By EARYEL BOWLEG
Tribune Staff Reporter
ebowleg@tribunemedia.net
THE government signed a contract valued under $480,000 with the firm ZCOM yesterday to implement a digitisation and migration system for all paper-based court documents within the judiciary.
At the contract signing, National Security Minister Marvin Dames explained court dockets and documents will be digitised and placed into an integrated case management system to provide real time access to court files.
The digitisation programme is funded by a loan facilitated by the IDB. He added there are approximately 4.3 million documents between the five courts’ registry.
“Since coming to office, our administration has sought to remove the primary constraints to citizens by improving their access to justice through increased and improved resources,” he said during a Zoom contract signing.
“This is a part of a two-prong technology roll out and follows the December 16, 2020 contract signing to introduce an integrated case management system (ICMS) for the judicial sector. Today’s event will activate the digitisation and migration of all paper-based court documents and dockets. This will subsequently result in the reduction in and better management of the overall volume of hard copy information. Currently, the work of the judiciary is completely paper based,” he said.
“Data is entered into a word processing programme such as a Microsoft Word printed for use during court cases and then filed.”
He said under the current filing system, physical documents and filing cabinets full of paper populate the courts.
Chief Justice Brian Moree identified the other benefits of digitisation which also provide increased transparency, greater accessibility to information, enhanced mobility, and higher level of efficiency in the preservation of data. Additional benefits of the digitisation project would include productivity improvement due to enhanced access in case dockets and records, and reduction in the time and effort required to search for documents and records needed for a variety of data analysis. It would also help in addressing the court’s backlog problem.
“It’s going to be a very major tool in reducing our backlog. The digitisation of the court dockets to the court documents. First of all, it’s going to reduce the cycle for cases - that means that we’re going to be able to reduce the life span from the commencement of the case to the delivery of the judgement,” the chief justice said.
“We’re going to have fewer adjournments because we won’t have difficulties with the files and getting the papers before for the judges. That is going to expedite the process. It is also going to be extremely helpful to the Bar and litigants who represent themselves because they’re gonna be able to file documents online on their computer.”
Deann Zufall of ZCOM said his company intends to begin the digitisation efforts beginning in the middle of January, following the holiday. The process is expected to take 12 months.
“I would speak to where the actual digitization will be taking place,” Ms Zufall said of security measures which will be in place. “It is under a hosted environment which exercises the most extreme security protocols that are available. In addition to that, once the documents are migrated to the ICMS they will be taken under the operation and backup procedures that are inherent to that particular project so we’re safeguarding them for the duration of our digitisation efforts and we’ve taken every security measure and protocol to ensure there are firewalls in place, there are encryptions, there are secure VPN.
“During the course of our efforts over the next 12 months, we will be implementing a barcode process in procedure that will allow us to identify where a case is at a given point and time so that we will be able to track the full lifecycle of where a case is at any time. Beyond that we do have redundancies, disaster recovery processes, and a number of safeguards in place as well as the continuing maintenance of the paper records for the foreseeable future.”
Comments
DDK 3 years, 4 months ago
More tax payers' hard-earned money flying out the window. Wonder who got what percent for this contract? How do they split it up? Is it on some form of seniority of the corrupt? These people top the list of the most sickenly stupid peaple to ever run a country.
joeblow 3 years, 4 months ago
... one would think that with all the civil servants sitting around doing nothing they could find 20 people who would work exclusively to complete this digitization process at no extra cost to the taxpayer.
ThisIsOurs 3 years, 4 months ago
I hope this is a Bahsmian firm at least and the money is staying in the country. Makes zero sense with a crunch on foreign exchange to hand all this IT work that could easily be done by Bahamians to foreign firms
FrustratedBusinessman 3 years, 4 months ago
Nope. Foreign owned.
https://zcomsolutions.com/">https://zcomsolutions.com/
This government always talks shit (excuse my language) about developing the Bahamian IT sector, but then repeatedly goes out of their way to award contracts to foreign companies. A bunch of jackass hypocrites.
They threw the Bahamian programmer who developed a patch for their garbage Click2Clear software under the bus just to justify their millions wasted on a shoddily designed piece of software. These foreign companies love fleecing these morons out of millions, while they preach about "believing in Bahamians".
ThisIsOurs 3 years, 4 months ago
This only makes sense if they getting kickbacks off these contracts. Scanning documents, searching for them and putting who can access what on top of it, is not a technically difficult task. And we have more than enough examples of Bahamian firm's who can handle the infrastructure redundancy needs. These guys in cabinet are completely clueless to the IT talent they have in black people in country. And if the concern is Bahamians don't deliver, then build an eco system.
ThisIsOurs 3 years, 4 months ago
The CEB bill opened the door for a bunch of low profile one man operation foreign IT firm's to flood the Bahamas. And cabinet doesn't even realize the damage they did. It's like writing a policy that says Chinese companies can come to the Bahamas to open convenience and electronics stores. They wouldn't add much that Bahamians can't do, but the profits going out the country and Bahamians squeezed out of work because of the We Believe in White/Light Skin Policy
JohnBrown1834 3 years, 4 months ago
Why does every discussion have to narrow down to "Foreign vs Bahamian" or "Black vs White"? Don't you think they put the contract out to open bid? Don't you know that anytime we borrow money from an international agency a prerequisite is that the contract has to be advertised in member countries that make up the bank? No one is focusing on the improvements and benefits to the judicial system. Time to grow up.
Dawes 3 years, 4 months ago
How else can we put the blame of all our problems on someone else if we cant blame a foreigner or a white man?
ThisIsOurs 3 years, 4 months ago
no I don't think they put the contract out to bid. same as they didn't put the food task force program out to bid. same as they dint put a wide number of other contracts out to bid. They decide when
FrustratedBusinessman 3 years, 4 months ago
To be honest, I partially agree with you on the issue of white/black. I am a conchy joe myself, and being able to trace part of my lineage all the way back to the Eleutheran Adventurers, it is a bit tiresome to hear. I understand that this is a 90% black country though, and the racial antics in the US get imported here, so I don't expect any better.
On the Bahamian vs foreigner part, we have every right to expect first preference when it comes to government contracts. Do you think that the US or Canadian federal governments will contract a foreign company (assuming that they can even pass security clearances, which they probably won't) to do IT work, or help out their nationals. I am sorry, this government is full of shit when it comes to their talk on developing the IT sector. They have awarded foreign firms the contracts for Click2Clear, the PHA information system, this, and many others when we have skilled Bahamian programmers and IT technicians here that can easily do the work (some of which I am familiar with). They know how to talk a good game, but can never follow through on anything that they proclaim as their intentions.
If only the FNM had more Pintards that cared about Bahamians, and less jokers that are so willing to sell us out to the Chinese, Americans, and God knows whoever else.
ThisIsOurs 3 years, 4 months ago
someone once gave me advice to find a white (+foreign) person to partner with. Someone on the "inside". This isnt fake news. The contract discrimination(white+foreign) is real. Its the Columbus syndrome.
JohnBrown1834 3 years, 4 months ago
https://www.bahamas.gov.bs/wps/wcm/co...">https://www.bahamas.gov.bs/wps/wcm/co...
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