Courts Service modernisation: Working with our partners to improve services for all

The initial years of the Court Service modernisation programme are garnering benefits but the reform envisaged is just beginning.

The Courts Service’s modernisation programme is about re-designing our services to meet user needs, leading with a digital first approach. The first two years of the programme have been characterised by ongoing engagement with service users, representative groups, practitioners, our partners across the justice sector and the judiciary to co-design our new services.

At the same time, we have been prototyping and developing proof-of-concepts based on the user and partner feedback. We are now beginning to see results from some of the initial modernisation programme projects.

Criminal Justice Operational Hub – eCharge sheets project

The Courts Service is part of the justice system which requires interacting with various organisations to ensure that cases come to court, are heard and the relevant actions are taken. This requires the processing of volumes of data daily, the majority of which is done manually. One of the reasons the Criminal Justice Operational Hub was developed was to support efficient processing and transacting of data between the different organisations involved in the criminal justice system.

Working with An Garda Síochána, the Courts Service identified our process of manually creating charge sheets on our system as a duplication of the sheets on An Garda Síochána’s system. Typically, the Courts Service process approximately 109,241 charge sheets annually (2021). Through the Criminal Justice Operational Hub an automated process was developed to pull charge sheet and station bail data from An Garda Síochána’s system for electronic importation into the Courts Service system. The new electronic process was piloted in three offices at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 and then rolled out between March and mid-June 2022 across all areas.

Currently, the new system is being used to process 95 per cent of all charge sheets and has resulted in 77 per cent reduction in the time to process a charge sheet from an average of 207 seconds per sheet to 49 seconds. Based on an annual average of 109,241 charge sheets, we are looking at a saving of 733 days of manual entry which is the equivalent of 3.2 FTE capacity released. This allows our people to deliver a better quality of service to our users in very busy offices. This project is realising a number of our modernisation programme key benefits including:

• reducing complexity in the system;
• improved process efficiencies;
• releasing our people from data entry work to concentrate on user needs;
• improved turnaround times; and
• accuracy and quality of our data.

Video technology enabled court rooms

In this report last year, we mentioned the benefits of remote courts and video-link options for victims, witnesses, subject matter experts, practitioners, as well as our partners across the justice system and the judiciary. Video-links have enabled cases to be heard quicker than if everyone involved had to be physically in the court. Our aim is to ensure 158 court rooms nationwide are video technology enabled by 2024. 117 courtrooms have been enabled to date with a further four expected by the end of the year, another 18 in 2023 and 19 in 2024. This initiative is about giving the judiciary and parties options to have cases heard in a timely more efficient manner, to make the most of costly and valuable court time. It is also about improving customer satisfaction by reducing anxiety for users.

Replying online to jury summons

The genesis of the modernisation programme was an organisation capability review in 2018. One of the main recommendations in that review was to centralise a number of services. In December 2019, the CEO of the Courts Service, Angela Denning, officially opened the centralised office in Castlebar. One of the services to be centralised was the issuing of jury summonses. Pat Conlan, the local manager in Castlebar, explains the work of the Jury Summons Office reports: “We are now administering jury summonses for the majority of offices around the country in support of County Registrars. The Jury Summons Office has issued over 420,000 summonses since opening in 2019. Centralising these processes has benefitted the Courts Service internally and thanks to the hard work and dedication of the staff in Castlebar, issuing of summonses continued throughout the pandemic to ensure continued access to justice.”

The next step for the Jury Summons Office is to provide an online solution for those who receive a jury summons through the post. Working to modernisation programme goals, the Jury Summons Office, working with ICT, is developing an easy-to-use online system based on user feedback. Currently at pilot stage, the new online platform is being developed to allow those who have received a summons to reply, check the status of their reply, and access helpful information about jury summons and duty online whenever they like 24/7.

The project is currently being piloted in four counties: Kilkenny, Mayo, Tipperary, and Waterford. Across the four pilot counties, approximately 30 per cent of people who have responded to their jury summons have done so using the new online platform. Encouragingly, feedback received from those who used the new platform has been very positive.

Following a review of the pilot project, it is planned that a nationwide roll-out will happen over the next few months. This project is aimed at providing users with options to choose how they want to respond. Not everyone will choose the digital option but it is important in a modern digital Ireland that people have the option.

So far in 2022, we have welcomed over 900 members of the public to learn more about how the Courts work and their rich history through our Four Court 100 tours. The tours ran in June – July 2022 to mark the Battle of the Four Courts centenary and for Culture Night on 23 September 2022. Hundreds more are downloading our Four Courts 100 app to experience the tour from their phones. The Courts Service also attended the National Ploughing Championships in September 2022 participating in the Department of Justice tent ‘Supporting Victims of Crime’. Providing information about the Courts through outreach initiatives can help make the justice system more accessible to members of the public.

For more information on the Courts Service visit www.courts.ie