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4 courts yet to be linked to power grid, internet to be resourced by June 2020

Chief Justice David Maraga (pictured) said 128 out of the 132 courts spread across the country have all been linked to the power grid and reliable internet/JUDICIARY PUBLIC AFFAIRS

NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 19 – Four courts yet to be connected to the national power grid and reliable internet will be resourced by June 30, 2020, Chief Justice David Maraga announced on Monday.

Maraga said 128 out of the 132 courts spread across the country have been linked to the power grid and reliable internet.

“We only have four courts, in extremely remote areas, which have neither electricity nor internet connectivity, but we aim to have them connected in the course of this financial year,” the CJ said in his opening remarks at the 2019 Annual Judges Colloquium.

“Connectivity is a crucial aspect of digitization and has been a principal goal for us,” he explained when he officially opened the annual forum in Mombasa.

Maraga also announced the Judiciary was working with the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology to migrate its systems to the National Fibre Optic Backbone (NOFBI) within the current financial year.

Automation is a key pillar of Judiciary ICT Master Plan (2018 – 2022) and its service delivery agenda captioned Sustaining Judiciary Transformation Framework (2017 – 2021).

Selected court are already piloting electronic case filing and management systems, online assessment of court fees and the rollout of speech to text software which will facilitate automated transcription of proceedings.

Courts are also phasing out payment of fees in cash with 80 per cent of court stations reporting compliance to the transition to mobile money payment systems under a newly unveiled Judiciary Financial Management Information System (JFMIS) according to the State the Judiciary and the Administration of Justice Report (SOJAR) 2016-2017.

“The implementation of a far-reaching digital strategy that will not only transform the way our courts work but also how the public interacts with us,” when he launched the 2016-2017 edition of SOJAR.

At the Milimani Law Courts, for instance, 333 cases have been filed online with Sh1.9 million in court fees paid through the KCB-Mpesa mobile money platform, according to SOJAR (2017-2018) released in February 2019.

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“More than 14 law firms are participating in the pilot project,” the report indicated.

Supreme Court Justices Njoki Ndung’u (left) and Isaac Lenaola (right) were among judges present at the opening ceremony of the 2019 Annual Judges Colloquium on Monday, August 19, 2019/JUDICIARY PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Maraga on Monday announced that some six courtrooms around the country will be joining a digital court recording and transcription system in September.

The CJ said similar digital recording platforms for 26 other courts were currently being procured.

“With the connectivity universally in place, we will continue to vigorously pursue other elements of digitization such as replacing the archaic, time-consuming tradition of handwritten notes with the digital court recording and transcription system, beginning with 32 courtrooms around the country,” he undertook.

The Judiciary under the 2017-2018 review period reported the conclusion of 148,877 cases between January 2017 and December 2018 in reforms partly attributed to digitization.

The number represented an 87 per cent clearance rate for cases that have been pending in law courts for more than five years which at the time stood at 170,186.

The Judiciary has also deployed a Case Tracking System (CTS) which has so far this year been used to track over 400,000 ongoing cases in 49 out of 132 court stations.

Maraga said the CTS infrastructure which includes an SMS-based notification facility will be rolled out in the remaining court stations by December 2019.

“This will include an SMS-based information facility for wananchi who will only need to send a message to the Judiciary shortcode – 22490 – to be updated about their cases,” he told judges attending the 2019 colloquium on Monday.

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