ON Courts

I have grown increasingly frustrated with the pace of reform in the legal sector in the country. It is quite evident to everyone in the ecosystem that there is much to be fixed but we seem unable to find a way to make the changes we all know are necessary. But I am here to tell you that there is hope.

This is a link-enhanced version of an article that first appeared in the Mint. You can read the original here.

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the launch of ON Courts (Open Networked Courts) in Kerala, possibly the most creative re-imagining of the justice delivery system attempted in the country to date. Rather than merely adding new digital layers on top of existing non-digital workflows, this bold redesign of the judicial system re-examines how processes at the heart of the system ought to operate.

The animating philosophy behind this re-design is the notion that litigants should not have to re-orient their lives around how the justice system operates: they should not have to wait long hours for their hearings only to be subject to last minute re-scheduling requests, or to have to go to designated physical locations to file their documents and pay their fees, or follow processes so arcane that no-one remembers why they exist in the first place. Instead of making people to come to the courts, we should take the courts to the people.

The only way to achieve an ambition so bold is to rebuild existing judicial processes so that the system proactively addresses the needs of litigants in ways that account for their individual preferences and unique circumstances. With this in mind, each of the judicial workflows in the ON Courts have been re-imagined from the perspective of the relevant stakeholders.

For litigants, it has been designed to allow access from anywhere, allowing them to respond to summons, submit documents, reschedule hearings, and even appear from anywhere. It provides a full and complete view of their case, sending them proactive alerts of any actions they may need to take (file documents or pay court fees), allowing them to collect verifiable copies of all relevant applications, orders and judgements.

For lawyers, it allows them to better coordinate their schedule through a new smart calendaring solution that algorithmically identifies the most suitable time for future hearings. By offering digital filing and the facility to edit uploaded files in case of errors, it eliminates the need for physical files. By sending lawyers prompts throughout the life-cycle of the case, it ensures that they can take whatever action they need to in a timely manner.

For court staff, it does away with manual data entry completely, offering instead a rule-based, case-specific e-filing workflow aimed at reducing the amount of manual scrutiny required. It also offers transcription tools for the drafting of orders and OCR systems for the scrutiny of documents.

As for judges, it helps them better optimise their time by separating the purely administrative functions from the judicial, so that they can spend their time on matters most deserving of their judicial attention. By offering tools like smart scheduling, assistive templates and voice-to-text transcription, it helps significantly improve their efficiency. This coupled with interactive dashboards that generate case level information and provide timely access to files and documents, judges will always know what to expect in each hearing, and have all the information they need to take considered decisions always at their fingertips.

What I found most interesting was the extent to which this system has incorporated digital public infrastructure (DPI) thinking into its design. Instead of building a new vertically integrated solution, it has taken pains to integrate existing services into its new workflow. For instance, rather than building a brand new digital infrastructure for summons, it has integrated e-posts into the e-summons process.

Of the 45 million cases that are currently pending in the judicial system, 10% are matters brought under Section 138B of the Negotiable Instruments Act in respect of cheques that, when presented for payment, were returned either on account of insufficiency of funds or because the account had been closed. If we can re-think how these bounced cheque cases are disposed of, we will make significant progress in removing the cholesterol that clogs the arteries of our courts.

It is these cases that the ON Courts are focused on addressing to start with. That said, since it has been built as a set of modular, reusable building blocks, elements (like e-summons) can be re-used to contribute to any other area of judicial sector reform.

As regular readers of this column will know by now, few things give me greater joy than seeing the policy reforms discussed in this column actually come to pass. When the government announced sweeping reforms to the mapping sector, I gleefully pointed out that this was something I had been calling for since the early days of this column. When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act, I was quietly satisfied that they were concurring with my conviction (expressed in my very first Ex Machina article) as to the sufficiency of privacy protections in that law.

But the sector in which I have been most keen to see progress is in the functioning of the legal profession, and here I have, if anything, grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress.

What I witnessed last Friday in Cochin restored my faith that this too shall come to pass. Not because the technology was simple yet effective or that the design was both intuitive and user friendly. But because the presentations were all made by the judges themselves, and it was clear that each of them not only understood the inner workings of the system, they were personally invested in its success.