E-Governance Project: E-Courts: Bombay High Court - Panaji Bench

About Organization

Bombay High Court- Panaji bench in its existing form came into being with the passage of Goa, Daman & Re-organization Act, 1987 by the Parliament conferring Statehood to Goa and the High Court of Bombay became the common High Court for the states of Maharashtra and Goa and the Union Territories of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu

Jurisdiction of Panaji Bench covers all appeals, applications references and petitions including petitions for exercise of powers under Articles 226 and 227 arising in the State of Goa which lie to the High Court at Bombay

Scope and Outline of Our Study

Study and Evaluate the Current progress of the E-Courts Integrated Mission Mode Project under National E-Governance Plan (NeGP) with subject under study as Bombay High Court – Panaji Bench

Study and Benchmark against International best practices in E-Governance initiatives in judiciary.

Suggest Improvements on current progress to reduce bottlenecks and successful role out and mass adoption of e-governance services

Main Objectives of the Project

To help judicial administration of the courts in streamlining their day-to-day activities

To assist judicial administration in reducing the pendency of cases

To provide transparency of information to the litigants To provide access to legal and judicial databases to the judges. To enhance efficiency and ensure speedy justice.

.. Of Timelines, Scope & Budget

The Online Portal of Bombay High Court – Panaji Bench is a part of the E-court project under the National e-Governance Plan which plans to provide ICT enablers such as computer hardware, LAN, and crucial software to ensure efficient citizen centric services in 14,249 courts in India.

The first phase of e-Court Project is planned to be implemented in 12,000 district and subordinate courts of the country by 2012.

The second phase of this project would be implemented in 2,249 courts by March, 2014.

The e-Courts project which a Mission Mode Project (MMP) for ICT enablement in courts— is being implemented at a cost of Rs 935 crore.

The scope of the Project covers 14,249 courts across the country to be provided computer hardware, LAN, power backup, WAN through SWAN/ NICNET, deployment of software to provide services for automation of case management, citizen centric services such as case filing certified copies of orders and creating National Judicial Data Grid.

The hardware and software installation is in progress in various High Courts and the Registrar Generals have been monitoring backlog data entry and deploying of technical manpower.

Source: Governance Knowledge Center

Stakeholders & Project Framework

The Key Stakeholders are Governments (National, State and Local) Judiciary Business Citizenry & Civil Society

The Project Framework multiparty interaction involves G2G Interaction as a part of National Grid Creation & Info flow. G2B Interaction G2C Interaction C2G Interaction G2N Interaction (Government to NGO)

Stages of the Project: E-Courts

Launch & Popularizing the project

Pilot launch and evaluation of Project

Government & Judicial Process Reengineering

Building Infrastructure for Implementation

Building Implementation Capacity

Building Strategic Capacity

Building Awareness and Commitment

Architecture of E-Governance for E-Courts

Infrastructure Pillars of Project

• Connectivity: State Wide Area Networks (SWANs)/NICNET

• National Data Bank/ State Data Centres ( SDCs)

• Common Service Centres (CSCs) primary mode of delivery

Role of NSDG (National Service Delivery Gateway)

To act as a core infrastructure for achieving standards-based interoperability between various e-Government applications

To evolve Gateway messaging standards and build a government owned Central Gateway based on these standards.

Act as a catalyst in enabling the building of Standards based e-Governance applications with Gateway as the middleware to ensure interoperability

Enable integration across Centre, State or Local Governments there by enabling Integrated Service Delivery and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Help protect the legacy investments in software and hardware by easily integrating them with other technology platforms and software implementations

De-link the back-end departments/Service Providers (SP) from the front-end Service Access Providers

E-Courts Enabling service through NSDG

Front End (Web Design) & Evaluation

Challenges Faced

FundingManagement of ChangePrivacyAuthentication InteroperabilityDelivery of ServicesStandardizationTechnology IssuesUse of local languages

Key Gains …

The project ensured seamless flow of information and case objects cutting across the inter-departmental barrier in a G2G mode

The project increased speed, transparency and inter-operability thereby eliminating duplicity and ensuring speedy justice

Centralized management and single window information and status access and grievance redressal.

Greater Social benefits like Decrease in Corruption, More accountability and Increase in access to information.

References http://indiagovernance.gov.in/news.php?id=821 http://egovindia.wordpress.com/category/courts-in-india/ http://legalenablementofictinindia.blogspot.com/2009/11/e-courts-in-india-essential-judicial.html http://www.mit.gov.in/content/e-courts http://www.gm.undp.org/prac_demo_gov.htm http://indiaegov.org/knowledgeexchg/egov_strategy.pdf http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/top_stories/2010/110121006.asp http://www.nisg.org/knowledgecenter_docs/A01000001.pdf http://www.gomidas.org/forum/af8-samu.pdf http://www.indg.in/e-governance/e-courts http://www.csi-sigegov.org/egovernance_pdf/17_137-144.pdf http://egovindia.wordpress.com/ http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/egovernance/2009/109112701.asp http://egovreach.in/social/?q=node/194 http://www.unpan.org/egovkb/global_reports/08report.htm http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/benchmarking/index_en.htm http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/netgov/papers/

schellong_2009_wp_eu_egovernment_benchmarking_future_methodology.pdf http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan023686.pdf http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan021547.pdf http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/igovernment/igov_wp18.htm http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/igovernment/documents/iGWkPpr18.pdf

Questions ??