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E-justice in Finland and in Italy: enabling versus constraining models
Abstract
All the countries in Europe have embarked on investments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The common motivation is that ICT should provide a means of increasing the speed and effectiveness of information exchange, while offering a formidable range of opportunities for institutional change and innovation. The variety of solutions adopted by individual countries, both technically and managerially, provide unique insights into the European justice sector (Fabri and Langbroek, 2000; Fabri and Contini, 2001; Fabri and Woolfson, 2001; Oskamp, Lodder and Apistola, 2004). However, the outcome of these investments varies widely from country to country. This chapter will deal with two very divergent examples in Europe: Finland and Italy, where indeed the outcome has been very different. The two cases will be described in terms of ICT governance2 strategies, legal framework, and main applications developed.
... Over-regulation and the slow change in legislation negatively affected the development and diffusion of the system. Fabri, in 2009, argued that the over-regulation of justice information systems, due in particular to legislators' excessive attention to security and to the sensitivity of proceedings, increased the complexity of Italian e-justice services and hindered the initial diffusion of systems (bootstrapping) [64,65]. Furthermore, slow introduction of legislative change (such as the delayed issuance of the DM providing for the legal validity of documents exchanged via TOL) has delayed the use of e-justice systems. ...
... Further, the implementation of some of the functional components of the infrastructure was left to private initiatives of local bar associations and of lawyers (point of access and external users interface). The project's technological procedure relied heavily on an existing offline procedure known for its inefficiency and inconsistency [64]. In this case, reliance on the installed legal base constituted a disadvantage that hindered the smooth functioning of the infrastructure. ...
... The e-CODEX system is strongly modularized, composed of several loosely-coupled sub-systems, which may foster adaptability by allowing each module to evolve independently without hindering the overall infrastructure. However, our analysis of TOL and MCOL and the e-justice literature [5,6,13,15,33,64,95] suggest that modularization alone does not considerably affect the system's functioning. Centralized or decentralized architectures may be more important. ...
Access to justice has become an important issue in many justice systems around the world. Increasingly, technology is seen as a potential facilitator of access to justice, particularly in terms of improving justice sector efficiency. The international diffusion of information systems (IS) within the justice sector raises the important question of how to insure quality performance. The IS literature has stressed a set of general design principles for the implementation of complex information technology systems that have also been applied to these systems in the justice sector. However, an emerging e-justice literature emphasizes the significance of unique law and technology concerns that are especially relevant to implementing and evaluating information technology systems in the justice sector specifically. Moreover, there is growing recognition that both principles relating to the design of information technology systems themselves (“system design principles”), as well as to designing and managing the processes by which systems are created and implemented (“design management principles”) can be critical to positive outcomes. This paper uses six e-justice system examples to illustrate and elaborate upon the system design and design management principles in a manner intended to assist an interdisciplinary legal audience to better understand how these principles might impact upon a system’s ability to improve access to justice: three European examples (Italian Trial Online; English and Welsh Money Claim Online; the trans-border European Union e-CODEX) and three Canadian examples (Ontario’s Integrated Justice Project (IJP), Ontario’s Court Information Management System (CIMS), and British Columbia’s eCourt project).
... Such strategies include, for example, adaptability (Hanseth & Lyytinen, 2010), bootstrapping (Hanseth & Aanestad, 2003;Hanseth & Lyytinen, 2010), decentralization (Broadbent, Weill, & St.Clair, 1999;Ciborra et al., 2000), flexibility (Braa et al., 2007;Hanseth, Monteiro, & Hatling, 1996), generativity (Bygstad, 2010;Henfridsson & Bygstad, 2013;Silsand & Ellingsen, 2014), grafting-merging technological innovations into existing sociotechnical arrangements- (Sanner, Manda, & Nielsen, 2014). Other strategies include using governance models (Ure et al., 2009), loosely coupled architecture (Fabri, 2008), mobilization (Aanestad & Jensen, 2011), and stratification and meshworking (Rodon & Silva, 2015). These strategies are abstractions that take the form of descriptive patterns and self-reinforcing mechanisms that produce observable events. ...
... For researchers, this study responds to Tilson, Lyytinen, and Sørensen's (2010) call to examine new theoretical lenses by which we might understand the paradoxical nature of change in digital infrastructure evolution. Prior research has mainly focused on analyzing strategies that have proven to be effective in resolving contradictory tensions-such as adaptability (Hanseth & Lyytinen, 2010), structural centralization (Broadbent, Weill, & St.Clair, 1999;Ciborra et al., 2000), flexibility (Braa et al., 2007;Hanseth, Monteiro, & Hatling, 1996), governance models (Ure et al., 2009), and loosely coupled structures (Fabri, 2008). This study extends this stream of research by developing a conceptual integration of contradictory tensions and ambidexterity in order to understand how organizations balance exploration and exploitation to attend to contradictory tensions in the evolution of a digital infrastructure. ...
Prior research on the evolution of digital infrastructure has paid considerable attention to effective strategies for resolving contradictory tensions, yet what we still do not understand is the role of higher-level organizational capabilities that help balance the contradictory tensions that emerge during this evolution. In addressing this gap, two related questions guided our investigation: (1) How do organizations experience and resolve contradictory tensions throughout the evolution of digital infrastructure? and (2) What can we learn about the organizational capabilities that drive strategic actions in resolving these contradictory tensions? We approach these questions using an in-depth case study at RE/MAX LLC, a global real estate franchise. Based on our findings, we propose a theoretical model of digital infrastructure ambidexterity. The model recognizes three pairs of capabilities (identifying and germinating, expanding and legitimizing, and augmenting and implanting) and two supporting factors (leadership and structure) that are key to resolving contradictory tensions during this evolution. This study responds to a recent research call for dynamic process perspectives at multiple levels of analysis. We discuss the implications of this model for research and practice and offer observations for future research.
... In particular, the idea of decentralized control of digital infrastructures has been considered a strong alternative to prevailing centralized approaches (see Broadbent and Weill 1997). On the technical side, architecture, in particular loosely coupled architectures, has come to the fore as an important condition for infrastructure evolution (Aanestad and Blegind Jensen 2010;Fabri 2009). Based on the extant infrastructure literature, we therefore propose that decentralized control and loosely coupled architecture work as key contextual conditions of digital infrastructure evolution. ...
... 123). Fabri (2009) The financial infrastructure scaled considerably in terms of its coverage and scope, and has since long become the most comprehensive one in the global bank sector. Regarding the Criminal Case Management system in Finland (Case #23, Fabri 2009), innovation in the civil procedure rules (e.g., elimination of original signature requirement) boosted new civil case management applications. ...
The current literature on digital infrastructure offers powerful lenses for conceptualizing the increasingly interconnected information system collectives found in contemporary organizations. However, little attention has been paid to the generative mechanisms of digital infrastructure, that is, the causal powers that explain how and why such infrastructure evolves over time. This is unfortunate, since more knowledge about what drives digital infrastructures would be highly valuable for managers and IT professionals confronted by the complexity of managing them. To this end, this paper adopts a critical realist view for developing a configurational perspective of infrastructure evolution. Our theorizing draws on a multimethod research design comprising an in-depth case study and a case survey. The in-depth case study, conducted at a Scandinavian airline, distinguishes three key mechanisms of digital infrastructure evolution: adoption, innovation, and scaling. The case survey research of 41 cases of digital infrastructure then identifies and analyzes causal paths through which configurations of these mechanisms lead to successful evolution outcomes. The study reported in this paper contributes to the infrastructure literature in two ways. First, we identify three generative mechanisms of digital infrastructure and how they contingently lead to evolution outcomes. Second, we use these mechanisms as a basis for developing a configurational perspective that advances current knowledge about why some digital infrastructures evolve successfully while others do not. In addition, the paper demonstrates and discusses the efficacy of critical realism as a philosophical tradition for developing substantive contributions in the field of information systems.
... Se sono presenti dei documenti elettronici da allegare, la procedura prevede la loro conversione dal formato iniziale (Microsoft Office -Word, Powerpoint and Excel; HTML; Testo (.txt) e Rich Text Format (RTF); e Immagini -TIFF, JPG, GIF and BMP) in formato PDF. 11 I dati previsti in fase iniziale di progetto erano: ufficio mittente (campo popolato automaticamente dal sistema); luogo (campo popolato automaticamente dal sistema); data/ora (campo popolato automaticamente dal sistema); procura di destinazione (campo popolato automaticamente dal sistema -modificabile); numero SDI; se si tratta di prima comunicazione o seguito; se si tratta di autori ignoti o noti; presenza in allegato di atti da convalidare. elettronica certificata renda disponibili sia le caselle di posta elettronica certificata degli ufficiali di polizia giudiziaria mittenti sia le caselle di posta elettronica certificata dei procuratori destinatari 12 . ...
... Ma non sarà così. Vari fattori, quali la realtà empirica del contesto ricevente assai diversa dalla ricostruzione del progetto basata solo sul dettato normativo, la necessità di considerare le istanze sollevate dagli uffici coinvolti, il cambiamento di alcune componenti della base installata tecnologica (Hanseth 1996(Hanseth , 2004, l'emergere di crescenti problemi di coordinamento e la presenza di momenti di stimolo e negoziazione quali il collaudo, hanno evidenziato come illusorio ed irrealistico concepire la realizzazione del progetto come un processo lineare di "implementazione" plug and play (Contini, Fabri 2001, Fabri 2009) che gli stessi sponsor dell'iniziativa auspicavano. Ed è invece proprio nel tentativo di dare senso, gestire, negoziare, navigare questo processo tortuoso e frammentato che l'assemblaggio ha avuto luogo. ...
Il presente articolo propone il caso di un progetto per l'introduzione di un sistema per lo scambio elettronico di dati (e-filing) tra forze di polizia e uffici giudiziari. Dalla descrizione del progetto iniziale, del contesto e degli elementi normativi, tecnologici ed organizzativi conosciuti, si passa alla descrizione dell'attività di esplorazione, ridisegno e negoziazione che ha avuto luogo nell'arco di tre anni nel tentativo di trovare una mediazione soddisfacente tra le varie componenti del sistema. La chiave interpretativa che viene scelta dagli autori è quella dell'assemblaggio, inteso come processo ed al contempo risultato dell'interazione di una molteplicità di attori attraverso cui vengono messe assieme componenti eterogenee (organizzative, normative, tecnologiche ed istituzionali) in un "ordine negoziato" che consente al sistema di funzionare almeno temporaneamente. Un sistema costituito da componenti solo debolmente collegate tra loro e che tendono a mantenere le loro specificità. Come le osservazioni effettuate mettono in rilievo, il processo di innovazione derivante dalla realizzazione del progetto avviene in un territorio mutevole e solo parzialmente esplorato. In questa prospettiva, la base installata non è qualcosa che può essere esplorata una volta per tutte e data per scontata. Normativa, opzioni tecnologiche ed assetti organizzativi sono risorse solo temporaneamente stabili in una realtà in cui il tentativo dei vari attori di assemblare il sistema è caratterizzato da azioni contingenti per far fronte ad eventi improvvisi, crisi imminenti e frequenti discontinuità.
... This crisis is partly due to the way work is organized in the legal industry, based on centuries-old models and cannot cope with the rapid changes digital technologies are bringing to professional services (R. E. Susskind, 2008). Technology has promised to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and automate technical aspects to make legal services accessible to the immense majority that cannot afford to pay for a lawyer with varying degrees of success (Cerrillo i Martínez & Fabra, 2009;Contini & Cordella, 2015;Fabri, 2009;Rosa et al., 2013;Velicogna, 2017). However, digitalized practices are still far from fulfilling those promises. ...
At the beginning of 2020, with COVID-19, courts of justice worldwide had to move online to continue providing judicial service. Digital technologies materialized the court practices in ways unthinkable shortly before the pandemic creating resonances with judicial and legal regulation, as well as frictions. A better understanding of the dynamics at play in the digitalization of courts is paramount for designing justice systems that serve their users better, ensure fair and timely dispute resolutions, and foster access to justice. Building on three major bodies of literature —e-justice, digitalization and organization studies, and design research— Designing for Digital Justice takes a nuanced approach to account for human and more-than-human agencies.
Using a qualitative approach, I have studied in depth the digitalization of Chilean courts during the pandemic, specifically between April 2020 and September 2022. Leveraging a comprehensive source of primary and secondary data, I traced back the genealogy of the novel materializations of courts’ practices structured by the possibilities offered by digital technologies. In five (5) cases studies, I show in detail how the courts got to 1) work remotely, 2) host hearings via videoconference, 3) engage with users via social media (i.e., Facebook and Chat Messenger), 4) broadcast a show with judges answering questions from users via Facebook Live, and 5) record, stream, and upload judicial hearings to YouTube to fulfil the publicity requirement of criminal hearings. The digitalization of courts during the pandemic is characterized by a suspended normativity, which makes innovation possible yet presents risks. While digital technologies enabled the judiciary to provide services continuously, they also created the risk of displacing traditional judicial and legal regulation.
Contributing to liminal innovation and digitalization research, Designing for Digital Justice theorizes four phases: 1) the pre-digitalization phase resulting in the development of regulation, 2) the hotspot of digitalization resulting in the extension of regulation, 3) the digital innovation redeveloping regulation (moving to a new, preliminary phase), and 4) the permanence of temporal practices displacing regulation. Contributing to design research Designing for Digital Justice provides new possibilities for innovation in the courts, focusing at different levels to better address tensions generated by digitalization. Fellow researchers will find in these pages a sound theoretical advancement at the intersection of digitalization and justice with novel methodological references. Practitioners will benefit from the actionable governance framework Designing for Digital Justice Model, which provides three fields of possibilities for action to design better justice systems. Only by taking into account digital, legal, and social factors can we design better systems that promote access to justice, the rule of law, and, ultimately social peace.
... The implementation of the ICT solution into the judicial system should bring not only a higher efficiency of the system, but it should open the door for potential further innovations (Fabri, 2009). An innovative technological software and hardware solution has to be primarily reliable, efficient, and user-friendly. ...
... Most of the legal changes established technical specifications and made use of the system legal. The code of procedure was not amended to make it better aligned with IT (Fabri 2009). Even when existing rules were designed around the physical features of paper documents, the Ministry left the code of procedure unchanged. ...
The comparison of three e-justice platforms (EJP) leads to the identification of a common dynamic – called double normalization – which makes EJP development an institutional and constitutional issue, not just a functional one. The case study analysis of Trial on Line in Italy, e-Curia (Court of Justice of the European Union) and Kwaliteit en Innovatie rechtspraak in the Netherlands shows how EJPs, establishing the working environment for judges, lawyers, and clerks, create more powerful constraints than those provided by the law. The normalization carried out by legal standards to make judicial procedures predictable and homogeneous and grant equal treatment is supplemented by the digital working environment. Hence technology provides an additional layer of normalization, steering the behaviour of judges in predetermined directions and inhibiting other action pathways. The process challenges the right of the judge to interpret procedural law and require appropriate judicial governance mechanisms to safeguard fair trial.
... ICT adoptions in the public sector and in the judiciary carry political, social, and contextual transformation that calls for a richer explanation of the overall impacts that public sector ICT-enabled reforms have on the processes undertaken to deliver public services and on the values generated by these services ( Cordella and Bonina 2012; Contini and Lanzara 2014; De Brie and Bannister 2015). E-justice projects have social and political dimensions, and do not only impact on organizational efficiency or effectiveness ( Fabri 2009a;Reiling 2009). In other words, the impact of ICT on the judiciary may be more complex and difficult to assess than the impact of ICT on the private sector ( Bozeman and Bretschneider 1986;Moore 1995;Frederickson 2000;Aberbach and Christensen 2005;Cordella 2007). ...
The purpose of collecting and organizing data in a Data warehouse is to
make it easily accessible so that it can be used efficiently and easily for business
analysis. Data Warehouse and the use of business intelligence in public administration aim to improve public administration competencies. The impact of business intelligence in the information system for assessing the quality of project
implementation in institutions and its adequate assessment in B&H institutions
is a key driver for improving the quality of project implementation. Considerations and conducted research prove that there is a possibility to provide resources within the public administration’s own resources and to create a business
intelligence solution for the needs of public administration. The main goal of
introducing business intelligence in public administration is its digitalization and
interoperability, which means not only the realization but also the improvement of public administration capacity and indirectly encouraging employment and
achieving sustainable development. The development of business intelligence
should have the status of a priority and include, in addition to investment in research and development and investment in human capital, institutions and practice.
Digital justice has long been a buzzword within the judicial community as governments across the world are increasingly transforming their complex judicial bureaucratic structures to build digital institutions. However, the deployment of IT-based systems in the judicial domain has been characterised by high complexities, as most public agents have failed to implement e-justice programmes effectively. The KEI programme of the Netherlands announced in 2012 pertains to such unaccomplished endeavours. Yet, the precise causes and dynamics that led to the withdrawal of this particular digitalisation programme remain to date unknown. This paper investigates the mechanisms and dynamics that governed the integration of the IT architectures during the KEI programme. The paper concludes that culture and structure play a critical role in shaping the negotiation between law and technology, as these have direct effects upon human agency. This paper contributes to existing e-government literature, in particular research on digital justice development, due to the limited exploration that has been seen in the specific field.
Focusing on inter-organizational information sharing in criminal justice, it is found that, while poor project management
leads to unsuccessful inter-organizational information sharing, a recipe for success is more demanding as it requires
both compatible technologies and good project management implemented either by means of a top-down approach
of strategic alignment or an emergent approach of bottom-up alignment. Though unplanned, the latter approach may
lead to mistakes that are more correctable than the large mistakes stemming from top-down, deliberate planning. The
study is an analysis of context-mechanism-outcome configurations of inter-organizational information sharing activities
within criminal justice systems and demonstrates the causal asymmetry between positive and negative cases. Theoretical,
methodological, and practical implications are discussed by highlighting the causal role of different types of governance
structure in a crisp set configurational fashion.
Since 2014, funded by the EU, the Malawi Judiciary introduced an integrated Case Management System with the aim to automate 100% of the court case management and to allow sharing of case information throughout the entire national legal system. Our objective was to investigate the usage of the system and to some extent its effectiveness in improving case registration, administration and the monitoring of civil and criminal cases at the High Court of Malawi. The research study was conducted in the four High Courts where the system was in operation. We used the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to understand users’ behavior. We used questionnaires (55), interviews (33) and observations. We evaluated the actual usage of the system by establishing patterns and trends in case registration since inception. A total of 20,879 cases were registered in the system over the first three years up to 2017 by the High Courts of Blantyre (50%), Lilongwe (35%), Mzuzu (10%) and Zomba (5%). Only 5% were marked as completed on the system. Court clerks and registrars were the most
frequent users of the system. Performance expectancy, IT skills and job progression were important drivers of use for the court clerks. Judges, sheriffs and court reporters showed little behavioural intention of using the system. Case registration, document filling and endorsement, and case scheduling are used regularly but electronic case files contain only selective information from the hard copy files. Facilitating conditions such as poor internet and the availability of scanning equipment are major obstacles to use. The study confirms that the system has the potential to improve the case management process. Poor usage from judges and registrars means that few cases progress beyond the document filling stage or endorsement. Training for key users and IT administrators is urgently needed.
The chapter discusses the question of judicial quality in Italy considering the principles and values that should underpin the functioning of judicial institutions. From this perspective, three fundamental principles are considered: the rule of law, the rule of economics, and the legitimacy of justice institutions. The analysis focuses on the effectiveness of the governance at central and court level, on the role of superior courts in promoting consistency in decision making, and on managerial methods, with the goal to assess the extent to which they support the three fundamental principles. In addition to the well-known problem of the slow pace of proceedings, the main weaknesses pertain to the lack of consistency of judicial decisions, leading to appeals and recourses to the Court of Cassation that further increase the litigation rate and the judicial workload. Another problem identified is nested in the governance structure. The functions split between the Ministry and the Judicial Council, organs with different constituencies and agendas, make problematic the definition and the implementation of a coherent policy program. The chapter also identifies some innovative practices to evaluate and improve the quality of justice as joint programmes in which judges, lawyers, and clerks work together to redesign common judicial practices at court level.
Since 2000, Trial OnLine (TOL) is a typical nationwide e-filing project aiming at managing, in a comprehensive way, documents and communications of all civil trial proceedings through digital solutions. Even though it was expected that in 2005 more than 50 courts would have taken advantage of TOL’s applications, at the end of 2006 only one application (payment order) was in use and only in one court: the Tribunal of Milan. Now the situation is changed and some other online civil proceedings are progressively spreading. In this chapter, the reasons behind this deep change are investigated. The understanding of the great complexity of legal, technological, organizational, and institutional domains involved in TOL project development has been the goal of our analysis. The simplification of the technological architecture, the modification of the legal framework for promoting legally viable ICT-based practices, and, above all, a close collaboration between courts and bar associations in facilitating user access to e-justice are considered the main factors for the revitalization of TOL when project failure was around the corner.
The central concern of this chapter is the assessment of the technical and institutional conditions that support or hinder the circulation of legal agency, i.e. the capability for agents to produce legal and administrative effects across national borders, media, and functional domains. Dynamic and interactive complexity is acknowledged as a critical factor that hinders the circulation of agency and the effective delivery of judicial e-services across Europe. I spell out the multiple sources of complexity that arise in the design of e-services in the domain of civil justice, both at the national and the pan-European level. I set my analysis within the broader issue of the design of large-scale systems and infrastructures and argue that interoperability requirements must be complemented by the equally critical requirements of system adaptability and evolvability. Finally I propose the twin design principles of maximum feasible simplicity and maximum manageable complexity that should be followed when developing e-government services and systems.
I n this paper, we examine the challenges around the development and scalability of information infrastructures. We identify two possible solutions proposed in the literature, one emphasizing more top-down control and the need for a clear IT governance framework, and a second arguing for a more flexible approach since absolute control is impossible and only leads to drift and unintended outcomes. We suggest that there is a clear gap in the literature in better understanding how to govern the development of information infrastructures using a bottom-up approach. We build on research that approaches IS development as a collective action problem and focus on how different actors frame the infrastructure as a public and private good, and how the framing process is underpinned by actors' different ideologies. We use our theoretical approach to examine the framing of the development of a regional health information infrastructure in Crete. Our analysis examines how different actors frame the infrastructure as a collective action good and explore their ideological positioning. We explore the struggle around meanings attributed to the good over time as being a public or private one in establishing or sustaining relations of power, and how legitimacy is challenged or reinforced. Finally, we develop contributions on the collective action challenges in infrastructure development and suggest how a polycentric approach to governance might be further developed to promote the ongoing cultivation of information infrastructures from the bottom up.
The article analyses the ways in which technology and law disperse, channel and reassemble agency in ICT-enabled legal proceedings. It works from case studies of online civil claims in England and Italy, and the automatically issued speed camera fine process in Australia. Information and communication technologies affect legal procedures in three dimensions: legitimacy, efficacy and performativity. The law can legitimate ensembles of technological and performative procedures, but it cannot construct them by regulation. Technology is a distinct regulative regime that opens some channels of communication while closing others. Machines and software codes identify and admit participants and direct human activity. The focus on the performative explores the requirements of sense-making, by which participants recognise the context and the legal consequences of ICT-enabled procedures. The interfaces of law and technology rely on the interpretive context in which messages are understood as well as the legal forms in which they are transmitted. Each of these elements is essential to the circulation of agency between people and things that reassembles and constitutes legal and social relationships.
The chapter analyses the ways in which technology and law disperse, channel and reassemble agency in ICT enabled legal proceedings. It works from five of the case studies of e-justice discussed in the book, assessing how different approaches magnify or reduce complexity and affect systems development and use. The law can legitimate ensembles of technological and performative procedures, but it cannot construct them by regulation through a legal blueprint. Attempts at excessive legal regulation quickly raise complexity to unmanageable levels. Technology is assessed as a distinct regulative regime that opens new channels of communication, potentially duplicating existing legal and traditional channels. The regulation of technology could take advantage of this state of affairs. Machines and software codes identify and admit participants and direct human activity. Some of the difficulties in reproducing legal processes in technologically enabled environments are explained by the demands of the performative, where meanings exceed the demands of simple information flow. The chapter explores the requirements of meaning making, by which participants recognise the context and the legal consequences of ICT enabled procedures. The interfaces of law and technology rely on the interpretive context in which messages are understood as well as the legal forms in which they are transmitted. Each of these elements is essential to assure the circulation of agency in ICT enabled legal proceedings, while ensuring the legality of the entire ensemble.
The chapter analyses the successful development of e-Curia, the e-justice platform of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Due to the institutional and procedural features of the Court, who deals with high profile transborder cases, complex multilingual procedures, and bulk procedural documents, development has presented new challenges to e-justice and e-government. To stay below the threshold of maximum manageable complexity, the project team has followed a development strategy pursuing the principle of maximum feasible simplicity by different means. The chapter analyses the strategy, the current functioning of the system, and the means used to reduce complexity, among which: ‘black-boxing’ through organisational or technological arrangements; building on the installed base of the users; avoiding techno-legal solutions that generate complexity; providing for smart switches between online and offline procedures. A light legal framework has established the ground for developing a platform. Once successfully tested by the Court and qualified users, its use has been made legal by a decision of the Court.
The development of a pan-European e-justice platform supporting transborder proceedings requires shared infrastructures supporting interoperability at legal, semantic, technological and institutional level. The challenge may quickly reach high level of complexity hindering the development and use of the system. Moving from the theoretical framework developed in the book, and from the findings of six case studies, the chapter pinpoints design principles addressed to ease the design and development of an e-justice platform supporting the circulation of agency in transborder judicial proceedings. Principles are meant to keep the development and use of the system below the threshold of maximum manageable complexity, without impinging the requirements of legal and social performa-tivity needed by judicial proceedings. The design principles, being relevant for e-justice application at national and pan-European level, are used to identify alternative techno-institutional architectures supporting the circulation of agency in the Payment Order and Small Claims Proceedings recently introduced by the Euro-pean law. Architectures are assessed considering their impact on complexity and the effects on the circulation of agency. Finally, the chapter suggests a strategy based on the cultivation of the installed base and on the decupling of European and national e-Justice platforms to cope with the multiple and contradictory requirements of e-justice development in transborder proceedings.
A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights. This paper discusses the essentials of building a learning organization. It also suggests that beyond high philosophy and grand themes, building a learning organization requires the gritty details of practice.
This article deals with the role of public Prosecution and the necessity of combining at the operational level two functional needs that are difficult to reconcile: (a) to ensure prosecutorial independence; (b) to ensure that prosecutorial discretion be subject to the democratic principle of accountability, While a trend to redress the balance in favour of prosecutorial independence seems to be gaining momentum in several countries, the author uses the Italian case to demonstrate that the need for prosecutorial accountability be protected. In particular he shows that Italy by ignoring the need to render prosecutorial discretion accountable has de facto delegated to a totally independent prosecutor the definition of a good part of its criminal policy. The manifold dysfunctional consequences for the efficient control of crime and for the effective and equal protection of civil rights are outlined.
The concept of ‘governance’ is in use in many different sub-disciplines of the social sciences. Although there are many differences in the way it is defined and applied, common elements are the emphasis on rules and qualities of systems, co-operation to enhance legitimacy and effectiveness and the attention for new processes and public-private arrangements. The apparent success of the concept seems to be that it reflects the societal need for new initiatives based upon the realization of growing societal interdependencies. The article surveys different uses. One form of governance is what may be called interactive or social-political governance. This perspective on governance takes different forms of social-political interactions as its central theme in which different kinds of distinctions are made, such as between self, ‘co’ and hierarchical governance and between orders of governance such as first-order governance, which means problem-solving and opportunity-creation, second-order governance, which looks at the institutional conditions and meta-governance which deals with the principles which ‘govern’ governance itself. In the article several governance issues are raised and some empirical examples given for the concepts used and the associated theoretical notions.
Most accounts of computer-based innovation in organizational settings assume a naive picture of organizational change, overlooking events, features, and behaviors that, though unexpected and puzzling, may be the sources of inventions, new knowledge, new organizational routines and arrangements. The ambivalent, untidy, and often unpredictable character of IT-based innovation and change is hardly captured, even by more recent theoretical approaches that have nevertheless provided a deeper understanding of the complex interaction between technology and organizations. Based on field observations of the failures and successes during a major systems development effort in a large European computer manufacturer, we tell a different story: We submit that failures at innovation, surprises, and a whole range of related phenomena can be accounted for by introducing the notion of formative context, that is, the set of institutional arrangements and cognitive imageries that inform the actors' practical and reasoning routines in organizations. Limited capability to inquire into formative contexts is responsible for the actors' limited learning, irrespective of their strategies, interests, espoused theories, and methods. Still, we suggest, plenty of opportunities for innovation lie in the open, pasted-up nature of formative contexts and a new vision of design based on “context-making” interventions can bring them to light.
An abstract is not available.
examine prevailing thought about technology, after which we will discuss properties of new technologies and then four conceptual shifts that help us understand the organizational implications of these properties
definitions of technology
stochastic events / continuous events / abstract events
from structure to structuration / from analysis to affect / from static to dynamic interactive complexity / from behavior and output control to premise control (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Electronic data interchange (EDI), the computer-to-computer exchange of business transactions in standardized formats, is one of the earliest forms of electronic commerce. Business benefits of EDI include reduced costs, improved accuracy, and support for just-in-time (JIT) inventory management and continuous replenishment process (CRP) strategies. EDI also has the potential to drive up costs, particularly for smaller organizations. This article provides an understanding of how EDI works and explains the technical and administrative aspects of implementing EDI. The article covers the standards developed for EDI and provides example applications of EDI. Although EDI pre-dates commercial use of the Internet, Internet-based EDI is rapidly evolving and offers the potential to make it easier and less expensive to attain the benefits of EDI. Organizations that implement EDI need to consider business process reengineering and trading partner relationships to be successful.
Keywords:
computer-to-computer exchange;
EDI standards;
Internet-based EDI;
just-in-time (JIT);
value-added network (VAN)
This paper aims to highlight the relevance of a cultivation approach with the goal of exploring the concrete implications it may have for public administrations (PA) involved in projects of organisational change. We suggest that adopting an approach to change that reflects the cultivation perspective is an unavoidable choice for PA, much more so than it is for the corporate world. The claim is that public-sector organisations design and implement organisational solutions that find it hard to move away from the 'maintenance' logic of legacy systems. Compared with the rational perspective, which is geared entirely to establishing optimal relations between means and ends, the cultivation approach enables us to make valuable advances at the interpretive level. We argue that the value of the processual and incremental perspective can be useful in creating a more realistic and less illusory reconstruction of the relationship between technological change and organisational change. In this paper, we discuss how combining policy studies with ICT social studies can help empower the cultivation logic, originating new tools for analysing and evaluating e-government results.
Examen del sistema político inglés desde 1990, basado en la revisión del cómo y porqué de los cambios ocurridos, así como en la respuesta a por qué han fallado las políticas gubernamentales. Tema central de la obra es el impacto que ha tenido el giro hacia la gobernanza como forma de gobierno.
Judiciaries in democratic countries have been facing problems of low legitimacy due to increasing judicial activism. Traditional
forms of accountability have shown to be inadequate to the present situation. The purpose of this article is to examine whether
easy access to information on judicial systems, courts’ activities and cases available through the Internet can increase legitimacy.
Although websites can be a tool to enhance accountability, transparency, legality and representativeness of the judiciary,
the results of this article show that this is not always the case. The authors hypothesize that enhancements occur when certain
combinations of four core elements (organization of the web service provision, access to information, content, and users)
take place. Based on an examination of all websites of three judicial systems, we seek to provide an initial outlook on the
use of websites in facilitating legitimacy, and a contribution to knowledge in the field of courts and ICT.
'In his comprehensive and systematic investigation into the saturation of the modern world by information and its technologies, Jannis Kallinikos offers us new ways of thinking about the social and institutional consequences of this development. Drawing on an impressively wide range of perspectives from information theory, social science and administrative studies to semiotics and philosophy, Kallinikos shows how the contemporary spread and pervasive use of information technology is challenging our conventional tendency to think the world in terms of stable and enduring structures. The new informational world recreates reality as a transient and continuously dissolving panorama of events in space and time. A significant theme of the book is its emphasis on the new plastic and pliable ways of thinking required to grasp the social and institutional implications of these ongoing informational transformations.' - Robert Cooper, Keele University, UK.
This paper examines some of the implications associated with the growing complex-ity of the contemporary world, consequent upon the expanding economic and organizational involvement of IT-based systems and artefacts. Drawing on Luhmann, traditional forms of technological control are analyzed in terms of functional simplification and closure. Func-tional simplification involves the demarcation of an operational domain within which the complexity of the world is reconstructed as a simplified set of causal or instrumental relations. Functional closure implies the construction of a protective cocoon that is placed around the selected causal sequences to ensure their recurrent unfolding. While possible to analyze in similar terms, the involvement of large-scale information systems in organizations spin a web of technological relations throughout the organization in ways that blur the distinction be-tween technological and social relations. The traditional forms of technological control, predicated upon the premises of functional simplification and closure, are thereby challenged. These trends are further accentuated by the diffusion of the internet and the exit of technology from the secluded world of organizations into the open realm of everyday life.
The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in organizations and the management of their impact has been the traditional domain of computer specialists and management consultants. The former have offered multiple ways to represent, model, and build applications that streamline and accelerate data flows, while the latter have been busy linking the deployment of ICTs with strategy and the redesign of business processes. This book takes quite a different approach altogether. It uses a string of metaphors, such as Bricolage, Krisis, Gestell, etc., to place a concern for human existence and our working lives at the centre of the study of ICTs and their diffusion in business organizations, and looks at our practices, improvisations, and moods. It draws upon the author's own extensive research and consulting experience to throw a fresh light on some key questions: why are systems ambiguous? Why do they not give us more time to do things? Is there strategic value in tinkering even in high-tech settings? What is the value of age-old practices in dealing with new technologies? What is the role of moods and affections in influencing action and cognition? The book presents an alternative to the current approaches in management, software-engineering, and strategy.
New medical imaging devices, such as the CT scanner, have begun to challenge traditional role relations among radiologists and radiological technologists. Under some conditions, these technologies may actually alter the organizational and occupational structure of radiological work. However, current theories of technology and organizational form are insensitive to the potential number of structural variations implicit in role-based change. This paper expands recent sociological thought on the link between institution and action to outline a theory of how technology might occasion different organizational structures by altering institutionalized roles and patterns of interaction. In so doing, technology is treated as a social rather than a physical object, and structure is conceptualized as a process rather than an entity. The implications of the theory are illustrated by showing how identical CT scanners occasioned similar structuring processes in two radiology departments and yet led to divergent forms of organization. The data suggest that to understand how technologies alter organizational structures researchers may need to integrate the study of social action and the study of social form.
L’indipendenza della magistratura in Italia. Una valutazione critica in chiave comparata
- Di Federico
Reinventing the Docket, Discovering the Database The Challenge of Change of Judicial Systems. Developing a Public Administration Perspective
- F Contini
Progettazione organizzativa e information technology nell’amministrazione giudiziaria italiana
- M Fabri
- F Contini
- A Negrini
Processo civile telematico: disciplina normativa e infrastruttura tecnologica
- D Intravaia
The Challenge of Information Society: Application of Advanced Technologies in Civil Litigation and other Procedures, National Report of Finland
- S Laukkanen
Il processo telematico. Nuovi ruoli e nuove tecnologie per un moderno processo civile
- M Jacchia
Il Processo telematico
- Taddei Elmi
Information and Communication Technology for the Public Prosecutor’s Office
- M Fabri
Tecnologia, organizzazione e giustizia. L’evoluzione del processo civile telematico fascicoli e tribunali: il processo civile in una prospettiva organizzativa
- S Zan
ICT in European Justice Systems
- M Fabri
- R Woolfson
The Positive Interplay between Information and Communication Technologies and the Finnish Public Prosecutor’s Office
- K Kujanen
- R Marttila
Approaching Integration: ICT in the Finnish Judicial System Justice and Technology in Europe: How ICT is Changing the Judicial Business. The Hague
- K Kujanen
- S Sarvillinna
Piano Triennale per l’Informatica 2007–2009 della Giustizia’. Retrieved, from www. giustizia. it/ministero
- Giustizia Ministero Della
Judicial Electronic Data Interchange in England and Wales
- P Timms
- J Plotnikoff
- R Woolfson
Giusto processo?’ Padova: Cedam
- C Guarnieri
- F Zannotti
Piano Triennale per l’Informatica 2007-2009 della Giustizia’. Retrieved, from www.giustizia.it /ministero/%20struttura/pt2007%E2%80%932009.htm#d311
- Giustizia Ministero Della
- Ministero della Giustizia
Nuovi ruoli e nuove tecnologie per un moderno processo civile
- M Jacchia
Information Technology and Changes in Organisational Work
- W Orlikowski
- G Walsham
- M R Jones
- J I Degross