Court Service's money claims system praised but England and Wales still lag behind other EU countries

At the premier European conference this year on the use of technology in courts, it was sometimes hard to see any EU-wide future behind member states' bragging rights.


The IT Congress in Vienna earlier this month saw delegates from countries as disparate as Estonia and England, Moldova and Ireland. But it was host country Austria that seemed to be taking the lead with its IT court and legal system.


Deputy secretary-general of the Council of Europe Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, who opened the conference, pointed to Austria's efforts and recent successes as an ideal possible way forward for European countries. Austria is now comparatively advanced in terms of electronic filing of documents (e-filing), with 85% of applications for civil actions at regional courts being made electronically, for example.


But Austria was not the only country held up for praise - both Germany and Estonia garnered plaudits from delegates quizzed by the Gazette in between speeches, and Italy showed off a set-up that appears to have been plucked from a hat as if by magic inside six months - a remarkable achievement by any standards.


Ms de Boer-Buquicchio spoke out in favour of the publication of information generated and used in EU courts, and the dissemination of technologies to the widest possible user base to ensure justice is served. 'To make a difference,' she said, 'these tools must be available in the everyday life of judges and lawyers.'


She said it is of 'great importance to guarantee the safety and security of the data' in future hi-tech court systems, and warned against retaining data that should be available to the public.


Germany has progressed well with e-filing, electronic claims and court automation given its 16 states and 80-plus million citizens, while Estonia demonstrated how it has plugged its ID smartcards into a widespread digital government network which looks like a model of joined-up e-government. Though this might sound surprising to the uninitiated, Estonians were behind the original Webmail system Hotmail, the notorious but wildly popular file-sharing network Kazaa, and Skype, the Internet's hottest telephony program.


Unlike at the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe conference in Madrid in December, there was an English and Welsh contingent present to talk about recent developments at home. Money Claims Online, the Web element of the Court Service's money claims system, got plus points for being up and running and, like XHIBIT, the information-sharing system for judges and court staff, actually working as advertised.


The electronic systems for money claims in England and Wales, incorporating the existing electronic filing systems and the newer Web-based element, are now handling 900,000 money claims annually (out of 1.4 million in total), said Darren Scates, director of IT business partners at the Department for Constitutional Affairs.


This amount should perhaps be judged against the following comparison: the number of claims that the Web side, Money Claims Online, handles (around 70,000) roughly equates to the number of cross-border claims made in the German system, which is a fraction of the total claims processed electronically there - 6.1 million in 2005.


That England and Wales still have much to do to catch up was acknowledged by Dr Andrew Robinson, a co-ordinator for the Council of Europe's eJustice programme and the latest EU-funded bizarre abbreviation, R4eGov - research for e-government.


'The danger is that we might be left behind in this,' said Dr Robinson. 'I'm not saying the German system would be better. What we're lacking in Britain [is] a better willingness to go and find out about projects just across the water - and there were hardly any English people there [in Vienna].'


Italy, then, may represent a positive future possibility. Processo Civile Telematico, though currently in a pilot form, is based on open standards and off-the-shelf systems. This kind of modular, over-the-counter thinking linked to strong authentication, pricked up more than a few ears, and rightly so.