A key enabler of court transformation.

By Rob Wood

Our ability to generate, process and store information has changed the way Canadians live and work. Emerging technologies have significantly impacted how legal matters are conducted – today, we have civil affidavits with hundreds of thousands of pages and criminal matters where data is measured in terabytes of information – yet how we handle information has been slow to keep up.

Faced with increasing demands and changing citizen needs, jurisdictions around the globe are seeking to develop electronic court solutions that will result in more efficient processes to help all of us effectively cope with the exponential growth in information and the associated paper that comes from our adoption of technology.

For the past several years, the Ministry of Attorney General’s Court Services Branch has focused on building the key elements required to support the creation of a digital court environment in British Columbia. Electronic case management systems, digital audio recording and video equipment and evidence presentation systems are now available in most of our court locations.

With much of the foundational work behind us, Court Services now stands poised to take a series of bold steps forward in the establishment of the electronic courtroom. Court Services’ goal is a seamless environment, where counsel, judges, citizens and court staff interact with the justice system in a digital environment: a world where matters are conducted electronically from initial filing to disposition and all steps in between. Of course, Court Services recognizes that some citizens and jurists will prefer to work in a paper environment and that sometimes statutory requirements for paper will subsist, but, as far as possible, Court Services wants to move to a paper-on-demand model over the next five years.

Court Services’ next steps are to bring together the various electronic components into one seamless system that speeds up courtroom processes and allows for broad information sharing with justice partners through electronic databases. Court Services wants to improve frontline services through the use of the Internet and specialized software. These innovations will be supported by a workforce that delivers electronic, citizen-centric court services from anywhere in the province.

Initiatives planned for the coming years that will be of particular interest to the profession include:

• In partnership with the judiciary, developing a process for producing orders in the courtroom.
• Launching an eHearing pilot where documents are submitted and shared electronically among the parties through monitors in the courtroom.
• Identification of an appropriate electronic exhibit management system that can be implemented in B.C. courts.
• Exploring opportunities for counsel to access the digital audio recording system (DARS) directly from their office desktop.

Court Services is focused on achieving an electronic environment. Clearly, this will not happen overnight, but we believe success is within reach. Court Services is committed to continuing to work with the judiciary and the profession to create an electronic environment that meets the needs of existing and future users and that enhances your interaction with the courts.

Rob Wood is the Assistant Deputy Minister of Court Services Branch

This article was published in the December 2010 issue of BarTalk. © 2010 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.