Jan 14th 2011, 19:55:42
I actually got to see it happen in scaled down version. It was quite amazing actually...
I was doing some work in some courts overseas, and was part of a project that implemented completely new procedures both judicially, and administratively in an eastern European country. Most of which were designed to enhance the amount of information collected and present it to the appropriate parties.
A few examples of instant changes that happened once the court's administrative staffs realized that they had been making uninformed decisions based on inaccurate, incomplete, or just missing information for decades:
- In one court, they cut their annual filing budget for file folders by nearly 300,000 pounds. This may not sound huge, until you take into consideration that the court's entire annual operating budget was only 1.3million euros per year.
- Backlogged cases waiting to be heard were cut from 3.9 million in 2002 to 800,000 in 2005.
- Disputes over jurisdiction that cost the court system 3.5 million euros to resolve in 2001 were cut to just 300,000 euros in 2004.
All because we gave them documented, verifiable, researchable information.
The interesting thing to me though, was that the majority of the court employees we dealt with (literally %60 or %70) fought the change tooth and nail....right up until they actually used it the first time. No amount of talking about how much easier their jobs would be, and how much more professional the justice system would be could get them to change their minds.
I was doing some work in some courts overseas, and was part of a project that implemented completely new procedures both judicially, and administratively in an eastern European country. Most of which were designed to enhance the amount of information collected and present it to the appropriate parties.
A few examples of instant changes that happened once the court's administrative staffs realized that they had been making uninformed decisions based on inaccurate, incomplete, or just missing information for decades:
- In one court, they cut their annual filing budget for file folders by nearly 300,000 pounds. This may not sound huge, until you take into consideration that the court's entire annual operating budget was only 1.3million euros per year.
- Backlogged cases waiting to be heard were cut from 3.9 million in 2002 to 800,000 in 2005.
- Disputes over jurisdiction that cost the court system 3.5 million euros to resolve in 2001 were cut to just 300,000 euros in 2004.
All because we gave them documented, verifiable, researchable information.
The interesting thing to me though, was that the majority of the court employees we dealt with (literally %60 or %70) fought the change tooth and nail....right up until they actually used it the first time. No amount of talking about how much easier their jobs would be, and how much more professional the justice system would be could get them to change their minds.
