Private trustees can now arrange court cases digitally
In the future, trustees will be able to provide information to courts digitally. Private receivers can now also pass on cases to the court via a web portal, so that they do not have to physically travel to a court.
Professional curators can link their networks to the systems of the Judiciary. There is a web portal for private curators, who arrange matters for friends or family, for example. That is called My Reign, writes the judiciary. Users must log in with DigiD and can then view files and fill them in digitally and submit them to the court. They also receive messages in the portal about changes in files.
Courts will gradually invite private receivers to use the portal. That is not mandatory; they can also go to court themselves. An information session is available for participants with which users the portal can get to know. It is possible to use one portal with different curators.
New step in digitization
It is a new step that the judiciary is taking towards digitization. Previously, trustees had to physically go to a specific court if they wanted to adjust files, which could cost a lot of time and money. In recent years, the Judiciary has set up more and more initiatives to make it easier for citizens to go to court. That took off during the corona crisis, when court cases could suddenly only take place online. Courts initially used a Cisco tool for this, but Skype has been widely used since the corona crisis. At the end of 2021, the Judiciary decided to switch to Microsoft Teams, which was mainly more user-friendly for citizens. The Judiciary considered this to be such a great success that the Council for the Judiciary advocated continuing to make online justice possible after the corona crisis.
During the corona crisis, courts started organizing online hearings. Not only covid-19 made the judiciary want to become more digital. That has been a goal for a long time. Halfway through 2021, the Council of the Judiciary already said that it wanted to put about three quarters of the judgments online. In that period, this only happened to about five percent of the one and a half million judgments that were made annually. That wish may be there, but the practice is difficult. Judgments need to be anonymized and it takes a lot of time to do that manually. That is why the Council for the Judiciary is currently looking at automating that process. Another factor is that judges must write judgments differently.
Government wish
The desire for digitization of the judiciary also comes from The Hague. The government already agreed in the coalition agreement that ‘a broad multi-year cyber security approach and cyber expertise should be introduced at the Judiciary’. Money was made available for this. In July of 2022, the government decided to give the Judiciary 155 million euros per year to digitize. The coalition agreement stated that the judiciary and the Public Prosecution Service will jointly receive 200 million euros per year. The money is intended to ‘invest heavily to make the judiciary more accessible digitally’. The portal for private receivers is an unmistakable part of this, just like previous initiatives to replace the fax with Safe Mail, for example.