Purpose: properly prepare the transition to the future ECRIS 5 system (Electronic Case Register and Information System used by Romanian court and prosecutor’s offices) by achieving a technological upgrade of the local and central IT&C infrastructure, improving data processing, storage, and transfer capacity and the security of data and services in all courts.
Objectives:
- Increase data communication capabilities (bandwidth) in MoJ’s WAN, in order to ensure optimal data transfer rates in the context of the virtualization of business applications;
- Ensuring adequate processing and storage capacity at the level of courts and courts of appeal to centralize virtualized systems and applications in the judicial system (e.g. ECRIS v4, other support applications) and to ensure efficient management of IT resources in courts by
- optimizing the physical server infrastructure by reducing the number of installation locations from 267 currently to around 63;
- increasing the level of security in the WAN network of the justice sector;
- updating the employed software;
- installing new processing and storage capacities at the semi-central level;
- Ensuring adequate processing and storage capacities, respectively the supporting security infrastructure, which allow the development of functionalities forecasted for a single version of the electronic file (National Electronic File - NEF).
Operationalization of the National Electronic File (NEF)
According to the Law No 304 of 15 November 2022 on judicial organization, as of 1 January 2024, implementing of the National Electronic File (NEF) at the level of all courts becomes mandatory. To this end, the Ministry of Justice committed to develop the NEF software together with IT specialist working in the justice system.
In compliance with the law, NEF aims at streamlining judicial procedures, in terms of interaction with, by ensuring flexibility regarding the use of the digital instruments both by the court staff (judges and clerks) as well as by third parties (litigants, lawyers, court experts).
In terms of functionalities of the NEF, for starters (in the piloting and national roll-out phase), the application will only allow the read-on function of documents in the electronic court file, such as view of court hearings date, court decisions, and other essential set of documents (summons, evidence, various communication,). After the national roll-out, respectively the stabilization of the reference version of the application, subject to the necessary legislative and regulatory changes, new features will be added, e.g. the possibility of submitting documents online (e-file component), communication of judicial procedural documents (e-serving component) etc.
Benefits:
- Accessing of the electronic court file by litigants, lawyers;
- Reducing of time and cost related to transport, printing of documents;
- Secure access to the documents provided through the NEF platform by two-step authentication;
- One account for all court files, for better management and access to information and documents;
- Streamlining the activity in the court’s archives and registry office both in terms of internal processes and in relation with litigants and other interested parties;
- Full compliance with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on the protection of individuals concerning the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (General Data Protection Regulation).
Additional information:
- Reference
- C7-I4 in the RO Recovery and Resilience Plan
- Project locations
- Romania
- Project website
- https://www.just.ro/...