The Central and Eastern Europe countries are undergoing significant change as they accelerate to becoming digital economies. A key cornerstone for the region’s future economic success is the quality of its justice system. Investors will steer clear of societies who have anything less than a robust justice system. With increased mobility citizens will similarly vote with their feet. - See more at: http://businessvalueexchange.com/blog/2015/03/31/e-justice-in-central-and-eastern-europe/#sthash.TveIVMtO.dpuf

1. Public Sector White Paper
E-Justice in
Central Eastern
Europe
How technology can help the different domains of justice

2. 2
Justice services in Central Eastern Europe have accomplished
a good part of the journey and we are now in a period of
opportunity to step change how the justice system operates,
improve the case throughput, access to justice and improve
citizen confidence.
What is the current state of justice in Central Eastern Europe
After the fall of the Berlin wall the Central and Eastern Europe countries faced a high
priority challenge to transform and standardize their judicial systems. Significant changes
in legislation were required, especially in the domain of civil and commercial law. Reforms
entailed restoration of independence of the judiciary, increasing its professionalism,
efficiency and transparency.
25 years later the judiciary landscape still varies a lot across the region. New EU member
states had to comply with EU accession rules including aligning their judicial system and
legislation with EU standards, yet many challenges lay ahead.
As part of the reforms new, more efficient systems of court organization and administration
have been introduced, including first generation of court management and case
management systems, ERP systems, electronic registries and individual agendas.
Main challenges of the justice sector
Despite the general ICT* under investment of the sector in Central and Eastern Europe
the availability of PC’s and other IT equipment in courts has significantly increased. This
paradoxically results in faster electronic production of paper documents, most of which are
exchanged, stored, accessed and archived in traditional 19th century ways. Many courts
still work exclusively with paper files and offer limited access through other communication
channels to parties, other courts and law enforcement agencies. It is not uncommon that
paper proCentral and Eastern Europedings from a complex case weigh a hundreds of
kilograms, adding problems with storage, access, transportation, security and preservation
of the files.
This results in a highly overloaded the court system, extended timelines for court cases
resolutions, increased risk of errors and a generally low level of confidence in the rule of
law. This is further accented by an increase in the number of applications to the courts. The
economic crisis and economic slowdown in Europe brought an ever increasing number of
individual or company insolvency and execution cases.
Frequent political changes induce changes in legislation, introducing errors and distortions
during the legislation process and affecting the stability of the legal environment. New laws
require re-education of professionals and the whole of society as well as new constructions
and judicature.
Therefore to varying degrees, Central and Eastern Europe countries still suffer from a
relatively low level of public confidence in the rule of law and timely law enforcement
capacity of the state. Judicial reforms became not only a political necessity, but also a
necessary condition to economic stability and growth. Continuing high levels of perceived
corruption, slowness of the courts and frequent changes in legislation discourage foreign
direct investments, economic cooperation and trade. Most of the countries still lack a
broader e-justice concept and strategy. Enhancement efforts are dispersed in a number of
not very coordinated initiatives.
Although much progress has been made on law and legal procedures, harmonizing the
use of ICT at the European level only reflects the state of the sector in individual countries.
While the EU portals mainly provide unidirectional information and guidance, describe
cross-border procedures and allow for downloading standardized forms, paper form largely
prevails in all legal acts and all cross border cooperation. The most notable exception being
the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS).
Public Sector White Paper –
E-Justice in Central and
Eastern Europe
* Information and Communication Technology
“Judicial reforms became not
only a political necessity, but
also a necessary condition
to economic stability and
growth.”
– Milan Sterba, HP Public Sector Business
Consultant

3. 3
Caveats and obstacles
As always, the big challenge of the e-Justice transformation is the management of the
change. New approaches will find a lot of resistance in a sector which is very formalized and
traditional. Giving up physical control of the paper files and transitioning to a realm of fully
digitized document flow can be a very unacceptable idea for more than a few. At the same
time, the situation today has many of the characteristics of a “burning platform”.
The broader introduction of e-Justice solutions has legislative requirements as well. The full
equivalence of electronic documents to paper based ones must be ensured. This goes hand
in hand with organizational changes and technical enablement.
Justice also sets extreme security requirements that imply a significant strengthening of
the cyber security of the e-Justice systems and data. Services beyond standard on‑line
information provision require authoritative on-line identification and authentication
schemes (ideally based on a nation-wide electronic ID scheme) as well as systems of secure
and trusted delivery of documents to parties. Governments in the region are gradually
introducing nation‑wide electronic ID and trust schemes that will become unified across EU
after the adoption of the new eIDAS1
regulation. Some countries introduce universal trusted
document delivery schemes (e.g. Czech “data boxes”, the new electronic documents delivery
system has launched by the Ministry of the Interior and the Czech Post.)
Another big challenge are the kilometers of paper folders associated with the court archives.
Gradually, all new and living court files will be digitized. While we will have a long transition
period where we will have both electronic and paper court files, finally, over time, traditional
paper case files will disappear and fully paperless courts will be the new standard.
Applying available best practices, today’s technologies, and using financial and other
resources coming from EU and other IFO’s to address the pressing challenges of justice in
Central and Eastern Europe can really make the change.
Public Sector White Paper –
E-Justice in Central and
Eastern Europe
1
The eIDAS, Electronic Identification and Trust
Services Regulation aims at boosting the user
convenience, trust and confidence in the digital
world, while keeping pace with technological
developments, promoting innovation and
stimulating competition.

4. 4
Overcoming the challenges – how can ICT help
ICT is certainly not a direct actor in justice reforms but can be a very important enabler and
accelerator. Firstly justice as a complex interconnected ecosystem with many different users
can largely benefit from introducing cloud service delivery models, where the services are
allocated based on the degree of commonality and specific service level requirements.
This can result in great efficiency improvements and standardization of the service levels
across the sector in basic IT services like workplace and mobility management, or unified
communication as well as non-core business services like ERP, HR, or procurement.
Re‑architecting the systems according to service oriented principles will make them more
flexible and allow for future integrations.
Backlog decrease
The courts’ backlogs can be dramatically decreased by opening a secure digital access to
electronic court files to all authorized parties, allowing them on-line consultation, search
and download of the files, enabling e-filing and secure on-line execution of other formally
required legal acts. Some more simple standardized legal transactions can be further
automated to decrease the workload. Alternative dispute resolution procedures can also
benefit from such ICT support and further decrease the backlog.
Paperless functioning
ICT can provide direct assistance to judges, court clerks, prosecutors and attorneys in terms
of court files access, IT supported creation, and access. All documents, court hearing records
and other media that become a standard part of court documentation should be stored in
digital format, readily available and searchable by all authorized parties. Tolls that allow
blending, processing and search across different media, including automated speech-to-
text transcripts are being increasingly used by professionals. Today’s technologies enable a
fully paperless functioning of the courts. We can already see many examples of this like the
Justice Electronic Library System in San Diego County District Attorney Office or the Central
Electronic Payment Order in Czech Republic.
Modern record management
The records produced by justice represent critical information and need to be managed,
maintained and archived with extreme caution and to the letter of the law. To fight the
mountains of paper modern record management systems allow us to capture, manage,
access and archive in a seamless way records containing all kind of information types
including structured, semi-structured and unstructured information, multimedia as well as
physical records. A good example of such a complex approach is the International Criminal
Court in The Hague. Digital archives can then classify, retain on a long-term and protect
documents in full compliance with regulation, meeting the most strict security standards,
allowing for rich on-line meaning based end-user search, e-discovery and investigations,
while offloading the production systems.
Secure digital information exchange
Secure digital information exchange with guaranteed delivery can be extended not only to
ensure secure electronic court files exchange between courts of different levels but also to
include all other parties in the end-to-end law enforcement value chain, including police,
prosecution, courts, parties, and penitentiary and probation services as this is the case for
example in the Causeway system in Northern Ireland. Such solutions represent the highest
potential benefits in cost savings and increased efficiency.
Full digitization of procedures
Significant improvements can also be brought by ICT by full digitization of procedures
related to administration and management of registers maintained by justice. The speed
of registering and establishing a business in country, managing land and building property,
quick settlement of debts by reliable execution services, guaranteed protection of debtors
and creditors interests in cases of insolvency are parameters an investor will evaluate
prior establishing a business. Through a well considered implementation of registries and
procedure automation, the Dutch Centraal Justitieel Incasso Bureau significantly improved
the speed of justice decision execution in fines and confiscations achieving at the same time
non-negligible economies.
Justice as a complex
interconnected ecosystem
with many different users
can largely benefit from
cloud service
delivery models.
Public Sector White Paper –
E-Justice in Central and
Eastern Europe

5. 5
Advanced information management
Access to right information, exchange and development of knowledge and lifelong education
are important characteristics for judges, court clerks and justice professionals. Advanced
information management, intelligent search systems, knowledge management, social media
and e-learning platforms are fundamental tools to keep the justice workers on top of their
ever changing and evolving domain, especially in transforming justice systems in Central
and Eastern Europe. The Belgian Federal Public Service Justice is a good example of where IT
solutions helped to tackle the problem.
Social media
Given the large number of ongoing legislation changes, the legislation process from
initialization to the publication of newly adopted laws and changes can also hugely benefit
from ICT support, enabling faster, more consistent, and error free legislation process,
which involves all the parties into a structured, transparent communication process when
designing, developing, reviewing and amending law. Social media can play an important role
in making this process open and transparent.
Publicly available sources
Access to justice can be improved by setting up on-line publicly accessible and easily
searchable source of authoritative wording of law and regulation valid at any particular
moment in time in the past. Such systems can be further complemented by legal aid
capabilities provided on-line to people in need. Publicly available information about courts
and activities should be easily accessible based on the principles of open data, addressing
the need for transparency of justice.
Improved law enforcement and prosecution
ICT can also significantly improve preventive and investigative phases of law enforcement
and prosecution, starting from monitoring, information gathering, analysis and identification
of suspect behavior patterns in all kinds of domains, ensuring physical and cyber security,
gathering and evaluating evidence.
Correctional and probation services
Let us not forget correctional and probation services, where IT technologies are typically
even less advanced than in courts. Digitizing and managing records electronically brings high
efficiency and security gains to the system as it is the case in the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation. Prisons are large complex organizations with a number of
specific needs that can be optimized by introducing shared e-services in procurement, HR
management or ERP as we can see in Her Majesty’s Prison Service in the UK. IT solutions can
also increase mobility of justice employees wherever required, like it is the case in the Dutch
Probation Services.
The HP vision consists of a coordinated strategic approach to
Central and Eastern Europe governments that will
materialize all the above mentioned opportunities in a
coherent and coordinated way, using modern transformation,
program management and enterprise architecture
approaches to bring e-Justice to life as a new standard.
Public Sector White Paper –
E-Justice in Central and
Eastern Europe

6. Leveraging best practices – learn from the leaders
The programs of the new EU programming period 2014-2020 attach a huge importance to
further improvements of the judicial system including broader cooperation in justice across
EU based on broader use of ICT. This includes areas such as the further development of the
EU e-Justice portal, integration of registers (business registers, land registers, insolvency
registers), improving secure and cross-border exchange and guaranteed delivery of
information in legal proCentral and Eastern Europedings, broader use of video conferencing,
as well as ICT support for specific agendas (small claims procedure, European payment
order) and eventually full on-line dispute resolution.
Central Eastern European countries will hugely benefit from taking inspiration from these
early examples of pervasive use of new style of IT in justice and law enforcement. By
significantly increasing access to justice, efficiency, transparency and professionalism
they can take a big step to increasing the confidence in the rule of law both internally and
externally and also contribute to growth of their economy. To finance large transformation
projects in justice they can mobilize different sources of funding including EU, other
international financing organizations but also national sources. Optimizing the judiciary
has a relatively short term impact on the overall yield of the economy, so it is worth public
investment. And people and businesses are willing to pay a premium to live in a place where
they can rely on justice being done in finite time.
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April 2015
Public Sector White Paper –
E-Justice in Central and
Eastern Europe