Special Workshop Abstracts

Special Workshop Title:	Electronic Government and Philosophy of Law
Author:	Erich Schweighofer, Vienna, Austria
Paper Title:	Knowledge Management and Administration of Justice
Abstract:	An up-to-date IT environment constitutes one of the backbones of organisational support for the administration of justice. An important part of this task can be described as knowledge management. Sufficient knowledge for legal reasoning should be provided by legal information systems. Another challenge is the efficient handling of day-to-day information and communication. The goal of knowledge management is a living and active treatment of the knowledge of an organisation. The distributed knowledge of a huge organisation like the administration of justice should be properly described in huge data warehouses and repositories. The knowledge of judges should be made explicit. A knowledge pump should channel the flow and use of knowledge in the organisation, connecting document repositories, people and processes. The collection, publication, distribution and retrieval of knowledge should be properly managed. In the administration of justice, three types of knowledge management systems can be distinguished: legal information systems, registries and electronic communication systems. Judges are highly trained knowledge workers. They have to apply the law but also make new law and practice if necessary. The communication of knowledge is formal, e.g. only through judgements. Therefore, the decisions have to be published in real time and offered for internal but also external use. In Austria, the Rechtsinformationssystem RIS has a very broad coverage of laws, judgements and literature: an electronic gazette, a consolidated version of the federal and provincial laws, a quite complete collection of court decisions, relevant law indices and most important legal journals. From the whole information spectrum, only handbooks, commentaries and monographs are missing. The improvement of knowledge distribution is remarkable. Legal documents are available at once and without any significant effort. Updating of the information system is done centrally and within days. Knowledge systems also offer another function in law: they provide accurate information about important legal facts, e.g. ownership of immovable property or legal representation of a company. A knowledge pump offers very important improvements of a formerly very time-consuming and cumbersome task. Austria was a forerunner in the development of an electronic land register but also a business register. Already started in 1980, the electronic land register has been proven as an indispensable tool for modern information handling. It is interesting that the business register has also seen the development of value-added services by the private sector like integration of the whole database in the network of a bank. The edicts on the blackboard of local courts have been replaced by a website, called edicts. Bankruptcies or auctions are notified in this way to the interested public. This service offers higher quality and speed of this rather important information. The day-to-day handling of information and communication requires two components: efficient electronic filing systems and electronic communications. The main advantages are higher speed of communication, recycling of information and easier handling and archiving of electronic documents. In Austria, electronic proceedings were already started in 1990. Relying in this experience, the number of applications has been constantly enlarged and covers now all proceedings. Since 1999, the administration of justice is also sending documents in electronic form to solicitors, notaries, banks or other participants. The participation in this closed system of electronic communications still requires a registration. This day-to-day knowledge pump of wishes of claims and executions upon a money judgement to courts in electronic form allows recycling of information in the form of judgements or writs of execution. The documentation of the process has also considerably improved. Today, more than 80 % of claims and more than 60 % of applications for executions are done electronically. In the near future, the electronic registrations will be allowed in the firm register and the land register.