4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The roots "Electronic Legal Communication (ELC)" go back to the early 1990ies, when a first implementation of an electronic filing system using FTP file transfer allowed electronic filings of a special case type – small money claims – for professional users connected to a special private network.
The modern implementation succeeded in the year 2007, when the electronic legal communication was transferred to a Web based technology using open standards as XML, Web services and SOAP.
The electronic legal communication, which is secured by SSL and certificates, is accessible via clearing houses and opens amongst other things the possibility of appending attachments to submissions transmitted electronically.
Since July 2012 this electronic delivery service is available as common re-usable service, which is re-used also by other applications like the Austrian Land Register and the Austrian Company Register.
In 2013 a Web interface for normal citizens was added to submit claims and applications in electronic form directly to any Austrian court, using electronic signatures for authentication.
The implementation started with high-volume civil procedures like money-claims and enforcement of civil titles and was gradually extended to all civil and criminal case types. This means that also police files their reports about criminal offences in electronic way to public prosecution and police can receive orders from prosecution for further investigations.
The target audience were in the first step mainly professional user like lawyers and notaries - acting as representatives of the parties – and large professional users like banks, insurance companies, large businesses and public authorities, who together file the majority of civil, enforcement and family cases. In a further step Police was added, because Police is the source for almost all criminal cases, which are submitted to prosecution and later on to the criminal courts.
In the next step planned for 2014 normal Austrian citizens can opt to register to a secure electronic delivery system for Austrian citizens and to use the interconnection of this service with the ELC system, which was already created in 2013. This interconnection will allow, that Austrian citizens can receive electronic documents not only from courts, but from any other local, regional or federal public authority.
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The electronic delivery system for court documents – Electronic Legal Communication (ELC) – was developed in close cooperation with all affected stakeholders: Lawyers and notaries, who work as representatives of citizens and companies in front of the court and care for the interests of their clients; Judges and court officers defining the requirements of the courts; Law makers from the Justice Ministry, who were needed for adopting laws and legal regulations to establish a legal base for the electronic delivery of court documents; Technical staff from the Austrian Federal Computing Centre, which did the technical implementation of this system.
The ELC system is organized as federated public private partnership using several private companies as clearing-house, which provide the technical interconnection for the lawyers and the professional users of ELC system.
To enable electronic delivery of court documents also to normal citizens, a secure electronic delivery system for Austrian citizens, which was developed by the Austrian Federal Computing Centre, is re-used and has been interconnected to the ELC system.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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Human resources used:
Legal experts from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Justice; Judges and practitioners from the courts were consulted as experts; Representatives of the Austrian lawyers (from the Austrian bar association) and notaries; Companies developing software for the lawyers; Clearing houses doing the technical interconnection for lawyers and professional users of the ELC system; Legal experts, project managers, IT-architects and developers from the Austrian Federal Computing Centre.
Technical resources used:
The lawyers used their own software providers to connect the case management systems used by the lawyers with the ELC system to allow electronic submission of claims and to receive court decisions from the ELC system directly into the private case management systems of the lawyers. Several private companies act as "clearing houses" providing the network-interconnection for the lawyers and other private professional users.
All central parts of the ELC system, the interconnection to the clearing houses and to large public institutions and police, the interface of the ELC system to the case management system of the Austrian courts and to other court applications like Land Register and Company Register were designed and developed and are run by the Austrian Federal Computing Centre.
Also the secure electronic delivery system to connect normal Austrian citizens was developed by the Austrian Federal Computing Centre and interconnected with the ELC system for the courts and the professional users.
Funding of the initiative was done by the organizations of the affected stakeholders:
The Austrian Federal Ministry of Justice funded the development of all central parts of the ELC system and the interconnection to the Austrian Court Case Management system and other applications of the court like Land Register and Company Register.
The Software providers of the lawyers funded the development of the interfaces of the case management systems of the lawyers to the ELC system. It was co-ordinated by the Austrian bar organization (German name: "Österreichischer Rechtsanwaltskammertag – ÖRAK")
The private "clearing houses" connecting all private professional users act as intermediate providers in the transport chain for electronic documents.
The operational costs of the ELC service are financed by transmission fees, payable to the clearing house by the sender of the transmission on a "per use" principle".
Typical costs for professional users like lawyers, notaries, banks, insurance companies:
Monthly fee for the connection: 17,50 EURO
Sending one transmission to a court: 0,30 EURO
Receiving a transmission from the courts: free of charge
Costs for private users:
Submissions via the Justice Web submission interface for Austrian citizens: no transmission costs, only the normal court fees for the case have to be paid.
Users who opt to register for the secure electronic delivery service for Austrian citizens:
Receiving of documents from courts or any other public authority: free of charge
Costs for the courts:
One transmission of documents to a party or representative: 0,07 EURO
Receiving incoming claims/applications: free of charge
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The electronic delivery service is now available as a re-usable service, which is re-used also for different applications like Land Register and Company Register for sending out decisions and for receiving applications.
The electronic delivery system is extremely cost efficient for the courts, when compared to traditional postal services. The court as sender has to pay just 0,07 EURO for sending an electronic message containing electronic court documents, compared with traditional costs of 0,75 EURO for a simple post letter or 3 to 5 EURO, when using traditional postal services for confirmed delivery of paper documents to a specific person. In the year 2012 the savings on postage fees was already an amount of more than 10 million EURO per year.
For each delivery the system saves at least one to two days duration compared to postal delivery and helps speeding up judicial proceedings.
Lawyers and claimants connected to the ELC system can file claims and follow-on applications electronically to all judicial courts in Austria up to the last minute before a legal deadline and 24 hours per day and 7 days a week.
Lawyers and professional parties get court decisions not only in man-readable PDF format, but also in structured machine-readable XML format, e.g. allowing to insert the date and time of a court hearing automatically into the calendar of the lawyer.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Intensive monthly and yearly statistics have been implemented to monitor the number of electronic messages sent out by the courts and the number of conventional letters need to be still sent out, because the addressee is not reachable via a secure electronic channel.
These statistics can be down to each different case-type and for each different court or court regions, to monitor if the electronic delivery is correctly applied or if some courts need extra education in using the electronic delivery.
Also the input side can be monitored for professional users to see how many applications per user are sent electronically to the courts. This information can be used to "encourage" professional claimants with a high number of claims to properly use the electronic filing functions.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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Judges and lawyers tended to be sceptical to any changes in the very early beginnings of the initiative, therefore the Electronic Legal Communication system had a slow start. Therefore it was important to explain and demonstrate the benefits for efficiency and speed of judicial proceedings and the financial advantages.
The situation turned quickly after the advantages of the Electronic Legal Communication became visible to a larger audience. Even law-makers started to adopt laws and regulations in a very creative way, that electronic communication could be applied to more court case-types and also for Land Register and Company Register.
Especially for lawyers and notaries acting as the representatives of the parties it was a significant investment in IT-infrastructure and to build automatic interfaces into their own internal case management systems. Therefore the benefits and cost-advantages of the Electronic Legal Communication had to be shared in a fair way between all participants. The lawyers and claimants got a regulation containing advantages over paper filing by the legal definition when an electronic submission is considered as "filed to the court", which allows them to file electronic applications up to the last minute before a legal deadline.
On the opposite side, the lawyers and claimants have to accept electronic delivery of documents from the courts, which avoids all paper handling for outgoing and incoming documents on both sides.
For normal citizens a different interface is required than for professional users, who need a system to system interface. Therefore the strategy to include citizens was to offer them a Web interface – secured by electronic certificates – where they can fill and submit claims electronically to the court. In addition the strategy includes re-using a secure electronic delivery system, which was specially designed for normal citizens. This system is aimed for electronic delivery of documents from any public authority to normal citizens, and it was interconnected to the electronic delivery system for the professional users.
These measures together helped to increase the volumes of the Electronic Legal Communication to really high figures and the ELC system is today one of the most successful Austrian e-Government systems with high international visibility.
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