Development: ePOC will allow part-time and fee-paid judges to access services

A key part of the long-awaited 'judicial portal' has been revealed, but it may be six months before it is launched.


Currently dubbed ePOC, it will expand electronic conferencing for judges from hundreds of users into thousands, according to one of the judges road-testing the system.


District Judge Geoff Edwards, who is involved in ePOC's development, said the system should allow part-time and fee-paid judges to access electronic conferencing services currently restricted to full-time judges. Using Web technology, thousands more users should benefit from this interconnection, he said.


'The principle advantage of the Web-based system is that it can be accessed from any computer anywhere without special software, and that the cost-per-user declines as the user base increases far more rapidly that it does for a hosted [bulletin board system],' Judge Edwards, who sits in Bradford, said.


The current conferencing system - Felix - is available only to full-time judges, but ePOC will be available to part-time and fee-paid judges, district judges, tribunal members and relevant Department for Constitutional Affairs staff, Judge Edwards explained.


But, like many government-led IT projects, ePOC - which stands for electronic point of contact - is nearly a year overdue and is unlikely to be ready for general use before the summer.


'The main reason for the current delay in the launch of ePOC has been the issue of speed,' said Judge Edwards. The system will at least partially replace the existing, much quicker bulletin-board system used by full-time judges, so the task has been to ensure 'that ePOC runs as quickly as a Web-based system can be expected to run'.


Judge Edwards is confident that ePOC, when it finally hits the courts, will be a great step forward. 'ePOC is only one of the services being made available via the judicial portal,' he said. 'The portal has huge potential for the delivery of further applications.'


Apart from ePOC, the portal will provide on-line commercial legal services, shared and personal document repositories, a judicial intranet, links to useful Web sites, and judicial e-mail accounts.