Developing e-Justice technology for use: the e-CODEX experience

This paper looks into the complexity of designing, developing and implementing a technological infrastructure for the electronic exchange of documents in cross-border judicial procedures. In the last 25 years, the introduction of ICT has been one of the main innovation drives and one of the main challenges of Justice systems all around the world. The idea is that, when properly linked to the automation of court procedures and practices (Fabri&Contini, 2001; Contini&Fabri, 2003; Velicogna, 2008; Reiling, 2010), and when properly used to support the communication between courts and parties (Velicogna, 2008; Velicogna, Errera&Derlange, 2011; Velicogna, Errera&Derlange, 2013; Lupo& Bailey, 2014) "ICT can be used to enhance efficiency, access, timeliness, transparency and accountability, thus helping the judiciaries to provide adequate services" (Velicogna, 2008: 6).In many countries, "statutory reforms have been introduced to allow the use and the exchange of electronic data and documents within national judicial systems" (Velicogna, 2007a) and ICT infrastructures, applications and services have been introduced (Contini&Lanzara, 2008; Contini&Lanzara, 2014).The e-CODEX project can be conceived as the next step, created to interconnect and make interoperable the e-justice systems developed so far within Europe and to allow the cross-border provision of e-Justice services. e-CODEX is a technological infrastructure developed by an EU Co-funded project to "Improve the cross-border access of citizens and businesses to legal means in Europe as well as to improve the interoperability between legal authorities within the EU". The project's duration is of 65 months (initially 36 months, then the project has been extended twice afterwards). The project, with a budget of EUR24m (EU contribution: EUR12m), runs from December 2010 to May 2016. It involves 20 countries (the number is expected to rise to 22 by the end of the project), mainly through their Ministries of Justice or their representatives, and also other institutions such as the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, the Council of the Notariats of the European Union, and the National Research Council of Italy. The first four years of the project were directed to determine the technological and normative requirements and to develop the technological infrastructure to provide an interoperability layer for the cross-border exchange of judicial data and to allow access to cross-border e-Justice services. As a result, e-CODEX project developed an e-delivery infrastructure that uses building blocks from previous EU Large Scale Projects to allow data and documents exchange, and the validation and cross-border recognition of e-identities and e-signatures in legal procedures (Velicogna, 2014; Velicogna et al. 2015).Furthermore, e-CODEX infrastructure provides for semantic interoperability, supporting the meaningful exchange of information between national systems. In other words, through semantic mapping and semantic transformation schemas, it ensures mutual interpretation of data exchanged between national electronic systems in cross border legal procedures. Technology though is not enough to allow cross border performativity of the electronic exchange in the judicial domain. Normative provisions authorising and regulating the use of technology are required (Contini and Mohr, 2014). Confronted with the limits of existing national and EU regulations, the e-CODEX project has also drafted an agreement called the Circle of Trust that established a basis to recognise exchanged electronic information (Velicogna et al., 2014). These efforts resulted in the implementation of a technological platform capable of supporting the information exchange provided for by the regulation and of a normati