Judiciary to digitise court processes

The Judiciary will re-train magistrates on new technology to enable quick completion of cases, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga has said.

Dr Mutunga said the long term goal of the Judiciary is to embrace digitisation for easy access to records and efficiency in handling appeals.

“Magistrates who will be hired will not have clerks, they will only be supplied with laptops to record the proceedings of the cases,” said Dr Mutunga.

He was speaking on Tuesday at the Milimani Law Courts in Nairobi to inspect a special typing pool created in collaboration with the National Youth Service.

The NYS posted 62 copy typists to the Judiciary last month to clear the backlog of records that have held up judgments and appeals because they were not typed.

Dr Mutunga said the Judiciary also intends to install video and audio recorders in courts to reduce the amount of time required to conclude a case.

He dismissed fears that the partnership with NYS to type the proceedings will affect confidentiality of the cases, saying they will only give copies of the typed proceedings and retain the originals to ensure the records are not changed.

“Appeals cannot be heard unless the proceedings are typed. We want to computerise operations in all courts to expedite the justice system,” said Mutunga.