USAID Increases Efficiency and Transparency of BiH Courts
As the 19th-century British statesman William Gladstone famously stated, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Delay undermines the purpose of courts, as the opportunity for justice is lost with the passage of time. Meanwhile, a nation’s economy suffers as unpredictable courts discourage investment. Yet delays and backlogs have plagued Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) courts for years.
One reason for the delays in processing BiH court cases has been the use of multiple hand-written registry books. Clerks would use different books to record information, such as the parties, case types, amount of recovery sought, and documents filed. Case documents were filed under different numbers in different locations, making reviews extremely difficult and time-consuming for judges. Court presidents were required to review virtually every incoming case and personally assign them to judges. The result was that courts couldn’t give an accurate accounting of the actual number of cases they were managing.
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| Court employees now provide computerized updates on cases without
searching the thousands of files lining their walls |
Responding to this challenge, USAID’s Fostering an Investment and Lender-friendly Environment (FILE) project developed a computerized Case Management System (CMS) that dramatically improves BiH courts’ ability to manage cases quickly and efficiently. CMS was rolled out in six pilot courts: Mostar, Konjic, Capljina, Derventa Basic Court, Sarajevo Municipal Court and Banja Luka Basic Court.
When cases are entered directly into CMS they are assigned a unique case number. Case numbers tie together all related documentation in the central database. Judges are automatically assigned cases and they, along with court staff and court presidents, have immediate and easy access to all supporting case documentation.
Prior to CMS, average citizens had little idea of where their court cases stood. Now, they can walk into any CMS court and receive an update on the progress of their cases in a matter of seconds.
For eight months, FILE worked closely with court staff to transfer more than 90,000 cases into the CMS database. This process included not only entering each case into the system, but reassessing the status of these cases and repackaging them for open access within the system. It was a massive undertaking whose success was made possible only due to the dedicated project and court staffs.
In September 2006, the FILE Project completed its activities and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s High Judicial Prosecutorial Council took responsibility for maintaining CMS and introducing it into the remaining courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“We want to make this court a modern, fully functional institution that dispenses justice to citizens in a timely and efficient manner. FILE’s CMS is a quick way to get there,” says Judge Ognjenka Skoro, President of the Mostar Municipal Court.
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