Vol. 6, No.
3 - Summer 2003
Access Upgrades
for Mongolia
For
decades, trial courts in Mongolia were, for the most part, manually operated,
and public access to court case information was practically nonexistent.
But
much has changed since the National Center for State Courts went to Mongolia to
help the country establish a more modern and democratic court system in 2001.
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The
project got off the ground when the USAID-funded Judicial Reform
Program (JRP) identified four pilot trial courts, providing each
with desktop computers and Local Area Network (LAN) servers, and
assisted with reengineering court practices. Working with the German
Technical Cooperation, the project staff updated a case management
software package—Judge 2001, developed in the late 1990s to
provide automated case tracking and reporting software—and
implemented it in the four pilot courts.
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Upgrades
and accessibility have led to an unprecedented increase in transparency and
accountability in Mongolia’s court system. The project has been so successful
that it has been expanded to nine additional Mongolian trial courts.
After
a recent visit to two of the pilot courts, the president of Mongolia remarked:
“The two automated courts visited today are examples of how the courts in
Mongolia should be open and accessible to the public, advocates, and other legal
professionals. These two courts are examples of openness and fairness that all
courts in Mongolia should strive to copy.”
The
automation efforts have directly affected how judges and staff perform their
day-to-day work—and how citizens view their courts. Manual production of court
minutes, orders, and judgments has been eliminated. Under the new method, chief
judges receive management reports that allow them to review case processing
times and more effectively manage judges’ caseloads.
To
make the courts more accessible to citizens, each court constructed a “Public
Information Center,” which allows the public, attorneys, and the media access
to court case information. Previously, litigants had to track down court
officials and convince them to find their court papers and to share the
information in order to determine trial dates, judge assignment, or whether a
judgment had been filed. Today, this information is readily available at the
Public Information Centers.
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