Websites of Judiciary Bodies Are Not User Friendly

Nata Dzvelishvili

Most of the websites of the Georgian judiciary bodies are less informative to users in terms of electronic transparency, and in technical terms they fail to meet up-to-date standards, reads the survey carried out by the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) into e-transparency of judiciary system. The project was made possible with the financial backing of the Eurasia Partnership Foundation.

IDFI released the report on October 24. Within the reporting period the researches found out that only 16 out of 41 judiciary authorities run websites. The organization conducted a study into those 16 agencies. The evaluation was carried out according to several parameters. The researchers were to identify whether the general information posted on the websites was about judiciary, its structure, resources, information about activities, legal acts related to judiciary activities, whether the websites had publicized personal data about FOI officers, application form and patterns to make a request for the public information. According to one of the parameters the researchers were to find out whether the websites had the data on state procurements, privatization of state property and contracts as well as financial information published.

The website of the Supreme Court meets the requirements best, according to IDFI and ranks first in terms of e-transparency not only compared with courts but the websites run by other State agencies.

According to the findings judiciary bodies showed the worst results in terms of the publication of the data on state procurements, privatization of state property and contracts as well as financial information.

Speaking at the presentation Ucha Todua of the Court of Appeals said the financial information on the websites is not provided since they have not got their own budget and are subordinate to the department for general court, the latter has the budget publicized on its website. Soon, Ucha Todua said, a general web portal will be launched to gather data about courts and current drawbacks will be eliminated.

According to the findings the informational parameters such as the registry of public information and the database of citizens applications was not found on any website. Proactive publication of statistic data is a matter of concern too.

Users would find it hard to get the certain acts such as curt resolution, legal acts about ratification of programs, documents about State procurements and privatization of State-owned property.

Declaration on the property of judges is not provided on any website of judiciary authorities.

Moreover, according to the survey, the security on the websites is not protected.

Within the framework of the project IDFI created a-module of judiciary statistics which was integrated with the website of the Supreme Court. Any interested individual will have a possibility to obtain information about proceedings in the courts, as well as the topics examined in the court and make a comparison with the past year data. The website is bilingual, users can get info in the Georgian and English languages. According to the project managers the Supreme Court was commissioned to take care of the system of the module management, the agency is responsible for its proactive update.