Filenews 13 December 2024
The competent Deputy Ministry and the Judicial Service are proceeding with the upgrade of i-justice after the collapse of e-justice, so that e-justice can proceed until it is decided what will happen next.
This decision was reached by all the relevant services after it was established that the new call for e-justice will greatly delay the procedures, while funding from European funds through the Recovery and Resilience Plan will be lost.
Recently, the issue was discussed between the Deputy Minister of Innovation Nikodemos Damianos and the Supreme Court and all the parameters for how things should move were set.
Filenews reports that in the first stage the existing i-justice system will be upgraded to include services that would be performed by e-justice, that is, the integrated e-justice system that includes users other than courts and lawyers.
The upgrade will be done immediately so that the system can respond to the new needs until it is decided what will happen in the future with the issue of integrated e-justice. It is recalled that due to problems that arose in the tests of e-justice, they led to the cancellation of the contract with both sides now resolving their differences in court.
The Republic had paid the contractor that undertook the project just over one million euros, while the total cost would have been €6 million.
In the meantime, a bill submitted by the Ministry of Justice provides for an amendment to the law to allow the recording of criminal proceedings conducted before a Court as well as the minutes and notes of evidence of the Court to be kept in a digital file.
The amendment is appropriate to be consistent with the implementation and introduction of the audio recording system of proceedings in Cypriot courts, an EU-funded project that has been included in the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
