Electronic case management system to be launched soon – CJ

Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George, SC, has revealed that the electronic case management system for the Court of Appeal and High Court will be ready for a soft launch in the coming weeks, as Guyana’s Judiciary moves towards the use of technology.
“The E-litigation system for Court of Appeal and High Court will be ready for a soft launch of Phase One – Court of Appeal – within the next few weeks. Phase Two -High Court – should be ready for launch by the last quarter of this year. Like the Magistrate Court case management system, the e-litigation system will be a game-changer for the administration of justice,” she posited.
Justice George, in describing the operation of the e-litigation system for the High Court and Court of Appeal, said matters would be filed at court registries’ service bureaus, where filing fees would be paid and documents would be uploaded to the system with the help of registry employees. The portal will be used for both the issuance of court orders and the exchange of documents between attorneys and/or the court.

She added, “As we become familiar with the system, we will migrate to having counsel file and make payments via a reducing balance credit system from the comfort of their chambers or wherever they may be in the world. Self-represented litigants will file through the service bureaus. Again, the cases will be electronically assigned to the Judges.”
Given this system is new, she explained, a committee is revising the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), and will report to the Rules Committee before the year-end.
She also said the Minutes Books for Judicial Officers would no longer be necessary.
“And in the future, we will move away from having the Minutes Books of Judicial Officers as the court record to having court-produced audio and/or written transcripts of all cases as the official record of our courts,” she declared.
The respective chambers of the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the Guyana Prison Service (GPS), the Guyana Police Force (GPF), and other justice sector stakeholders have been praised by the Chief Justice for their collaboration with judicial officers in supervising the creation of these cutting-edge technological systems.
“We will be engaging with other justice sector partners: for example, the Deed’s Registry, the Land Registry, the Child Care and Protection Agency, and the Probation Department of the Human Services [and Social Security Ministry], in relation to utilising the system,” she said.
A sophisticated electronic Court Case Management System for the Magistrates’ Courts was launched last month. Once the pilot project at the Diamond/Golden Grove Magistrates’ Courts proves successful, it will be replicated in Magistrates’ Courts across the country.
The Guyana and United States governments worked together to establish the system. It was put into effect by the National Center for State Courts and by the Guyana Judiciary with backing from the US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. (Feona Morrison)