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                                                                       [PP73] 
  
Program compatibility and data standards between parties to the trial


There is little shared use made of document control databases by the parties
to a criminal trial, or the court. A set of document summaries will not
normally be provided by the prosecution to the defence or the Court, even if
images of the exhibits are provided, because the summaries contain many
details which are of an investigative nature, and because many of the
documents summarised will not become exhibits. An important exception is that
the production of lists of exhibits in computer-readable form by the
prosecution, for either or both of the defence or the Court, may be required
in some cases. This is discussed later. Such computerised exhibit lists can
also provide a means by which the defence and the court can retrieve document
images by document titles, allowing retrieval by something other than exhibit
number, and this may be valuable (see Tompkins (1992)). Some other types of
summaries may also be produced from a document control database and also be
admissible. These are also discussed later.


Program compatibility and data standards between investigating and

prosecuting agencies


In contrast, it is extremely important for effective prosecution that document
control databases are able to be shared between investigating and prosecuting
agencies. Livermore (1992) from the NCA argues that

   'We must seek to make all information acquired during an investigation
   more easily available an comprehensible to the prosecutor. The only
   way this can be done is to seek to coordinate the development of
   computerised investigative and litigation support systems.
   
   At the moment there is no coordination of the development of
   investigative and litigation support systems among investigative and
   prosecutorial agencies. Some agencies have little or no technological
   support and others have expended significant resources in developing
   appropriate systems.'
   
He recommends that investigating and prosecuting agencies take a more
coordinated approach to the use of document control databases. Although the
relationship between investigating and prosecuting agencies is on the margins
of our terms of reference, which focus on the court process, it is clear that
there can be no effective use of information technology in complex trials
unless there is close coordination between these agencies. Investigative
agencies must be able to provide a 'computerised brief' to prosecuting
agencies, comprising document control data, transcripts and witness
statements, in a form that is compatible with the prosecution's programs and
database design (including transcript formats), or able to be made compatible
with minimum difficulty. It has not been part of our brief for this Report to
investigate the extent to which this does or does not occur at present, but we
have heard sufficient anecdotal evidence to indicate that such coordination,
while it is starting to occur, is not yet sufficiently developed, at least in
so far as the key Commonwealth agencies (Commonwealth DPP, ASC and NCA: see
Chapter 3 at 3.1) are concerned. We therefore recommend as follows:

   As a matter of priority, the key Commonwealth agencies involved in the
   investigation and prosecution of complex crime (Commonwealth DPP, A
   SC and NCA) should coordinate their use of software, database design,
   and text and image formats for document control, free text
   retrieval, and image retrieval, to ensure that there is sufficient
   compatibility to enable prosecuting agencies to be presented with a
   'computerised brief' by investigative agencies. In doing so these
   agencies should be involved in, and take account of, the development
   of national standards concerning these matters, as recommended in
   this Report.
   

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