In September 2014, the launch of the new CITIUS court case processing system failed spectacularly on take-off and remained inoperable for 44 days, while the media reported on recrimination, back-biting and zero progress in clearing the backlog of cases built up from years of inefficiency and official indifference.
The judicial reform programme, far from reforming anything, turned a poor system into a showcase of what was wrong with Portugal’s antiquated justice delivery system noted already for understaffed courts and slow justice, but now with a computer software that had failed to work and was making things worse, not better.
Many court cases vanished into a cyber black hole, other live cases were designated as pending and the massive backlog of cases rose rather than decreased, causing distress and misery for those citizens waiting for their day in court.
The head of the union of prosecutors today said, "Justice is worse today than a year ago."
In a press conference held today, António Ventinhas, president of the union of prosecutors said of the justice system that the old problems had stayed but new ones have been added with a lack of staff, judges and with a computer system that does notdo what it was supposed to do.
Ventinhas said the resulting chaos after the launch of CITIUS was due to a lack of financial resources, to which he could have added, ‘training and management.’ He did point out that the lack of planning meant that a year later the country still does not have the necessary courts, the required number of judges and the number of staff required to run the system. He added that the money spent on the computer system has not been effective.
For Ventrinhas, the blame lies squarely with the Minister of Justice, Paula Teixeira da Cruz (pictured) whose management skills have been tested to the full and found early on to be lacking.
The head of the Bar Association, Elina Fraga, commented that the reform of the judicial map simply has detered citizens from seeing justice and that CITIUS still does not work as it should be working.
More concerning there still is no explanation from the minister for the failure of CITIUS.
A report is promised ‘next month’ but is unlikely to be published before the general election on October 4th. One of the reasons for the delay in the report is that the Minister of Justice did not commission it until a full eight months after the failure of the computer system for which she resolutely refused to take the blame, despite being in charge.
The report anyway will be light on detail as rather conveniently, the CITIUS computer problems preclude a detailed analysis of the judicial reform as no statistical data on pending or completed cases can be pulled from the system.
The justice system is in a mess, those working in it are stressed and lack resources, the public are less able to access the system due to travel and cost constraints, the new computer system failed to work and still does not function as specified, the report into the failure of CITIUS has been delayed by the person responsible and the chances of justice within a plaintiff’s lifetime are as remote as ever, if not more so.
The Minister in charge has the full backing of the Prime Minister.
