Judicial officers told to use ICT-based approaches

By Francis Emorut

Judicial officers, planners and statisticians working in the justice sector have been urged to employ information technology to smoothen the process of delivering justice in gender-related cases.

To realize this, an information communication technology (ICT) approach in gender reporting has been recommended to speed up justice for victims of sexual violence.

The call was made by the director of Centre for Justice Studies and Innovations (CJSI), Valentine Namakula.

She said the manual method of recording court cases is obsolete in this age, hence urging the judicial officers to embrace new technology in data entry.

And she expressed optimism for the transition.

She explained that the use of an IT approach in data entry would enable judicial officers to keep track of how long the case has taken for the victim to receive justice by “just a click of a button instead of rummaging through files of papers”.

She was at the closing of a four-day training on gender reporting at Imperial Resort Beach Hotel in Entebbe on Tuesday.

The training attracted members of Justice and Law Order Sector (JLOS) and was organised by the Centre for Justice Studies and Innovations.

Namakula revealed findings from a survey by JLOS on the attitude towards change in the judicial processes.

According to the survey, 47% of judicial officers at middle management resisted reforms and instead preferred doing things the traditional way.

“They were completely disengaged when new reforms were introduced. They were extremely uncooperative,” she said.

Only 17% embraced new reforms while 36% kept their allegiance to the reforms only in promise.

“The change agents [17%] were loyal, productive and task effective,” Namakula explained.

Officers from the Directorate of Public Prosecution, Police, Prisons, Judicial Service Commission and Immigrations attended the function.

A United Nations expert on women in transitional justice, Alison Davidian encouraged participants to fight all forms of injustices women are faced with.