ISLAMABAD   -   Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah has stressed the need for implementation of performance monitoring dashboards at the district-level upto Supreme Court for evaluating performance effectively.

The senior puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, who is also the Chairman of the National Judicial Automation Committee (NJAC), chaired the fourth meeting of the NJAC in the Supreme Court, Islamabad here on Thursday. 

Justice Shah articulated his vision for “Transforming Justice through Data Analytics,” emphasizing the imperative role of technology in enhancing transparency and expediting judicial processes while curtailing delays. Acknowledging the commendable efforts of the High Courts in developing case flow management systems, the Chairman underscored the necessity of fortifying datasets to pinpoint causes of delay in proceedings of court cases.

In his opening remarks, Justice Shah stressed the need for implementation of performance monitoring dashboards at the district-level for evaluating performance effectively. These dashboards, exemplified by a sample provided by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, would feature color-coded graphs based on key performance indicators will also incorporate alert systems to promptly identify cases experiencing abnormal delays, enabling District Judges to take necessary action. The dashboard framework established at the district level will be replicated at the High Court level and expanded at the Supreme Court level, thus establishing a comprehensive monitoring system.

The Committee unanimously endorsed the Chairman’s visionary concept and lauded the proposal to establish a technology corridor, seamlessly linking the judiciary from the district level to the Supreme Court, via centralized dashboards.

The committee encouraged engaging specialized data entry personnel in every court, discouraging reliance solely on court staff for data input and put special emphasis on the need to establish a specialized cadre for handling and verifying data entry. The committee also reviewed the report on the current state assessment of the IT infrastructure in the High Courts conducted by the National Information Technology Board (NITB) and the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) under the directions of NJAC and deliberated on its findings.

The Committee acknowledged the crucial role of government involvement, especially from the Ministry of Information Technology, as the key stakeholder in technology-driven endeavours. Recognizing the necessity of government support and coordination in fostering an inclusive policy-making process, the presence and participation of government is essential, a senior officer from the Ministry of Information Technology (MOITT) was invited to attend the meeting. The committee instructed the MOITT representative to assign a team of IT professionals to conduct a survey of the district courts, with a focus on data architecture. This survey will serve as the groundwork upon which the dashboards will be developed.

Additionally, it was unanimously decided that prior to the next session, the IT department of each Superior Court will provide a comprehensive list of mandatory fields for new case registration to augment the available data structure. Committee members will also compile a set of criteria for alarm bell triggers to activate alerts on the dashboards, and submit them to the committee for review and integration into the dashboard system. Furthermore, members will offer recommendations to the committee regarding the formulation of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for data entry.