Designing and Implementing e-Justice Systems: Some Lessons Learned from EU and Canadian Examples

Access to justice has become an important issue in many justice systems around the world. Increasingly, technology is seen as a potential facilitator of access to justice, particularly in terms of improving justice sector efficiency. The international diffusion of information systems (IS) within the justice sector raises the important question of how to insure quality performance. The IS literature has stressed a set of general design principles for the implementation of complex information technology systems that have also been applied to these systems in the justice sector. However, an emerging e-justice literature emphasizes the significance of unique law and technology concerns that are especially relevant to implementing and evaluating information technology systems in the justice sector specifically. Moreover, there is growing recognition that both principles relating to the design of information technology systems themselves (“system design principles”), as well as to designing and managing the processes by which systems are created and implemented (“design management principles”) can be critical to positive outcomes. This paper uses six e-justice system examples to illustrate and elaborate upon the system design and design management principles in a manner intended to assist an interdisciplinary legal audience to better understand how these principles might impact upon a system’s ability to improve access to justice: three European examples (Italian Trial Online; English and Welsh Money Claim Online; the trans-border European Union e-CODEX) and three Canadian examples (Ontario’s Integrated Justice Project (IJP), Ontario’s Court Information Management System (CIMS), and British Columbia’s eCourt project).