Contract signed to move forward with e-Law programme

Aiming at improving the organisation and functioning of the Republic’s legal services, a contract introducing a holistic information technology system managing cases, files, and documents(e-Law) was signed on Thursday with the contracting company.

Signing on behalf of the state was the director of IT services department of the deputy ministry of research, innovation and digital policy.

The introduction of e-Law is intended to continuously monitor the progress of the work produced by the legal service and the course of pending cases in a way that improves the organisation and operation of the service, to facilitate and speed up cooperation and communication between officials, and to save working time by improving efficiency and speed required to complete the daily workload.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2023 and it will cost €1.5 million, fully financed by the Cyprus resilience and recovery programme.

E-Law is one of the costliest modernisation actions effected at the legal service, deemed as crucial given the service’ lack of modern technological tools.

“That is why investing in innovative changes was a one-way street,” the announcement reads.

Attorney-general George Savvides welcomed the agreement and the reform.

“The purpose of all reform actions, implemented based on a timetable, is in the immediate future to free the service from anachronistic work management practices and evolve into a modern and flexible organisation able to respond to speed, growing demand, needs and emerging challenges,” he said.

Deputy Minister for Digital Innovation Kyriacos Kokkinos on his part noted that this project signals yet another step in the ambitious reform programme for the restructuring and digital transformation of the justice system touching on electronic case management and processing (eJustice) and digital recordkeeping.

“With the maximum usage of technological capabilities in mind, we construct a more functional, resilient and effective justice system, a precondition for the smooth social, political and economic life of the country,” he said.

Additionally, the announcement notes that in the context of upgrading the functioning of the service, another digital project will begin concerning the digitisation of the legal service’ documents numbering approximately 60,000 physical files and eight million pages.