Supreme Court chasing electronic case filing system implementation

The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) is moving quickly to implement an electronic case filing system to deal with the pile up of paper at court facilities in its jurisdiction.{{more}}

Addressing a special sitting of the High Court earlier last week, Chief Justice of the ECSC Janice Perreira said the volume of paper is a significant problem, compounded by the increase in litigation.

“The build up of paper creates serious processing challenges for our court personnel and places a significant strain on facilities, as the courts must constantly search for space to file legal documents in buildings, which are already bursting at their seams,” Perreira said.

She said the new electronic system will be geared towards increasing efficiency in the area of filing documents and

records management. Perreira also said the court is working assiduously towards realising its vision of a system to cope with the burgeoning use of paper for court records.

In August, Perreira said Agnes Actie, deputy chief registrar and Anderson Henry, systems administrator at the ECSC, presented the idea of piloting an e-filing initiative for filing appeals to the Bar members of the territory of the Virgin Islands.

She said the Bar welcomed the proposal and is anxious to implement it.

The Chief Justice said the pilot would commence with four firms that participated in the initial testing phase of the project. She said it is expected that the successful introduction of e-filing will eventually help to reduce to a large extent, the use of paper in the ECSC, cutting back on the need for physical space to store paper and the manpower to transport hardcopy files, not only in the courthouses, but across member states and territories.

“Once the pilot is successfully completed, all documents, we hope, will be filed electronically. As is expected, in the initial stages of the pilot project, there may be several logistical issues to be fine tuned. However, I am of the view that this is a tremendous step forward and I am certain that during the upcoming year, there will be more to report on in this area,” Perreira stated.(KW)