The Ministry of Justice released a bold statement today announcing that the computerised court case management system Citius now is working for new cases and that existing cases will be migrated "gradually."
Last week the Secretary of State for Justice promised a disaster progress report. Today the Institute for Financial Management and Equipment of Justice stated that "it is assured that starting today there will be full access to all features of the Citius platform that supports the activity of courts and new cases."
The key phrase is ‘starting today’ as no existing cases are available on the Citius system, just ones added from Monday 15th September onwards.
Citius was meant to revolutionise the country’s justice system management as of September 1st but with 3.5 million existing cases to put onto a computer system that no one can use, the justice system has been halted by the technology that was meant to speed things up.
The Working Group for the Implementation of the Reform of Judicial Organization, IGFEJ, even recommends that old cases are added “gradually” but gives no reason for this 'go slow.'
The implementation of the new judicial map on September 1st somehow involved wiping out all the data on the old computer system which supported the work of the courts which therefore have not achieved anything justice-related in the past two weeks.
The president of the Union of Judicial Officers, Fernando Jorge, said today that he was "very concerned about the malfunction" of the Citius platform and described the chaos that descended on the country’s courts.
"What is happening in the courts is pandemonium. An unthinkable situation. People want to work but can not, then along comes the IGFEJ saying that we already have access to the Citius features.”
Citius, or Citius II as it now should be called as is has been changed so much in the two weeks since launch, is a computer programme that is meant to enable the electronic delivery of court papers along with digital signatures so as to reduce paperwork and speed things up.
The IGFEJ said that the old records were backed up before September 1st and that "it is possible, at any time, to recover the missing data.”
Failures in Citius, the key part of the new judicial map, have drawn criticism from just about everyone associated with its use including the Bar Association, the Union of Employees of Justice, the Unions of Justice Officials, the Professional Association of Judges and Union of Prosecutors and has led to the Socialist Party to demand the resignation of the Minister of Justice, while the Communists have been asking for an urgent explanation from the minister, Paula Teixeira da Cruz, (pictured) in Parliament.
