It takes 24 hours for judiciary staff at the National Judiciary staff service at Waigani to register a matter when it comes to their attention in the data system used at the National and Supreme Court.
For this to be done accurately the involvement of staff is critical in ensuring the right data is entered into the data system that is uses, says PNG’s Chief Justice Sir Salamo Injia.
The Judicial Case Management System (JCMS) currently uses the Case Docketing System that sees data entered onto the Enterprise data base system.
In 2012, a new system code named Case Docketing System (CDS) was introduced which saw cases assigned to judges. It was developed by the National Judiciary Staff Services IT advisor Koichi Nakagawa (pictured above.)
He said the system database has been built and modified to the Judiciary’s requirements.
Speaking at day two of the 2016 Pacific Judicial Conference, Sir Salamo said a lot of training has been done over the past three-four years on the judiciary staff to ensure the right data is entered into the system.
“They are the ones who put in data daily, and if they do not put the right information, everything else could go wrong so there has been a lot of training of our staff.
“If a case is filed, within 24 hours that case will have to appear on my data base. The same applies to recording of court proceedings. The same applies to recording of court diary, court orders etc,” he said.
Howeve, Sir Salamo said the only thing lacking in this data case is the video recording of the court proceedings.
“I have made a deliberate decision not to record court proceedings in Papua New Guinea.”
“I will continuously express my appreciation for the staff put long hours to get in the data. There is a lot of money involved but we really need to put the right people behind the computers to produce the right information,” he said.
Justice Nicholas Kirriwom who also made a presentation on enhancing the quality of justice through the use of modern technology said the biggest achievement to Judicial Case Management is that judges can access instant production of court transcripts from the time they adjourn a case.
He said Judges have the audio file right on their fingertip, from the comfort of their chambers to help them in the drafting of their judgments.
(Pictured is National Judiciary Staff Services IT advisor Koichi Nakagawa who developed the Case Docketing System. He spoke at the Conference today in Port Moresby.)