Ministry can't say how much wasted on e-court plan

The Ministry of Justice can't say how much money has been wasted in an $18 million project that was supposed to produce a paperless court.

The e-bench project was the centrepiece of the Government's digitisation of the court system allowing judges to open digital files in court, make notes and changes including appearance dates and bail conditions, saving time and money.

But after six years of work, the ministry has found the software was not up to scratch and has put the plan on hold.

About $14 million has been spent on the first two phases of the scheme, but the centrepiece of the project has been put on ice.

E-bench was the third phase in the project which includes police filing charge sheets digitally and the Department of Corrections filing pre-sentence reports.

A spokesman for the ministry said on Friday he could not put a figure on the final amount lost, because some of the work applied to all three phases and it wasn't possible to separate it out.

Courts Minister Chester Borrows said the system would not have lived up to expectations and would still have relied on paper.

"The whole thing was designed about six years ago and what we've found is, when we've looked at other jurisdictions in other courts and other government agencies, they're doing similar things to a much higher level, and as good as that was going to be it was never going to give us a paperless court."

Mr Borrows said the wasted taxpayer money is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the work already done has not been lost.

Labour to file complaint

The Labour Party is to file a complaint with the Auditor-General's office over the matter. Justice spokesperson Andrew Little said millions of dollars have been spent on the project which has not met its objectives and the Auditor-General's office needs to investigate what went wrong.

Mr Little said it seems nothing has been learned from the mistakes of the early police computer system, INCIS, and the debacle over the Novopay teachers' payroll system.

A spokesperson for Chester Borrows said there is no need to call in the Auditor-General, and doing so would just add to the expense.

Digital system needed - Temm

Former Law Society president Jonathan Temm said while the decision to put the project on hold is extremely disappointing, the system would not have lived up to expectations had it gone live in January as anticipated.

Mr Temm said the courts cannot continue with a paper-based system and a digital system must be brought in.

"I'm confident the project will come back on line. It's now a matter for the minister and the ministry to pull together the parties that can assist them in their objective."

Police are already filing their charges in digital form, and the Probation Service will provide digital copies of its reports from 9 December.