REPUBLIC OF AUSTRIA
FEDERAL MINISTRY OF JUSTICE
Videoconferencing
Findings and State-of-play Informal Working Group on
Cross-border Videoconferencing
Johann Kickinger
c/o Federal Ministry of Justice, Austria
• Criminal:
– Avoid transport of prisoners – Take witness testimony – Hearing expert opinion – Suspects and accused
persons’ statement
• Some MS: defendants only in preliminary proceedings
• Civil (Taking of evidence):
– Hearing of witness – Party
– Expert / Interpreter
Simple to complex use-cases (at different security levels):
– Hearing of a single remote person (point-to-point VC) – With (consecutive or
simultaneous) interpretation
– Multi-point VC: e.g. coordination meeting fighting serious crime
– Main tribunal with “true-to-live”
VC environment More complex
But: Cross-border VC has to solve some more practical difficulties!
Videoconferencing is useful and cost-efficient for
many (national and cross-border) judicial use-cases
Informal Working Group on
Cross-border Videoconferencing
Goal: Promoting the practical use of cross-border VC Expected results:
• Suggest specific (short-term) actions to improve the situation
• Suggest specific (funding) projects to improve
• Regular short status reports to the Council Working Party e-Justice
• Final report (Dec. 2014)
Time-line:
• 4 Meetings done: Goals, questionnaire and results, improvement actions, improvement projects: Legal / Technical / Organisational
• 20 Oct. 2014, 13:30–17:30: Next meeting in Brussels
– Structure of the Final Report
– Content, partners and time-line for funding project – detailing content
Questionnaires on VC
Completed VC-questionnaires received from
• 17 Member States:
AT, CY, CZ, DE(NRW), EE, ES, FR, HR, HU, IE, LV, MT, NL, PT, SE, SI, UK(England and Wales;
Scotland)
• 1 Organisation:
EUROJUST
Other participants:
• General Secretariat of the Council, COM - DG Justice, European Court of Justice,
Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), Europäische EDV-Akademie des Rechts (EEAR)
• Some MS are just interested in the results, e.g. Denmark
e-Justice and e-Law Conference Rome, 13-14 October 2014 4
Findings: Typical problems with cross-border videoconferencing
Majority of problems: Organisational or technical!
Organising a videoconference, e.g.:
• Contact person in other MS cannot be found
• Contact person is unable to understand me – language problem
• Wrong start-time because of different time-zones
Organisational (Legal), e.g.:
• Formal process for mutual assistance to get permission for VC takes too long (can be months!)
Technical problems - unable to start VC, e.g.:
• Wrong ISDN Number / wrong IP address / behind firewall /
incompatible standards / insufficient bandwidth / parameters for optimizing quality of video and audio
Suggestion of actions, e.g.:
• Improve finding the right contact-point / contact-person and ease the language problem (e.g. central contact point per MS)
Suggested content for project(s):
Combine items 1 to 7 into one funding project
1.) Identify use cases with high benefit from cross-border VC (Goal: get the overall picture)
5.) Summarize recommended technical standards from
practical perspective
2.) Practical technical tests of cross-border VC connections between pairs of MS
6.) Training and motivating potential VC users: e.g. via a series of demo VC-sessions
3.) Perfecting VC between a pair of MS
7.) Improve Form for
requesting/confirming a VC (and public parameters to be published
4.) Develop step-by-step
“protocol” with instructions for doing certain use-cases and processes with cross-border VC
8.) Implement electronic
sending of forms for “Direct
Taking of Evidence” via e-Justice Portal and e-CODEX
(Should be an e-CODEX project)
e-Justice and e-Law Conference Rome, 13-14 October 2014 6
Outcome from discussions on content items for project(s)
Many thanks to MS and organisations providing active contributions or suggestions!
• Content items Nr. 1 to 7 shall be combined in one funding project
– They are closely interrelated (e.g. 2, 3, 4 and 5) or important for many MS (see table on previous slide)
– NL, UK, SE, IT, SI, EE, LV and AT want to join such a project.
Other MS are still thinking (e.g. FR, DE, MT, HR) and will inform – Also “observer partners” shall be possible
• Content item Nr. 8 should be done under the umbrella of the e-CODEX project (re-using e-CODEX transport)
• 20 Oct. 2014, 13:30–17:30: 5
thMeeting Informal Working
Group on Cross-border Videoconferencing in Brussels
BACKUP Slides
e-Justice and e-Law Conference Rome, 13-14 October 2014 8
VC-Questionnaires: Statistics
Number of entries
Category
Topic Legal Organisational Psychological Technical Other Total Number Action
recommended
3 12 2 10 3 30
Best practice recommended
2 12 4 9 3 30
Issue or problem 5 43 6 29 4 87
Other 1 2 3
Project suggested 5 2 3 10
Solution
recommended
3 22 4 12 1 42
Synergy with other project
1 2 3
Useful material or document
2 14 1 3 20
Total Number 15 109 19 66 16 225
DRAFT Structure of the Final Report
• Goals of the IWG; Alignment with e-Justice Action Plan
• Existing situation:
– Results from the questionnaires (raw materials / reports as appendices?)
• Problems and Issues identified (probable sorted by category)
• Solutions and best practices identified/suggested for improvement
• Actions suggested and suggestions for specific projects to improve
• Possible synergies with other European e-Justice projects
• Useful materials identified, which should be promoted for VC users
– Key problem areas identified
• Recommendations to improve cross-border VC
– Legal
• Specific short-time actions suggested
• Specific (funding) projects suggested
• …
– Organisational
• Specific short-time actions suggested
• Specific (funding) projects suggested
• …
– Technical
• Specific short-time actions suggested
• Specific (funding) projects suggested
• (Minimum) technical standards suggested
• …
e-Justice and e-Law Conference Rome, 13-14 October 2014 10
Videoconferencing in the
European e-Justice Action Plan
Project Responsibility for
action
Actions to be
taken Timetable Category 30. Videoconference
- Organising and running cross-
border videoconferences (in all MS) - IT tools helping to support and
organise videoconferences - enhancing interoperability for
videoconferencing
- form for requesting/ confirming a cross-border videoconference - Network for exchange of
experience and sharing best practice on videoconferencing, including training
(participation of legal practitioners:
judges, public prosecutors, lawyers,
- Member States and the
Commission
- Informal group
2014 to 2016
A
