A simple suite and index book computer system has been developed which has automated the suite and index book system in the civil registry of the supreme court.

This system makes note of new cases entering the registry and the parties involved. Effectively replacing the index book of the Civil Registry.

Subsequent documents filed on the case are also tracked on the system. The system makes note of the date and time the document is filed and by whom as well as the type of document.

This component will create an electronic docket for each case which will register each document filed in terms of type of document, who filed it and when.

Reports will be provided on an ad hoc and regular basis for the management of the court to tract its efficiency in order to address areas in need of resources.

Case management will also handle jury selection, judge selection and calendaring of judges, courtrooms and other facilities.

Case management will manage the case from initiation to final disposition. It will track the case from the first document is filed and note each filed document in the case and a record of the proceedings of each case.

Information on each hearing that is held the current status of the case will be maintained in an electronic docket.

This system is temporary pending a full case management system. This new software is to be acquired in the next 3 months and will take 12 weeks to implement.

On completion of implementation it will replace the current system and provide a far more comprehensive system of which this initial simple component will be a subset.

Implementation will be in initially for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. All RM and other courts in the island will be completed by the end of 2001.

This component again has been only implemented in the civil registry of the Supreme Court.

These documents will be added to the case management system and form the requisite part of the electronic docket for each case.

This will allow the user to access the electronic image of each document stored in docket entry for each case.

The case management system will be in place in the next 3 months that will have as one of its components an image management system that will store the pdf images captured to date.

Between February and April of 2000 all the judges and most of the senior court administrators as well as a number of secretaries in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal were provided with PC’s. These machines were networked to facilitate the sharing of printers.

Additionally the users were given email addresses and trained on the use of email, internet access and word processing.

All PC’s in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal have Internet Access.

The Supreme Court has also had its own website since February 1999. The website has the case calendar posted on a weekly basis for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal.

As a part of the Court case management system most case dockets will be made available via the Internet for appropriately authorized persons via the internet. Initially this will be the lawyers and judges as well as other court officials involved in the particular case.

This phase will be a part of the implementation of the case management system between now and March 2001.

This part of the project has been piloted in the Supreme Court between February and June of 2000.

ECF involves allowing attorneys to file documents via the Internet to the Supreme Court Registry.