In 2010, the cabinet approved the Judicial Service Bill 2010 that would revolutionize the Kenya Judicial System. This was the beginning of judicial reforms. The bill would make provision for judicial services and administration of the Judiciary, provide structures in the appointment of members of the Judicial Service Commission, make provision for the establishment of a Judiciary Fund, provide for the procedure of appointment, discipline and removal of judges, other judicial officers and staff and establish the National Council on Administration of Justice. By the beginning of 2012, Kenya had a Judicial Service Commission, a new Chief Justice and the vetting of judges had commenced. But is everything ok?
An aspect of judicial reforms that had not been captured was the mitigation of the delays experienced in the judicial system. The Kenyan Judicial System has in the past been plagued with the backlog of cases denying justice to the populace. One of the ways of dealing with this problem is automation of the entire judicial system to help citizens get justice in the shortest time possible. A good comparison is the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has embraced technology in their courts - with a click of a mouse button; the judges were able to see the number of pending cases and also the lifespan of the cases. Such techniques greatly reduce the time required to for the bench to deliver a judgment.
There are various initiatives by the Kenya Judiciary towards adopting technology. Recently, the National Youth Service posted 62 copy typists to the Judiciary to clear the backlog of records that have held up judgments and appeals because they were not typed and other important data entries. After the digitization of the court records, the next challenge will be in the training of the staff and the bench on utilization this content. In fact, according to Chief Justice, Dr. Willy Mutunga, the Judiciary will re-train magistrates on new technology to enable quick completion of cases. Magistrates who will be hired will not have clerks; they will only be supplied with laptops to record the proceedings of the cases.
Back in 2010, another initiative in Kenya’s judiciary was in the launching of the first ever telepresence solution for the hearing of cases in a partnership between Cisco, Safaricom, and the judiciary. The first case was relayed from Mombasa city where the Court of Appeal heard three cases via telepresence where the bench sat in Nairobi while the respective lawyers were in Mombasa. Telepresence, which integrates life-size High Definition (HD) video with high-quality sound in a room setup, creates the feel of actually being in the same room as participants at other locations. The solution would greatly reduce the need to travel over long distances; probably it would improve security if it introduced between the High Courts and maximum prisons. Often, prisoners have to be transported to the Nairobi Central Business District just to hear their cases. Wouldn’t it be more secure to have their lawyers argue their cases in court as they follow the proceedings from the prison?
With the assistance of the ICT Board and the Judiciary, the Judiciary has already finalized phase one of the physical organization and quantification of court documents to be digitized. The activity involved preparation of the files through cleansing of files for the last 10 years. A total of 325,000 files in the Court of Appeal and High Court Divisions of all High Court Stations in the country i.e. Milimani, Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret, Nyeri, Meru, Embu, Machakos, Malindi, Kericho, Kisii, Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia and Kitale Law Courts were cleansed. With the upcoming elections, the Kenya Judiciary System is expected to be strained by loads of law suits from the election results. It is thus prudent for the Judiciary to be prepared, considering the devolved system of Government according to the new constitution. The first step towards offering justice at the county level is the digitization of the judicial process.
Similar initiatives in other parts of the world have proved to be beneficial. For instance, the Integrated Electronic Litigation Systems (iELS) was an initiative by the Singapore Judiciary to replace the existing Electronic Filing System (EFS). EFS was conceived and developed in the mid- to late-1990s, and iELS represented the second phase in implementing technology to enhance the litigation process in Singapore. Upon its rollout in 2011, iELS was the world's first properly "paperless" electronic court platform. The iELS was designed to deliver a modern platform for the integration of ICT systems of the Judiciary, the legal profession and litigants. It integrates workflow and electronic forms seamlessly using the content management system as the presentation layer for electronic filing. In this way, the courts are able to pro-actively track and manage pending matters
