Cross-border Videoconferencing

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

Meeting 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