The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has witnessed the signing of a cooperation protocol between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and the Cairo Court of Appeal within the framework of the implementation of the Digital Egypt Justice Project. The protocol was signed in the presence of the President of the Cairo Court of Appeal and member of the Supreme Judicial Council Essam El-Din Farid, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Egyptian Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Combating Unit (EMLCU) Ahmed Saeed Khalil.
The protocol is aimed at activating the role of ICT to develop the litigation system by developing and automating the work cycle of the Cairo Court of Appeal and its affiliated departments, archiving documents and lawsuits, and providing judicial services provided by the Court through various technological platforms.
The protocol was signed by Deputy ICT Minister for Infrastructure Raafat Hindy and member of the Supreme Judicial Council Essam El-Din Farid.
The ICT Minister emphasized that various projects are being implemented in cooperation between MCIT and judicial authorities, including the Digital Egypt Justice Project. This project is aimed at automating courts, and technical and administrative bodies assisting judicial authorities, such as forensic medicine, the Experts Department and others. This is in addition to the law enforcement project, which has been implemented in seven governorates and is being applied in the remaining governorates. This project aims to achieve inter-integration between all litigation bodies, from reporting the incident at police station until executing the court ruling.
Another project is automating the Public Prosecution’s operations, and another project in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice to convert pleadings and court proceedings into text, as well as the project of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist judges. Talaat stressed MCIT keenness to cooperate with the Cairo Court of Appeal by providing technological support. He also expressed his aspiration that this cooperation will be an exemplary model and be replicated in all judicial authorities.
Farid explained that the protocol aims at developing the judicial and administrative work of the Cairo Court of Appeal and achieving integration between the various litigation bodies, by starting to implement various projects, foremost of which is the project that is being completed: the electronic litigation project. This project is a nucleus for the dissemination of litigation procedures remotely, to ensure an increase in the efficiency and implementation of the decision-making process. This is in addition to the Digital Egypt Justice Project, which aims at developing and automating the infrastructure of courts nationwide, and providing a mechanism for linking between the court and relevant judicial authorities.
Farid pointed out that within the framework of the Cairo Court of Appeal carrying out its work through 450 criminal, civil and family divisions, the implementation of this protocol is expected to annually serve nearly half a million litigants.
Khalil expressed his pleasure at signing this protocol. He emphasized that MCIT is a major partner and has an important role to achieve prompt justice. Also, he expressed his aspiration to prepare proactive plans for all courts in the future to use ICT to achieve prompt justice.
By virtue of this protocol, various projects will be implemented, namely, the project to develop the information center of the Cairo Court of Appeal, and the unified electronic archive project for the Cairo Court of Appeal. This unified project aims at using AI techniques to build and link a central electronic repository to a central repository in order to maintain, archive, and index the contents of all lawsuits that have been finally adjudicated, and enter basic and functional data for each case. This is in addition to the project of automating judicial services provided by the court through the “Digital Egypt” Platform.
Moreover, litigation services provided by the court will be provided to citizens, such as the possibility of filing and following up various procedures of lawsuits in all stages of litigation online, especially through the Digital Egypt Platform, to save time and effort and reduce litigation expenses. This is in addition to providing internal services to court members online, such as making a law library available for members of judicial authorities.
The protocol includes a project of automating, managing, and linking hearings with the unified repository of Digital Egypt Justice. It also includes an institutional development project through building digital capacity, for employees of the Cairo Court of Appeal, counselors, members of the Public Prosecution, or secretaries. This is conducted through the provision of a package of specialized training programs using computers and the safe use of IT to enable them to use modern technologies for communication as well as exchange and convert documents remotely to digital files.
