Pilot system for electronic processing of utility cases

SOKOP - An experience from BiH

Simone Ginzburg

Batumi, Georgia – 28/09/2011

SOKOP - An experience from

BiH

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1 State

2 Entities + 1 District

4 Enforcement laws

14 Ministries of Justice

Bosnia – Herzegovina

One High Judicial andProsecutorial Council (2004):

Ensuring the maintenance of an independent, impartial and professional judiciary- Appointments and disciplinary sanctions- Standards for education- Reccomendations for the budgets- Projects- Introduction, approval and monitor of IT systems in judiciary

~ 4 000 000 inhabitants

~ 1 500 000 enforcement “utility cases”

Backlog reduction project (2008 – 2011)

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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Outline:

1.Definition of the problem. Challenges and opportunities

2. Brief chronology

3. System overview

4. Final observations

Enforcement is in BiH a judicial process

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Unpaid bills for:

- Water provision

- Central heating distribution

- Garbage disposal

Unpaid Radio / TV possession fees

Utility cases

Judge – led

• Formalistic • Plaintiff driven

Direct enforcement

Business registries excerpts are considered “Authentic documents”

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

Bailiffs act upon judge’s dispositions:in charge of inventory, seizing and sale of movable properties

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Enforcement motion

Enforcement

Enforcement decision

Court caseCMS

Debtor’smotivated

timelyobjection

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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Intake of plaintiffs submissions: trucks / boxes.Handling and storage

Frequent communication with the plaintiff

Checking / Issuing decisions

Shipping documents

Field work of bailiffs and couriers

Checking service

Plenty of standard communications

Check fees payment by the plaintiffs

Electronic submission

Two-ways electronic communication Court / plaintiffs

Validation of submissions

Scanning and recognition of delivery slips

Single shipping station

Critical process phases and new solutions

Facilitated and mass creation of documents

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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Challenges Opportunities

• These cases are not a priority

• Very advanced informatizationof the judiciary:infrastructure / hardware / mindset

• Diverse addresses lists • Advanced informatizationof other State institutions• Data-protection Agency

very restrictive approach

• More eagerness to experiment new practices

• Provisions for electronic submission in the 2003 Civil Procedure Law

• All plaintiffs’ submissions via email

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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Council decisionto develop a pilot System for handling of utility cases (SOKOP)October 2008

Visits to www.covl.si November 2008 and February 2009

Software developing - first phaseJuly 2009 – March 2010

First two pilot Courts receive and process casesApril – December 2010

Other seven Courts receive casesJanuary – August 2011

Software developing - second phaseJanuary – June 2011

Backlog entered into the first two pilot CourtsAugust – September 2011

Brief chronology

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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Judicial and police network

Internet / https

System architecture

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

One database server and two application servers (virtual machine).

Java Enterprise Edition platform, JEE 5 standard.JPA, EJB3, JAXB, JAAS, JSF - XHTML renderer, JasperReports, web GUI and AJAX (RichFaces), JakartaPOI. Abbyy Flexi Capture 9.0

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via e-mail digitally signed with a qualified electronic signature

Communication from the plaintiffs to the Court

Submissions: XML + XSL files + optional attachments(one XSL for each type of submission - 9)

ZIP-ped and validated

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

Naslov prezentacije

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Communication from the Court to the plaintiff

Court documents are made available through the system; plaintiffs send back digitally signed confirmation receipts.

Internet / https

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- Validate or create submissions for Court

- Search through all their cases and look every case file

- Mark the case for which they want to pay fees

Internet / https

Plaintiffs’ secure internet access also for...

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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Printing on-demand

Tasking defined on the basis of the coded address

Possibility for the bailiffs to take over service of documents

Tasks results on standard forms, ready to be scanned and trigger the next action One debtor’s address at a time!

Impact on the bailiffs field work

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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Scanned and immediately available through the system to the plaintiffs

Debtor’s and third parties’ submissions

Newly designed delivery slip

Scanning / optical recognition / validation

Possibility of group review

Record of service results

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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Each event is signalled to the case handler:- Parties’ submissions- Service results and Bailiffs’ minutes- Expiration of set deadlines- Corrections in the previous data

For each event, one or more documents to be created are suggested, filled with any possible detail (except the motivation!) including addressees and sending options

Mass creation possible only for cases with one event only

Facilitated and mass creation of documents

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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IPA 2009 (2011 – 2012)

Include submission of cases which are started as civil claims asking for default judgment in case of lack of reply

Two-way integration with Court CMS

Start to integrate addresses and assetts’ search (first test OK with RS Tax Administration)

Test hybrid post

31.08.2011: 117.078 cases into the system: 55.339 received electronically and 61.739 old cases

Start to work with the backlog cases (3% of debtors account for at least 8% of the cases)

Where now, what next?

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

System for the electronic handling of small claims / utility cases

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Enforcement motion

Enforcement

Enforcement decision Court caseCMS

Otheroutcome

Debtor’smotivated

timelyobjection

Small claim

Send the claim for answer

Debtor’sanswer

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

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• Integration with claims submission:no need to check consistence among confirmed claims and enforcement request

• Communication by the plaintiff in the enforcement phase: case (partial) withdrawal, suspension request, ...

• Complete transparency for the plaintiff

• Flexibility for the plaintiffs to discretionally and gradually integrate their IT systems

• Ability to withold any further action as soon as any relevant event occurs:

• Integration with other databases searches

Final observations: relevant elements

SOKOP – an experience from BiH

Naslov prezentacije

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