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July 4th, 2008
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Justice Ministry taps Internet to improve participation in the legal process

By František Bouc
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 29th, 2007 issue

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Justice Minister Jiří Pospíšil is calling on people to take the law in their own hands — via the Internet.
The government is encouraging citizens to file comments and proposed changes to various drafts of bills before they are submitted to the Cabinet. Within two years, Pospíšil said, citizens should be able to review most laws before they come into effect.
“This should help us come up with better laws and also reduce excessive paperwork in the legal process,” he said.
Apart from posting legal drafts on the Web, the Justice Ministry has also been developing a project that will launch online communication between the people and courts.
The ministry’s initiatives are seen as an opening of the government to the participatory nature of the Internet, allowing increased access to state institutions and the accompanying scrutiny of thousands of eyeballs — all while improving efficiency.
The government has already received comments on a draft of the new Criminal Code. Some of the public comments were even incorporated into a new draft.
Pospíšil said the involvement of the public in creating laws should reduce the number of errors that politicians sometimes include in drafts. “The public will be able to supervise the legislation process,” he said.
Project coordinator Martina Jalovecká of the Interior Ministry told the daily Hospodářské noviny that this could bring about a breakthrough in the government’s legislation system. Similar involvement of the public in the law-making process is not yet widespread through Europe, though it does exist in United Kingdom, Estonia and Latvia.
In the first phase of the project, people will be invited to comment on drafts of the national anti-terrorist program, the 2011 census law and also a law unifying supervision of financial markets.
The pilot phase should last one year and the government will then decide whether this practice will be compulsory for the drafting of all laws. The only laws that would be exempt from public comment would be tax laws and the state budget.
While citizens can already interact online with the creation of laws, the ministry hopes improved access to local courts will make the day-to-day enforcement of those laws simpler for municipalities.
“Online communications should do away with the delays resulting from circulation of papers and documents from one court to another,” Pospíšil said. “Mere data transfers via the Internet should make the work of local courts much more time effective.”
The government has already spent 475 million Kč ($23 million) on the online communication project. Next year, its development will cost 615 million Kč per year. Some of that money will be drawn from European Union funds.
Pospíšil said the system’s online forms, used for filing a lawsuit, for example, should simplify the process of administering the suits. Apart from filing forms on the Internet, people will be able to send questions via e-mail to court clerks.
After the system’s October launch, the Justice Ministry is preparing another project, starting February 2008, called InfoCourt. The ministry says InfoCourt will allow people to monitor the progress of court proceedings in particular cases.
Both initiatives should significantly speed up the work of courts in the country, which are often criticized as being unbearably slow, Pospíšil said.
Also, the ministry hopes to launch an online insolvency register and online government billboard in the near future.

František Bouc can be reached at fbouc@praguepost.com


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