Policy Context and Legal Framework

Turkish Constitution sets out under Art.36, everyone has the right to a legal remedy either as plaintiff or defendant and entitled to the right to a fair trial. Bearing in mind the eternal reality ‘justice delayed, justice denied’ the constitution states that justice should be maintained in a swift and economic manner. So as to meet the expectation among the individuals in this context, IT Dept. of the MOJ was given the task and the responsibility to realize the modernisation of justice which is included as fundamental priorities in the Accession Partnership and in the National Plan. The Accession Partnership with Turkey was adopted on 8 March 2001, and the Government of Turkey prepared a National Plan for the Adoption of the Acquis (NPAA) to achieve the objectives stated in the Accession Partnership. Modernisation of justice is included as one of the fundamental priorities in the Accession Partnership and in the NPAA. In the course of progress towards accession to the European Union and in response to the obligations of the acquis of the EU Turkish government, is actively following these programmes. These legal, technical and politic reasons resulted in UYAP, as a very good example of outstanding e-justice system which is now considered as an indispensable part of the eGovernment programmes, policies and strategies of the EU. The database provided by UYAP is being used by judiciary institutes, and other private or government institutes on demand and the said authorities have access to of government and other eGovernment programmes in a more easy and effective manner.

UYAP totally complies with the E-Plus strategy of the EU which aims to establish a high level information society and remove the gap between the justice staff and the individuals seeking justice. UYAP database can be connected to the central databases of the EU and thus form a broadened network, providing direct benefits to the governments, citizens and businesses. Above all, in close future it will be possible to bridge UYAP with the backbone networks such as TESTA and other EU countries’ systems. Achieving this goal will result in the secureness and swiftness the transmittion of the international requests such as rogatory letters, the requests regarding extratidion and transfer of sentenced persons. UYAP not only can establish a information path among judicial institutions, but also constitute a new and effective line among the judicial and non judicial justice-related units within the EU.

Implementation and Management Approach

The UYAP system was initially developed in collaboration with a Turkish software house Havelsan but is now entirely managed by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) who have a team of judges and developers ensuring the continuity and future development of the system.  The IT Department of the MOJ has the duties and responsibilities to establish, operate, and maintain the informatics system in cooperation with the units of the MoJ. Accordingly, the own team of IT Department has provided successfull coordination and cooperation relating to the IT projects among the ministerial units by using the most updated technology and methodologies. In order to handle institutional and legal differences within ministry and show the utmost determination of MOJ, it has been established a high Board in the ministry, who has duty to take necessary measures, provide harmony and eliminate obstacles to implement Project, consisting of Undersecretary, Deputy Undersecretaries and Director Generals of different departments. Modernisation of justice has become indispensable part of the eGovernment programmes, policies and strategies of Turkey. MOJ has determined to take sufficient measures to provide effective, accurate, and swift justice for the public which can be enhanced by the use of ICT means. In order to that it has been given so much importance to establish partnership with other government departments. Hence, there has been also set up integration with the different departments of governments such as birth registry, criminal records database, telecommuniation authority, post offices, police offices, land registry and some banks enabling online exchange of information among them. Furthermore it has been tried to harmonise and simplify the procedural rules, codes and working practices according to the technological change. In the computerisation process of courts, the human element, judges and prosecutors who are considered the most conservative group in the legal profession, experience difficulties to keep up with the new developments. In order to overcome this problem some trainings programs, awereness campaigns, meetings and seminars were organised. While the computer literacy was only 5 % before UYAP in courts, it has been increased to level of 95 % thanks to basic computer and UYAP modules trainings. Furthermore they have been given distance learning facilities enabling them to acces audial and visual training materials through internet. In addition after being involved in the project and perceiving  the benefits of the UYAP in their daily routine as it dramatically reduces the labour force and time and facilitate the complex procedure, the usage of UYAP along with political support has increased significantly. In a very short time they had started to use the electronic environment in their daily works and they confessed that they wished to use that system earlier. Since culture change requires the constant effort of every actor in the judiciary, the participation and motivation of judicial workers was provided by open communications, clear incentives, promotions and awards. During the initial stage of Project it has been encountered with the lack of funding particularly for the employment of experienced engineers and programme developers in the government sector. At the end it is understood that using the power of technology can definitely solve or at least mitigate the problems of judiciary. Then strong government support has been given at any cost facilitating the speed up the process of UYAP. A knowledge management strategy based on the teamwork principle rather than depending on individuals has been tried to apply in UYAP management. Overall it is proved in Turkey that with sufficient investment, a strong and high level of project management and determination of the policy-makers pave the way for successful implementation of e-justice.

Technology solution

The UYAP system has been implemented using JEE2 on the client-side and runs on an Oracle database. Availibity to open code sources and standard technologies for end users allow the Turkish judiciary to develop independent, integrated and cost effective solutions. Judges can reach to the system by VPN technology from their houses with their laptop, facilitating their preparation and research for trials and the writing of judgments. Central database was set up in order to collect and share all data effectively and economically to be called up by judges and court staff when needed rather than local ones which can cause data duplication and discrepancies. UYAP has disaster recovery procedures in place and the system is fully backed up each night.  A new system centre is currently being built to upgrade hardware and to enhance the overall disaster recovery strategy. The system has numerous Quality Certificates assigned to it including TS-EN-ISO 9001, AQAP-150, AQAP-110 SW CMM Level 3 and soon hope to obtain ISO 17799 and ISO/IEC 15408 CC Standard.  The system is protected by a firewall and anti-virus software.

Consistency and usability are strong characteristics of the system. A single user interface and its core functionality are universally applied. So, for example, if a judge initially works for the court of 1st instance and then moves to the Court of Cassation she/he will be already familiar with the UYAP working environment. Judges have been supplied with USB keys to enable them to electronically sign documents and this is being adopted across the board. Until now 35400 personnel have been given their e-signature. Procedures, among the branches of the justice  system and other relevant official bodies, have been totally integrated and automated on electronic signature infrastructure, establishing interoperability and electronic office atmosphere that not need paperwork.The system registers the state of proceeding of a case which along with associated information is used for statistical analysis. This makes it easy, for example, to produce a report that identifies how many cases relating to burglary were registered either by the Ankara Court or country-wide. Such ease of reporting is critical for the prosecutors who then use the data to examine the case load allocation for their particular court. Local area network and wide area network (WAN) were completed through territorial lines and satellite for which each of them is the substitute of other, enabling uninterruptable service.

Impact

UYAP has reduced the administrative and communication costs which would otherwise be incurred in paper-based system. With the on-line connection of courts, expenses of bureaucracy and postal costs are removed. Judicial record database has been integrated with database of UYAP. The birth certificates, Land Registries and driver registers can also be retrieved online and instantly at every stage of the trials. Thanks to internal and external integration totaly 30.286.424 Euro is saved annually.  All cases in courts can be accessible on line by authorized judges without delay.The processes and correspondences that formerly took hours or days can now be done only in minutes through UYAP. While preparing daily, monthly or annual statistics of judiciary took hours, weeks or months, thanks to UYAP it can be done instantly by using electronic means. The UYAP system has its own custom DMS (Document Management System) which was developed in-house and workflow solution to enable the system to create and assign tasks to judges for action.The system is process driven which enhances the overall work productivity and enables top level managers to effectively manage the case load of the courts and to identify the overall productivity of staff members. Previously, all registration of cases was done in ledgers and the allocation of cases was done manually.  The system now registers and automatically assigns cases to judges based on their current workload. All bureaucratic procedures and formal writings made in the electronic environment, thereby avoiding delays and reducing mistakes, especially those related to codes of procedures, as well as ensuring some degree of transparency.

Before UYAP, judicial units used to write the forms by hand one by one. After the introduction of UYAP similar writs are being composed through template forms. Thus, the employees save time and workforce, courts and other units can do the same job with less staff. Due to template forms, all data are automatically being received from the system and transmitted into the documents. As a result, it has led to some 30 % labour force savings and provided speed and reliance. Thanks to UYAP the judicial inspections can be tackled online and remotely. Thanks to databank which provide updated legal sources verdicts has been facilitated and similar decisions can be procured about similar trials. UYAP provides a very powerful tool to combat fraud and abuse of verdicts as a most important impact of eGovernment. Prevention of corruption is achieved thanks to electronic logging of every movement in the system.Creating, intelligent warning-systems which are not available in any other justice system throughout the world, user faults have been remarkably reduced and that led to fewer serious mistakes in judicial proceedings.

Electronic filing allows all data to be stored up-to date, accurate and ready with the click of a button, for more than one person concurrently. Thanks to online connection to banks which enable electronic collection of case fees, handling of cash is unnecessary which prevents corruption and bribes. Problems associated with handling of paper are no longer a burden for the judiciary such as non-filing and misfiling of documents, loss of case files, retrieving them instantly and need for huge storage places. Overall, UYAP has enhanced the authority of the state, ensured victims to reach the justice immediately, and made easy to punish offenders as they deserved.Those mentioned developments, in terms of their consequences are progresses augmenting the confidence of the citizens for the judiciary and show that the impact is sustainable.

Track record of sharing

As John Hunter says, (Head of the IT Department of European Court of Human Rights), who examined the system in 2008 for 3 days, “UYAP is probably one of the most advanced nation-wide court justice systems in the world and an excellent example of best practice for national courts” (http://www.adalet.gov.tr/duyurular/2008/kasim08/ENExpertReportUYAP.pdf). Turkish Project team join all e-Justice Programme events and make some visits to share this good practice and exchange of experience with European and Mediterranean region. In these events UYAP has been presented to show how the efficiency of justice can be improved by updating means and tools used for justice by pointing out the importance of quality and efficiency as an essential guarantee for successful and modernised management of justice. Turkish team have been also invited to some countries to share its invaluable experience throughout its neighbours. For instance, there has been initiated a cooperation with Bosnia and Herzegovina to transfer the knowledge of Turkey in the area of e-justice (http://www.adalet.gov.tr/english/news/2009/news0/news.html). In addition we have hosted IT teams of many countries that are willing to establish collaboration in  the area of e-justice such as UK, Germany, Syria, Kazakhistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Algeria, Egypt and so on (http://www.adalet.gov.tr/english/news/2009/news1/news.html).  Likewise we host some experts from the EU within the context of TAIEX activities in our department in order to show the innovations come with UYAP. In all these visits because of its capacity and capability UYAP has been regarded as the best model by the visitors.  As Jack Straw comments “There is much we have and continue to learn from you. For instance, in respect of the excellent IT system being used in your courts, of which a delegation from my Ministry of Justice was exceedingly jealous” (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/sp291107a.htm). These evaluations and comments show the potential that UYAP has for others to learn from. Our document and case management system can be easily adapted and used by other national and international institutions because of its ability to harmonize each unit. We have just started to give our document management system to some public institutions such as some municipalities and Customs Department. So not only are we ready to share our experience with domestic organisations but also with international organisations.

Lessons learnt

SAme as other innovative projects we have gained so many general experiences that can enable other administrations to learn from it. The transformation of huge organisational structure of Turkish Judiciary to the smooth functioning system is the most important lesson to be learned. Carrying out an IT project in public sector, particularly in judiciary requires overcoming too many difficulties. If the team are keen on succeeding with the utmost motivation and well-planning there is no chance for the failure. The team work sprit and motivation is the most important stimulus in this context. The motivation of the staff has been provided with some awards schemes and e-mail sharing that has been established for knowledge supply and motivation. A knowledge management strategy based on the teamwork principle rather than depending on individuals has been tried to apply in UYAP management. All judicial units has carried into contest environment for the best usage of UYAP. Another important lesson that can be learned from our case is how to overcome the resistance of the users to the new way of life coming with IT. They feel that paper is still indispensable and more secure in the legal process, due to their lack of information about how IT works. In order to overcome this problem some trainings programs, awereness campaigns, meetings and seminars were organised. They have been assured by the authentication methods such as safe identity verification of digital signatures.  At the end of 2007 all of the registry books and cartoons have been removed and started to keep in electronic environment. While the computer literacy was only 5 % before UYAP in courts, it has been increased to level of 95 % thanks to basic computer and UYAP modules trainings. In a very short time they had started to use the electronic environment in their daily works and they confessed that they wished to use that system earlier. It has been explained very well to the users that teething problems may also be encountered during the initial period, as it is a natural result of every change.  In addition there has been a strong share of know-how, consultative discussions and collaboration between ICT experts and judicial staff. it is proved in Turkey that with sufficient investment, a strong and high level of project management and determination of the policy-makers pave the way for successful implementation of e-justice.