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3.3. Western Australia


The Information Technology Branch of the Crown Law Department has developed a
Judicial Support System for the Supreme Court which is the principal focus of
interest in this Report, but there are a number of other systems which come
under the Department which are of considerable significance to criminal
trials. The Department has made considerable use of a consultancy group,
Corporate Systems Planning, in developing and implementing some of these
applications.


The Judicial Support System


The Judicial Support System, described in Seaman (1992), is designed to be
used exclusively by judges, Masters and their secretaries and associates.
Each judge has been provided with a portable laptop computer (minimum 386 cpu
40 Mb disc) and printer. Each secretary has a standard personal computer
(minimum 386 cpu 100 Mb disc) and a laser printer. These 23 PCs are attached
to a local area network which connects all the users of the system. The local
area network is managed by LAN Manager network software, and uses Ethernet
cabling. The network is served by two more powerful computers running under
the Unix operating system, one of which is dedicated to the Titan text
retrieval program.

The Judicial network is not connected to any other networks or computers, and
does not allow any telecommunications access as yet, due to concerns about
security. The possibility of such links is being investigated: Seaman (1992).
At present, when judges go on circuit, they do not have access to any of the
research or litigation support facilities provided by the use of the Titan
software on the network, but they do have PC-based facilities such as word
processing. If a portable PC running Unix is available, it can be used to run
Titan for litigation support purposes when the judge cannot access the
network.

The Western Australian initiative began in 1988 when the Crown Law Department
carried out a survey of developments in computerisation of courts in other
Australian jurisdictions and developed a Courts' Computerisation Feasibility
Study: WA Crown Law (1988). It was decided that one of the first tasks should
be to develop applications for use by judges, as their work is the most varied
of any carried out by the court. This was an important decision, in that it
ensured that any system which emerged would be flexible enough to allow new
functions to be incorporated. From the start, the view was taken that any
planning without substantial judicial input was unlikely to be successful:
Seaman (1992). In June 1990 a project sub-committee of the Supreme Court,
chaired by Mr. Justice Seaman, was convened to oversee the Supreme Court
judicial support aspects of the overall computerisation project, comprising
two Supreme Court judges, and representatives of the Court administration, the
Department and the consultants engaged on the project: WA Crown Law (1990). A
comprehensive System Proposal was presented to the judiciary and approved in
December 1990: WA Crown Law (1990).


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