Baby Steps for E-Justice
(How About an Electronic Filing System in UP Diliman?)

Having worked in the University Student Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) for months now, I have been a witness as to how its office is stuffed with too many paper documents consisting of pleadings manually filed by the parties and other files (i.e., Transcript of Stenographic Notes). Also, while the SDT is probably the most understaffed office in UP[1], and while it receives minimal appropriation from the University, it performs all the functions done in regular courts and quasi-judicial bodies –- from the manual mailing or personal service of preliminary inquiry notices to the mailing of copies of orders/decisions/resolutions after conduct of full-blown trials –- not to mention its other functions (i.e., issuance of clearances to students).

It is in this context that I once casually proposed to one of my officemates, over lunch, that UP should consider launching the Electronic Filing System (EFS) to do away with the paper court documents and to minimize office costs due to mailing and personal service of notices and reproduction of court documents.

The EFS is one of the latest developments in the E-Justice trend and is now being fully implemented in Singapore. It underwent 7 years of planning in Singapore, commencing in 1990, until its full implementation in 2005. It was “specifically designed to fully exploit the electronic super highway to minimize not just the physical movement of people and paper court documents from the law firms to the Courts, but also to leverage the benefits of electronic storage within the Courts (i.e., faster document filing and retrieval, eradication of the misplacement of case files, concurrent access to view the same case filed by different parties).”[2]

The System has four components: the Electronic Filing Service, the Electronic Exacting Service, the Electronic Service of Documents Facility, and the Electronic Information Service. The Singaporean government describes it as a revolutionary, integrated, and national network, which allows more proactive supervision of cases so that the life span of cases can be shortened and the number of outstanding cases produced. At present, over 84% of documents are filed in court electronically by more than 400 law firms via the web-based system, more than 2.5 million court documents have been electronically filed to-date, and 2,000 documents are processed electronically daily.[3]


Needless to say, the benefits to having the EFS are many. And even if confronted with the questions on feasibility and practicability by my officemate, I opined that there is not much change to be done to give way to the adoption of the EFS. The UP Dilnet[4] is launched, pioneered, and run by the best minds of the University (or of the country, for that matter) and given the already-successful Singaporean model, nothing is really impossible. Sure, the birth pains will be inevitable. But if Singapore was able to incrementally do it over the years, so can we.

The University is no alien to being the pilot-testing grounds to many proposals. And the foreseeable success of the EFS in the University is sure to open doors to its nationwide feasibility and success, just like what they are currently enjoying in Singapore.




(for the week 13 - 19 Jul 2008)
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[1] SDT has two full-time employees, 1 graduate assistant and 1 student assistant. The members of the Tribunal are composed of three full-time UP Diliman Professors (two of whom are completing their doctorate degrees in the University), 1 parent juror (who also works for the University) and a student juror.
[2] www.wikipedia.com
[3] www.efs.com.sg
[4] UP Dilnet is an abbreviation for UP Diliman Network