SINGAPORE: The State Courts’ pc system is present process emergency restoration after being scheduled for “urgent maintenance” for over 24 hours, inflicting instances to be adjourned or dealt with manually.
The Built-in Case Administration System (ICMS), a web-based platform launched in 2015 for prison instances on the State and Youth Courts, first confirmed an error message on Tuesday (Feb 7) that mentioned it was present process pressing upkeep from midnight to 11.59pm on Feb 7.
On Wednesday afternoon, the system was nonetheless inaccessible and a notice on the web site learn: “ICMS is undergoing emergency recovery which may take up to 11.59pm tonight (8 Feb 2023). We apologise for the inconvenience.”
A number of instances on Tuesday have been adjourned on account of the technical points. The ICMS is utilized by judges, attorneys and prosecutors to maintain digital data of the case, add paperwork and organize for future mentions of the case, amongst different issues.
Legal professionals informed CNA that it isn’t unusual for ICMS to be down. Legal defence lawyer Ashwin Ganapathy of IRB Legislation mentioned the system is down for upkeep points “every other week”.
Whereas he mentioned the system itself is “OK”, he mentioned it was “very slow” and he will get logged out after a short time. It additionally undergoes upkeep fairly often and it’s troublesome to add bigger paperwork, though they’re inside prescribed dimension limits.
Nevertheless, he mentioned the system was not overly sophisticated to make use of.
Lawyer Johannes Hadi of Eugene Thuraisingam’s regulation agency mentioned ICMS has two or three downtimes a month.
He mentioned the present outage implies that he can not file a mitigation plea for a consumer.
“ICMS was designed during a different technological time and it shows,” he mentioned. “Besides frequent service outages, the platform is clunky and no longer fit for today’s litigation needs. An overhaul is long overdue.”
He mentioned an even bigger subject was how the system lags and a whole lot of time is spent making an attempt to add paperwork as a result of it “always shows ‘error'”.
Lawyer Azri Imran Tan of IRB Legislation mentioned it may be “extremely frustrating at times” and rated the system 4 out of 10.
He mentioned full-blown outages like this will not be the norm, however ICMS tends to must bear upkeep “very often”.
“Also, there are a host of issues ranging from being unable to download documents, to difficulties uploading documents,” he mentioned.
“As a criminal lawyer, I have not been able to do any work on my matters the past two days without ICMS access as all essential documents are stored there,” mentioned Mr Tan.
Lawyer Cory Wong of Invictus Legislation mentioned that ICMS itself is a “tremendous technological improvement in case management since its inception”.
“I recall a time whereby case documents were difficult to access and visibility into the latest status or documents of a case was quite unheard of,” he mentioned.
“Lawyers would sometimes receive amended hard copy case documents at the eleventh hour or even at the very hearing itself, and it would cause undue delays down the road and oftentimes anguish to the client.”
He mentioned that with ICMS, the newest details about a case file could be readily obtained even on the go, like when on a cellular gadget.
“Subject to the rules of evidence and disclosure of course, ICMS supports a particular tenet of natural justice by facilitating an accused person to know the allegations mounted against them and the underlying disclosable supporting case documents,” he mentioned.
Mr Wong mentioned substantial service outages are rare. As an alternative, it’s a norm for ICMS to bear common upkeep or updates. These are usually pre-scheduled for off-peak night occasions, when courtroom has already adjourned for the day.
Discover can also be given upfront, he mentioned.
“Despite the slight inconvenience caused when working late into the evening, such regular maintenance helps to assure users that no effort is spared by the authorities when it comes to data security and case privacy; these are matters taken very seriously by the authorities,” he mentioned.
Lawyer Ramesh Tiwary mentioned the present outage is certainly inconvenient for all involved, however mentioned “we ought to be patient”, contemplating the quantity of instances that ICMS offers with.
CNA has contacted the State Courts on what brought on the technical points and what number of courtroom instances have been affected.
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