The European Court of Human Rights will this year create an online application form for citizens who want to file cases.
The Strasbourg court received 44,000 applications last year from individuals and organisations alleging violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, and wants to use IT to improve its efficiency.
‘IT is crucial to the functioning of the court and we have to be able to do more for less,’ said John Hunter, head of the court’s IT division.
Applicants will be able to submit a form via a managed and secure site, saving the complex application file directly into the court’s document management system and registering it on the Court Management Information System (CMIS) database.
Hunter says 90 per cent of applications are inadmissible, but everything that comes into the court must be registered. He says electronic applications will simplify the process, but that this will not happen overnight.
‘Turning the court into a digitalised environment will take years, because many countries’ citizens do not have access to the internet,’ he said.
The court has already introduced a portal that allows searching and tracking of progress on cases. The site received more than two million visitors last year (Computing, 11 July 2002).
The site uses publishing software from legal IT firm Tikit, that allows documents to be scheduled for publication at any desired date and time.
The court is also introducing barcoding to enable automatic registration of correspondence and electronic archiving.
‘Barcoding will be used for file records management. We can track a file’s movement, which could trigger an action against the database, such as marked for destruction,’ said Hunter.
The court is also moving to a Microsoft .Net environment.
‘Visual Basic 6 will not be supported in 2008, so we are moving to .Net. It is a mature programming language and we will be able to utilise web services,’ said Hunter.
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