Why are we behind Dubai on courts IT?
On the Gazette we’ve been here many times before, but that’s only because I feel duty-bound to keep pointing this out: we could have a really tidy electronic filing and document management (EFDM) system for our commercial courts (and beyond) for a fraction of the price that we appear to be paying. Yet more proof of this has crossed my path recently.
Back in June last year we broke the story that the government wasted millions on consultants after failing to pilot properly and then dropping a system tried out in the commercial courts, InterCOMM – then known to most of us as CCIT Phase One. Since then I’ve tried – without much success – to get real answers from government on what it is doing to implement EFDM in our commercial courts or beyond.
Government has, it seems, been flopping around like a landed fish on this so badly that delivering such a system is probably only going to happen in time for the launch of the new Business Court because that itself is delayed until next year.
So imagine my expression when I read in some of the Gulf press that the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts, the Emirate’s equivalent to our commercial courts, got its own case management system delivered and finished in a matter of weeks earlier this year? More irksome still was that they bought a version of the very system that the UK government tested, found worked, for some reason canned and then ignored for three years – InterCOMM.
Obviously I wrote immediately to the registrar’s office of the DIFC Courts to ask for confirmation and to get some more detail. The reply made me want to hold my head in my hands – I resisted, however, as I have long since given up despairing of the Ministry of Justice and HM Courts Service’s approach to IT.
InterCOMM's creator, Visionhall Information Systems, sold DIFC Courts the system and went from contract signing to ‘go-live’ in five weeks. It helped a lot, apparently, that the system had already been tested on our own commercial courts. The deputy registrar told me: ‘We found Visionhall to be very helpful and knowledgeable on our court procedures due to the fact a similar system is used by the London commercial courts. Now the system is in place, we are looking to add additional modules to enable e-filing in the future.' The IT project ‘was recently voted runner-up in our Governor’s award project of the year’, the deputy told me.
Astounding. So, if it’s good enough for Dubai, why isn’t it good enough for us?
Comments
We need Dubai's Tender!!! I'm
We need Dubai's Tender!!!
I'm not too aware of the circumstances that caused the commercial courts to dump InterCOMM, but according to
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/annual_report_comm_admiralty_ct_0506.pdf
"Initial difficulties with “slowness” of the software were soon overcome."
- they found it slow?
"a fully integrated filing system on a par with the arrangements in other jurisdictions such as Singapore."
- since when was Singapore's filing system "fully integrated"?
It's a fair cop
Sorry Trevor, yes the Commercial Courts do have a case management (which I think is what phase one was) system but it can't deliver e-filing and document management as that would have been phase two. My apologies.
And as I understand it many government internetworks have suffered in the past from not being up to the job, as I discovered while covering the failure of C-NOMIS with various parts of the government secure intranet (GSI) not being capable of the bandwidth up-scale required for such a grand project...
One - The Dubai International
One - The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts is not the Emirate's (Dubai) equivalent to the UK's commercial courts. The DIFC, although in Dubai, is a separate legal jurisdiction in Dubai. Dubai has its own Court system (Dubai Courts).
Two - It took 5 weeks because there have been NO cases tried in the Courts to date and so didn't have to take into account how to deal with ongoing filings, etc. They just installed the program and there it is.
It's incredible how wrong everyone gets about all things Dubai. DO YOUR HOMEWORK. YOU ARE JOURNALISTS AFTER ALL.At least (even though you were wrong on the point) you referred to Dubai as being an Emirate as opposed to it being the Country....
Points of order on DIFC Courts IT
Hi there -
Anonymous, I wouldn't be so detailed in my response if I didn't have a deep suspicion that you're somehow involved in this business, hence a) your vehemence and b) your 'knowledge' of the installation which I find most unusual in people who haven't been following this issue, which imho is a rarified one. You're also wrong, as I shall demonstrate:
- First, the DIFC Courts are the Emirate's "equivalent" to the UK's Commercial Courts in that they (will/do) handle common law disputes and cases involving companies within the DIFC (the international financial centre) and beyond (one assumes). The DIFC Courts appear, at least to me, to have a remarkably similar function to the Commercial Courts, viz:
From the Law Society's own site
"Established in 2004, the DIFC Courts are the only English language, common law justice system in the Middle East. The DIFC Courts were created to deal with all cases falling within its jurisdiction, particularly those involving sophisticated international financial transactions."
From DIFCCourts.ae
"DIFC Courts' functions
The DIFC laws allow for any institution operating within the DIFC to select a legal jurisdiction of its choice, other than the DIFC, when entering into contracts. However, in the event that parties do not do so, the DIFC laws will be applicable by default and they can file a case in the DIFC Courts.
The DIFC Courts have jurisdiction over civil and commercial matters only. The DIFC Courts do not have jurisdiction over criminal matters. All criminal matters are referred to the appropriate external authority.
Powers of the DIFC Courts
The DIFC Courts have the power, in matters over which it has jurisdiction, to make any orders, including interlocutory orders and to issue or direct the issue of any writs it considers appropriate. Orders may be made in relation to restitution, disgorgement, compensation, or damages."
From DIFC.ae on the business of the DIFC
"Sectors of Activity
The DIFC focuses on several sectors of financial activity: Banking and Brokerage (Investment Banking, Corporate Banking & Private Banking); Capital Markets (Equity, Debt Instruments, Derivatives and Commodity Trading); Wealth Management (Asset Management, Fund Registration and Family Office); Insurance, Reinsurance and Captives; Islamic Finance & Ancillary Services."
And it appears even the local legal eagles think that it's the closest thing the Middle East has to the Commercial Court - from DubaiBarristers.com:
"Whilst the DIFC Courts are in their infancy they will become over the next few years one of the most important legal forums in the world. They have complete and unfettered jurisdiction over all civil matters associated with the DIFC free zone.
The registered practitioners come from all over the word from the UK to Mexico and are all experienced commercial litigators. The DIFC Court is based upon the English Commercial Court and so English barristers are especially well suited to issuing and presenting cases in the Court."
Regardless of the issue that the DIFC is an independent financial area, the DIFC Courts very much *are* Dubai's version of the Commercial Courts here, especially in that they appear to be looking to attract lots of foreign commercial work, potentially robbing the UK (this competition for commercial courts work has been covered by the Gazette passim).
- Second, you appear to have a problem with temporality here. Surely installation comes before delivering casework? Whether its done cases has nothing to do with time to installation. And anyway, the time to successful implementation isn't all, or even the main point, of what I was blogging about. Essentially, It Doesn't Matter, because:
I was saying that DIFC Courts, which, as laid out above, aims to fulfill and will have to fulfill to deliver on its goals an equivalent service to the Commercial Courts here, needed an equivalently capable system to ours. They intend to deliver full EFDM straight off the back of a system that HMCS stopped developing/piloting/paying for more work on back in, I think, 2006. Thereafter, as we have covered in the Gazette, the government spent millions on consultants (you weren't one of them were you?) and ended up with, er, nothing much.
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/more-delays-court-it-roll-out
Now we're back to square one as I hear on the grapevine that the 'new' CCIT is, er, based on the existing/old one. That was >£5m, of our money, well spent then. Please let me know if we have *another* possible EFDM system waiting in the wings...
- Lastly, it irks me when people who *may* be involved in these processes (who knows? you haven't said who you are) post anonymously, attacking our coverage, when they're wrong or at least far, far wronger than I.
It irks me doubly when I get the "get your facts" right attacks because the only reason I have been able to write about this area so far is down to making seemingly endless FOI applications - because HMCS press office generally gives non-answers to these questions, always refuses to put people forward for interviews on the area, and no one seems ever to be able to fully answer questions on it, and certain committees in charge of IT for *our* courts hold closed sessions and don't chat with the press. So what I know is generally hard-found. If government was more straight with us about this stuff, we'd all be more informed. Perhaps no one's allowed to talk about this publicly. Hmm, most transparent.
My contact details are on the "Contact Us" page, link at the bottom of every page of our site. I'd love to interview publicly people in charge of EFDM in the UK. Don't expect, however, not to be asked why we've spent four years waiting to get what looks very like the system we could have had in 2006 - without spending £5m on consultants (and that's just on what we *had* spent up to my FOI request - Lord knows what it is now). I want us to have a cracking Business Court with a world-class EFDM system, and I want to cover the creation of that. So far, though, I've not been able to, and it's not for want of trying...
"They just installed the program and there it is."
Anonymous makes a number of dubious remarks with questionable motives but looking positively, any system that can be ‘just installed’ is surely a good thing? A system that can be bought off-the-shelf and ‘just installed’ must have been well designed and will be economic to maintain. It also means that the court can offer their users an enhanced service without delay.
For the record, the installation included importing documents for existing cases into the new system. For Anonymous to assert that no trials means no filings demonstrates poor understanding of court procedures.
Point made, let's step back a bit
I'm sure that it's ok to defend one's work and I happen to agree with this point but I don't really want the Gaz to be a forum for a slanging match over whether the Dubai installation is or is not Michaelangelo's chapel - if our poster wishes to engage in a personal conversation on this matter, I'm sure that can happen by email, but let's let others debate the merits of the above on this blog, should they want, ok?
And breathe....
Its time for IT in the Courts
The debate is great but it needs to take place with the likes of Nigel Kelly from HMCS and get a change agenda moving. Perhaps even Anonymous might be tempted out of his anonymity to be part of this.
The Commercia Litigation Association (which I chair) is hosting a confernce at the back end of this year on these issues, would Trevor like to come along?