Sri Lanka plans to go for E-Court system
Sri Lanka is exploring the possibility of introducing paperless E-Court services as a remedy to the delay in expediting cases which has made litigants lose faith in the country’s judicial system, Justice Ministry sources said.
Justice Minister Thalatha Athukorala’s attention has been drawn to the E-Court concept by Minister in the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said who shared her country’s experience in implementing the e-Justice system since 2009.
Ms. Azalina was one of the ministers who accompanied Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on an official visit to Sri Lanka from December 17 to 19.
“Malaysia has implemented the e-Justice system since 2009 and the government of Sri Lanka is interested to introduce it into its court system. This shows that Malaysia is recognised by other countries for its efficient justice system,” Ms. Azalina said in a statement recently.
E-Court is a location which has a well-developed technical infrastructure where cases are taken up for hearing before a Judge or Judges.
This infrastructure is usually designed to allow parties, participants and other stakeholders to better operate some administrative and procedural aspects of the court’s functions, such as presenting evidence, filing judicial records (electronic court filing) or receiving testimony remotely.
Judges, lawyers and all litigant parties can use the e-Court facility to digitally file records.
E-Court services could reform management efficacy of the sector to sustain it on par with advancing technology, a telecom expert who has held very senior positions nationally and internationally, said.
Using the services of lay judges will create a multidisciplinary knowledge based platform commensurate with needs advancing science and technology to foster transparent high quality jurisdictions for expeditious dispensing of justice, he added.
E-Court services like BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), Tele-working, Tele-education, etc is a subset of telecommuting application, Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha, former higher education state minister, said.
In a recent statement, he noted its potential to avert hassle of time consuming commuting of long distances to courts, on traffic congested roads, prone to accidents; it’s also equipped with computer aided management tools manage information: capture, store; retrieve; analyse, etc and provide access.
Another useful feature is that it could avoid unproductive commuting, he said adding that majority of the litigants are said to commute to courts just to be informed of the next date of the trial.
The access to E-Court services may be accomplished by defining Points of Presence (PoP) for the entirety of the justice sector court system, he disclosed.
Such PoP enables access to any court via the Internet and in case, a litigant and his attorney had to attend a court case scheduled for call up or trial, then online access to the court, by the litigant and attorneys for real time participation in the court proceedings could be provided from a fully equipped secured centre in the vicinity of homes of the litigant and attorney located at a public office such as a post office, provincial or district secretariat or police station, etc, he explained.
Backlogs and delays in concluding cases are high, with the citizens attempting to take the law into their hands due to excessive delays with 95,000 unresolved cases and a backlog of 800,000 cases pending including 105 controversial cases, Attorney General’s Department sources revealed.
This has prompted the Attorney General’s Department to fast-track the cases to be heard on a daily basis by special courts, sources said.