Integrated Court case management Albania

Sida has signed the contribution agreement on 05-05-2023. However, was soon after, informed by the cooperation partner, the High Judicial Council, that it did not get clearance from the Ministry of Finance and Economy to countersign. At the same time, the funds allocated for the ICCMS to the high Judicial Council were withdrawn from the Government side. The reasons behind the change were totally unexpected efforts coming from institutions outside the judiciary and its IT center and with no legal say in the matter, to develop the system under a different set up and as a part of a much more costly and bigger scenario of system(s) development. After a long period of advocacy and dialogue with the Government of Albania, and in close coordination with the EU Delegation in Tirana, the High Judicial Council and the Embassy managed to convince the relevant actors to reverse this approach and pave the way to the signing of the agreement from the HJC on 18 09 2024. The GoA funds for 2024 have also been reallocated to the HJC, allowing it to kick off the operations for the development of the ICCMS. The fist installment from the Swedish side, of 15 MSEK, has been disbursed in December 2024. The process of recruitment of the Administrative Coordinator and the IT expert for the project has already started and is ongoing, with the expectation that by early March the incumbents, will be working at the HJC.The intervention is expected to get much more speed after the start of work of the Administrative Coordinator and the IT expert, financed by the project. Even though there are no other concrete achievements in the framework of the intervention, compared to the plan, there is a significant success in cooperation partners' resilience to resist efforts to design the ICCMS in a way that would compromise the independence of the judiciary. This resilience has at the same time brought the intervention back to a reasonable cost. The current delay will likely be compensated from the advantage that it will be carried out in parallel to the development of the Prosecution case management system, which is funded by EU/IPA and implemented by UNOPS. Both interventions will be thus carried out simultaneously, under the same time-plan and will be closely coordinated.

The goal of this proposed intervention is to ensure that all people who seek justice in the courts will be given so with transparency, efficiency, less costs and easily accessible. This goal is embedded in the HJC mission as cooperation partner to build, lead, and govern a highperforming judicial system that demands excellence and deserves the public trust, as defined in the legal framework in force as well as the HJC Strategic Plan. Therefore, the main objective of this has been stated as "Strengthen the rule of law through improving the information and technology instruments that guarantee, efficiency and quality of service delivery in order to increase public confidence in the justice system". This will be achieved through the development of a new Integrated Case Management and Information System that aims to reach to following specific objectives: - Increase the efficiency of the courts Digitization, replacement of manual and double data entry, standardization and simplification of courts procedures, opportunity to exchange data with other systems serving to the needs of the Judiciary (in particular the Human Resources Management System and the systems dealing with finance) will decrease workload as well as financial and human resources needed. All functionalities of new integrated CMIS lead towards reduction of the duration of court proceedings and accurate and realtime data to manage the judiciary, by boosting court efficiency internally but also in relation to the public. -Increase the quality of judicial work, its results and of data produced A new CMIS will provide usable and flexible tools for: a) the drafting and the publication of judicial decisions in digital manner b) for a proper management of the courts caseload and of their calendars by providing alerts on deadlines and informing the users about tasks or events in need of attention, as well as c) information on courts performance and judicial caseload trends, through the indepth analysis of CMIS data processed. By reducing the workload of court staff and automatisation of work processes, automatically we have created opportunities to increase the quality of their work and at the same time to increase the quality of services provided to citizens. -Increase the transparency, accountability and inclusiveness Electronic access and provision of electronic services to society, through enable the electronic filing of data and documents by external users, will increase the access of interest groups and citizens to the Albanian judicial system. Additionally, a new CMIS will offer the opportunity for different users to access judicial decisions via a onestopshop solution (e.g., ejustice portal) without having the need to follow the current procedure through request for information. By offering digital services though onestop approach will increase openness and transparency of the court. At the same time, it will offer the public and interest groups (media representatives, civil society actors, business communities, etc.) the necessary tools to better exercise their rights of inclusiveness and to keep institutions accountable. Establishment of a centralized, unified and integrated a new CMIS, which will replace the existing systems currently used in the Albanian judiciary, both suffering from numerous shortcoming as well as lack of functionalities required for further digitalization of manual paperbased processes, would significantly improve the efficiency of the courts, create better working conditions in line with current technological developments, increasing efficiency, transparency and accountability in the judicial system, as well as fulfilling legal obligations.