At the beginning of December 2015, Popov&Partners law office successfully executed the analytical part of the Supreme Judicial Council’s project: “Electronic justice – research and construction of integrated communication and informational infrastructure and integrate electronic portal of the judicial system”. The project was implemented with the financial support of Operational Programme “Administrative capacity”, cofinanced by the European Union through the European Social Fund. The work on the project lasted more than half a year and passed through two major phases:
I phase: A detailed analysis was conducted which contained all separate actions of each of the participants in civil and administrative processes. Figuratively speaking the actions and the series of actions were divided into elements in order to be able to conveniently design them when integrating the in software algorithms.
II phase: Popov & Partners made recommendations on the rules of electronic justice and prepared a conception on how to perform the transmission from paper to electronic justice and how exactly the judicial system should function after that – as human resources, organization of work and processes.
On 15th of December 2015 during the representation of the project before the press the member of the Supreme Judicial Council – Mr. Rumen Georgiev (head of the project) likened the work on the project to the foundations of a Lego constructor, which is already laid. A special attention was brought to some of the inventive ideas of the experts of Popov&Partners. Among them was the recommended by att. Emiliyan Arnaudov random distribution of cases that do not require the attendance of parties amongst all regional judges in the country. Such cases are the writ of execution procedure and securities in civil cases. These cases form more than half of all the cases in regional courts. In this way the uneven burdening with cases to judges will be significantly overcome and most of all – the process of reviewing the cases would be accelerated. This effect would be immediately felt by all citizens. Another recommendation was introducing an explicit prohibition on using paper correspondence between two judicial bodies if they have installed the electronic system and it functions. Taking into consideration the optimization of processes when the electronic system starts working, the team of Popov&Partners recommended opening points of access to the judicial system in small, remote and hardly accessible settlements. So, except from creating workplaces that will compensate for the jobs that will be cut, it will also ensure easier access to justice.
Currently the software is being technically tested and the prepared by Popov&Partners conception is planned to be realized within the frames of the next programme period. The transition of traditional processes in justice sector to electronic processes will ensure speed, transparency, economy and convenience.
Popov&Partners has already successfully executed several other projects aiming to digitalize the justice and optimize the processes within it. The law office will continue to cooperate with expertise on hand in order to finally implement “e-justice” and additional development of “e-government”.
