps and challenges
* May reflects for courts under the Supreme Court only
** Driven by the new laws on the Basic Judiciaries, Public Information Law, and Public Services Law
Some Traps

 So sophisticated but could not deliver

direct benefit to the users, e.g. solving
regular reporting duties and eliminating
clerical tasks
 Main complaint on most IT systems


 Pushing too far, creating complex change

management
 The user environment is not ready
 Crossing the regulation border
 Challenging some philosophical “principles”
Challenges

 “Unfriendly” regulations
 Resistances
 Changing the way of work
▪ That may need change of regulations and
conflicting interests
 Corruption fight backs
 The challenges scale as the
implementation scales
 Should be careful on nationwide
implementation
 Pilot may be useful, but must be carefully
executed and probably need an end to end