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The Australian Securities Commission (ASC)


The Australian Securities Commission has established a national network which
allows public access to company information in both text and image form
(summarised in Bennett (1992)). DocImage is an image database of company
documents based on Kodak optical storage and retrieval technology, located at
Morwell, Victoria. It contains images of over 8 million pages of documents.
Ascot is a text database containing summary details of over 900,000 companies
(including identifiers for the relevant DocImage documents), running on a
Hitachi Data Systems mainframe located in Canberra. These databases are
accessible to the public via twelve ASC business centres across Australia, and
on-line via information brokers. The ASC's databases, and its now considerable
experience in document imaging technology, both generally and in relation to
litigation support, makes its involvement of important to all aspects of the
use of information technology in complex trials.

Information contained in the DocImage and ASCOT databases is of
considerable importance for corporate prosecutions by any
investigatory and prosecution agencies in Australia,
and litigation support facilities used by those organisations
need to be able to handle ASC-
provided data. The ASC company databases are accessed within            [PP32]
the ASC itself via ISDN links to LANs of PCs and Sun workstations
at regional ASC offices. The ASC has developed a range of
litigation support facilities, of which the two most important are ISIS and
REG, both derivates of the ICL program Indepol, and running on an ICL
mainframe. It has also used other text retrieval programs for specific trials.
The ASC is re-evaluating its whole approach to litigation support facilities
at present.

The ASC briefs the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute
major corporate fraud matters, and only prosecutes regulatory offences on its
own account. It is therefore vital for effective litigation support that the
ASC be able to pass an effective 'computerised brief' to the DPP, at least in
the sense that all ASC-originating computerised materials should be compatible
with DPP systems.


The National Crime Authority (NCA)


The National Crime Authority does not have the power to prosecute cases that
it investigates, but has a statutory task limited to 'assembling admissible
evidence' and 'furnishing' same to the appropriate prosecuting authority. In a
complex fraud matter this may be the Commonwealth DPP or one of the State DPPs
(Livermore (1992)). The NCA has developed a computerised document registration
or 'document control' system for investigations, described in Livermore
(1992). Such an investigative system has considerable differences from one
established only for litigation support, as it records details of events and
documents which may relate to various prosecutions, or to none at all. The
system is capable of generating numerous type of reports, particularly
chronologies relating to individuals or corporations (Livermore (1992)).

NCA investigative teams use the free text retrieval program, ISYS, to access
the text of analyses and reports on an investigation (written in Word for
Windows), witness statements, and transcript of hearings. All members of an
investigative team, whether located in the same city or not, may access
documents in directories related to their investigations through a wide area
network (WAN) between NCA offices, and local area networks (LANs) within each
office. The NCA seeks to obtain information in computerised form wherever
possible (Livermore (1992)). The NCA is developing document imaging, using
systems provided by Tower Technologies, for use in a current fraud
investigation. Images will also be accessible across the WAN. Extensive use of
spreadsheet software such as Excel is regarded as essential for analysis of
complex transactions. Graphics software is used to set out complex corporate
structures and 'money trails' (Livermore (1992)).


The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)


The Commonwealth DPP has in the past relied on applications written for a Wang
VS minicomputer environment to provide a document control database, and on
access to the STATUS program running on the Commonwealth Attorney-General's
Department mainframe for free text retrieval of transcript, witness statements
etc. The DPP's Strategic Plan (Commonwealth DPP (1991)) outlines a general
migration from these larger systems to networked PCs, for reasons which
include greater enthusiasm by professional for 'hands-on' use of computers,
strong staff preference for PC-based products, difficulty in loading and using
STATUS databases, lack of integration between document control and text
retrieval, and greater use of computers in court. Installation of Novell-based
local area networks in DPP offices is to be completed in mid-1993.


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