F ROM BEST PRACTICES TO " MODELS ":

F ROM BEST PRACTICES TO " MODELS ":

A FIRST FACT - FINDING MANUAL ON THE MORE WIDESPREAD ORGANISATIONAL PRACTICES IN I TALIAN JUDICIAL OFFICES

(CSM R

7 J

2016)

High Council for the Judiciary

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(Prev. Resolutions 27 July 2010 "Definition, Recognition, Classification, Evaluation and Dissemination - Methodological notes" and 16 March 2011 “Establishment of the National Best Practices Databank", Resolution of 17 June 2015 ''Updating of Best Practices at the Judicial Offices").

Summary

1. Introduction: the High Council for the Judiciary’s role in judicial offices’ best practices and the implementation of the resolution of 17.6.2015

2. Best practice as the application of constitutional principles and values 3. The results of the new data collection and the new statistical analysis

4. From best practices to "models": towards a first manual of the more widespread organisational practices in Italian judicial offices. The fact-finding manual for the models

4.1 Content of the document on organisational models 5. The Best Practices Ministerial Project - ESF

6. The project’s successive stages

7. The publication of Best Practices on the Council’s new website as part of the broader

"Innovation, Organisation and Statistics" section

8. Further verification and integration of the material analysed 9. Promotion of the fact-finding manual

1. Introduction: the High Council for the Judiciary’s role in judicial offices’ best practices and the implementation of the resolution of 17.6.2015

With the resolutions of 27 July 2010 ("Definition, Recognition, Classification, Evaluation and Dissemination - Methodological notes") and of 16 March 2011 (Establishment of the National Best Practices Databank), the Council has outlined a path aimed at bringing the reality of territorial practices into focus on the basis of an approach defining the virtuous practices that are worthy of attention, and by creating a cataloguing and knowledge tool at the disposal of the system’s stakeholders.The sector was recently restructured in the wake of a selection of current practices that are more suited to the judicial offices’ modern circumstances and to the, repeatedly invoked, persistent shortage of human and material resources.

The new project was fully defined in the resolution of 17 June 2015, as part of the more extensive work on the judicial offices’ innovation and organisation. It was also reflected in the resolution of 13 May 2015 on the online civil procedure and the resolution of 14 October 2015 on the computerisation and online procedure in criminal matters, as well as in the resolutions of 25 March 2015, 23 September 2015 and 27 January 2016 establishing the High Council for the Judiciary’s new communications portal.

In particular, it was decided to create a historical archive of the practices indicated by the Italian judicial offices (there are over 1,500 to-date). It was also decided to create an area relating to the offices’ organisation and the Best Practices Project in the High Council for the Judiciary’s new internet portal, under the remit of the Project Committee, the Technical Department for Organisation (STO) and the Office for I.T. Development (USI), as part of the High Council for the Judiciary’s overall reengineering project. Monitoring was also put it place to verify the relevance of the best practices catalogued in the databank, the abidance of best practices related to the Best Practices Ministerial Project - ESF consistently acquired in the organisation of the office, and the nature and dissemination of information technology (I.T.) practices, through the involvement of the Referent District Magistrates (RIDs).

As part of this broader project, and on the basis of the solutions adopted by the Best Practices Working Group, the Council specifically wanted to focus its attention and encourage the judicial offices’ executives on the organisational practices that have been tested and have achieved positive results, and are in some way measurable in two fundamental areas of the current judicial system:

1) The planning of workload management, reducing the backlog and the reasonable length of proceedings and other best practices for reducing the length of proceedings and the management of serial affairs.

2) Assistance to the magistrate – Proceedings Office (for example, the organisational method and the use of trainees or other external human resources, specifying the acquisition method of such resources, the advanced and innovative use of the honorary judiciary, integration techniques of the various human resources that are internal and external to the service of the jurisdiction and, integration with technological and I.T. tools such as the Magistrate’s Console).

2. Best practice as the application of constitutional principles and values

The judicial offices’ organisation, targeting the improvement of the judicial action’s efficiency and effectiveness, immediately invokes the public administration’s application of the principle of sound administration and impartiality (Art. 97 of the Constitution). Increasingly, in cultural and legislative development, this should contribute together with other principles to establish the constitutional framework of reference for the overall exercise of the judicial function, including with reference to the criterion of transparency that immediately emanates from it.

In this context, best practices deserve to be considered first and foremost as applications of the constitutional principles and values of reference.

The collective governance of the administration of justice, for example, on which the High Council has sought to cultivate a focus, finds its highest expression in the distribution of constitutional powers between the judiciary and the executive branches referred to in Art. 110 of the Constitution. It represents the response to the complexity of the judicial world and to the applications of justice which, directly or indirectly, emanate from the territory (judicial offices, professional firms, local authorities, and public and private university institutions).

In another area, as will be seen, the selected best practices fit into the groove of the judiciary’s ongoing effort to ensure full compliance with the constitutional obligation of a fair trial and of a reasonable duration (Art. 111 of the Constitution). At present, these often do not find a sufficient and adequate response in the state of procedural legislation and in the employment of resources that is unfortunately restricted (especially in terms of coverage by judiciary and administrative staff).

The management of judicial offices is being called upon to make an additional ancillary, or sometimes substitutionary, effort in terms of the organisation not only of the office but, above all, of the procedure, to rationalise resources for the achievement of the suitable procedural result of the irrevocable decision on the merits of the case.

In another and equally relevant perspective, however, constitutional values as a whole, and the interaction with supranational sources, demand that the matters of "reasonable duration" and

"efficiency" do not lead to the sacrifice of service quality. The logic of stable cooperation, in compliance with the respective institutional responsibilities and specific competences, increases the the different stakeholders’ motivation to achieve satisfactory results, even through a partial redefinition of their objectives and in coordination with the other stakeholders. This fosters a more effective achievement of common solutions and, therefore, is qualitatively able to provide the right and fast decision and in compliance with defensive guarantees (Art. 24 of the Constitution).

It should be noted, finally, that in the observation and cataloguing process of the innovative practices reported by the offices, the organisation of the criminal procedure was the most fertile macro-area in terms of the identification of new organisational models. There was further specific reference to the activity of the Public Prosecutors’ offices, grappling with the need to ensure, even with reduced resources, an appropriate response to the community’s considerable demand for justice, through innovative best practices which are able to maximise the innovative contribution of computerisation in order to put the principle of mandatory prosecution into effect (Art. 112 of the Constitution).

These very brief considerations allow an immediate comprehension of the deeper nature of the organisational activity that results in the development of practices that are a direct application of the constitutional principles that must constantly steer the exercise of jurisdiction (Arts. 24, 97, 110, 111, and 112).

3. The results of the new data collection and the new statistical analysis

The results of the new data collection organised by the High Council for the Judiciary with the resolution of 17.6.2015 were the subject of analysis and examination by the STO and the Best Practices Working Group, which filed a full report on 24 April 2016. Quantitatively, these are highly significant, confirming the ongoing commitment of the executives and offices in the department to optimise the organisation and more adequately address the shortage of resources.

This is a commitment that represents a structural, cultural component of the judicial system. It is the result of better capacity for developing the judiciary’s overall professionalism in accordance with pressing directives in this respect from the High Council for the Judiciary and on which an even greater and renewed impetus can only be hoped for on the part of the Superior School for the Judiciary. A summary of statistical data can explain the scale of the situation, while the consultation of Annex 2 by the Statistical Office can provide more complete and detailed data.

Overall, 709 best practices were included between 17.6.2015 to 15.5.2016 of which, 445 were from judging offices and 264 from investigating offices. In particular, 347 best practices were

reported on the "Planning of workload management, reducing the backlog and the reasonable length of proceedings", 108 relating to "Assistance to the magistrate – Proceedings Office", and 254 "Best practices in I.T.".

The chart below shows the results in percentages.

Distribution by Type

1. Planning of workload management, reducing the backlog and the reasonable length of proceedings 49%

2. Assistance to the magistrate – Proceedings Office 15%

3. Best practices in I.T. 36%

Distinguishing by level of offices, altogether 569 projects were adopted at First Instance and 77 at Second Instance. The projects achieved in the supervisory context are 63.

The distribution of best practices by type, office type and adopted practices are reported in the next chart in order to illustrate the differences.

Distribution by Office Type and Type of Best Practice Type 3. Best practices in I.T.

Type 2. Assistance to the magistrate –Proceedings Office

Type 1. Planning of workload management, reducing the backlog and the reasonable length of proceedings Giudicanti: Judging

Requirenti: Investigating Primo grado: First Instance Secondo grado: Second Instance Sorveglianza: Supervisory

With respect to the material received, rigorous selection was undertaken on the basis of the methodology laid down by the aforementioned council resolutions, and the practices selected were deemed worthy of attention since they are characterised by:

• effectiveness;

• innovation and creativity;

• valid programming and planning activity for interventions;

• reproducibility and transferability;

• sustainability over time, which takes the cost of the initiative into account;

• capacity of horizontal and vertical involvement (mainstreaming), as reported in Annex 3).

Moreover, the narrowing of the council objective towards specific areas of interest has contributed to necessarily making the examination more selective, in order to ensure that the selected material of interest can constitute a sound basis for subsequent strategic choices. Therefore, the exclusion of a significant number of reports was not intended to express disvalue. Rather, it was only a choice of opportunities that the Council decided to adopt on the basis of pre-determined methodological rules and in the light of its goals aimed at selecting certain models within the scope of the aforementioned focus in this work phase that rests on the best practices received by 31.5.2016. Particular attention was, therefore, given to those practices reported with reference to the parameter of the effectiveness of the result achieved, even though this profile will require additional further study and new directions to be provided to the offices. In this context for example, the Council had the opportunity to positively consider the practice reported by the Court of Locri during a visit to the judicial offices of the District of Reggio Calabria. This Court, with the collaboration of the Prison Administration of Locri, started a project in November 2015 entitled

"The Colours of Legality" involving the re-painting of the building by using some Locri prison inmates who provided their work free of charge.

The study shows a model of a magistrate executive who is increasingly attentive to the work’s organisational profiles and to experimentation for the best solutions designed to optimise the available resources that are presented as being clearly insufficient in the face of the demand for justice.

There has been a limited response to the request for the updating of practices sent to the offices with the resolutions of 17.6.2015 and 23.7.2015 and relating to the activities already surveyed at that date. This is a circumstance that appears to be partly explainable by the natural obsolescence of practices that have consequently been archived, and partly by inattention resulting

from the transition of certain executives or other stakeholders, who had promoted the specific projects, to another post or into retirement – a situation that must be emphasised for the offices’

attention to prevent consequences in the future. The difficulty of a comprehensive study also emerged to the extent that some initiatives are no longer perceived in terms of innovation (and therefore worthy of being designated as such), but as acquired standards that find a physiological placement in the ordinary management tools such as the plans under Art. 37l.111 of 2011 or the general organisational documents referred to in the office charts (consider, for example, the structured methodologies for reducing the backlog of civil cases falling beyond a three year period and which many offices no longer consider to be an innovative development but a structural one for the office’s organisation).

4. From best practices to "models": towards a first manual of the more widespread organisational practices in Italian judicial offices. The fact-finding manual for the models (Annex 1)

The fact-finding manual (Annex 1) represents the results of the work for the first eighteen- month tenure in the area of best practice and the first part of the project that enabled the drafting of the manual which had been planned as far back as 2010 but was not produced.

This enables:

1) the collection of existing best practices by materials, objectives and organisational lines so as to establish a vade mecum for the offices which, on its consultation, will provide the references for the practices to be replicated or from which to draw inspiration, even in relation to the size of the office of reference, so as to be able to envisage spontaneous

"twinning" - virtual or real - between homologous offices;

2) the outlining of certain "models", understood as being the frameworks of practices that have already achieved such a dissemination and replicability that they represent a reliable reference for a good organisation of the Office;

3) the forming of the present basis for a more comprehensive and structured manual of best practices, that should seek to analytically outline the single model plan, supported by an analysis and a study (statistical, technical, juridical and I.T.) that renders it easily applicable to the various judicial and territorial institutions. It is a further objective that requires the contribution of resources and specialised expertise - possibly to be found through conventional instruments with external parties such as universities - that should eventually be acquired within a new phase of the project; in any case, there will be the publication on the portal with the consequent normal interaction between offices, together with the Council’s

support activity, and hopefully, that of the Superior School for the Judiciary, to effectively achieve the full implementation of the manual that was conceived in 2010.

In practice, the reference models take on different names yet it is useful to have cataloguing that provides a common name, which the High Council for the Judiciary is suggesting to the offices in order to facilitate consultation, developmental stabilisation and export.

4.1 Content of the document on organisational models

The fact-finding manual refers to court management experiences, selecting 33 models in accordance with a classification in seven areas or macro-areas:

1. cooperation with the territory (Macro-area 1), that is, with parties that are external to the management of the judicial offices and, in particular, the adoption of collective governance models;

2. the organisation of the criminal procedure (Macro-area 2), which includes the inter- organisational processes between offices, and the coordination between offices in workload management and information flows;

3. the organisation of the civil procedure (Macro-area 3), which includes planning by objectives and the management of information flows;

4. the organisation of the Office for Assistance to the Magistrate and the Proceedings Office (Macro-area 4);

5. the organisation of the Office for Assistance to Citizens (Macro-area 5).

Best practices in I.T. that are distinct in the macro-areas of I.T. practices in the civil sector (Macro-area 6) and the criminal sector (Macro-area 7) were added to these, albeit with the characteristics of transversal methods and higher volatility.

With reference to Macro-area 1 - Cooperation with the territory, four models have been selected: the first, which took the form of "pacts for justice" and "round tables” with the support of agreements or protocols with subjects that are external to the judicial office; the second, within the judicial administration, featuring committees or "offices for innovation"; the third and distinctive model, the "Online Civil Procedure (PCT) Standing Committees" in between the two, which is replicable in view of the online criminal procedure, and the fourth relating to "social budgets and service charters”.

As regards Macro-area 2 - Organisation of the criminal procedure, this groups the best practices that developed in three directions under the organisational profile: planning for the handling of the business and the timing of the process, coordination of the different offices’

activities, and cooperation with offices that are external to the judicial administration.

With reference to best practices relating to Macro-area 3 - Organisation of the civil procedure, best practices were identified that are essentially characterised by the activities of workload management and the reduction of the backlog falling beyond a three year period, as well as by initiatives to address the impact of the online civil procedure.

In relation to Macro-area 4 - Organisation of the Office for Assistance to the Magistrate and Macro-area 5 - Organisation of the Office for Assistance to Citizens, internal office organisational models were drawn up that ensure better work performance and access to justice.

Finally, the fact-finding manual includes several I.T. practices that complement and underpin the various innovation activities relating to the civil judicial sector (Macro-area 6), the investigating sector and criminal judging (Macro-area 7). It is a direction of initiatives for the use of software and the organisation of procedures that make up for the lack of timely interventions from the Ministry. It also includes other activities that organise the dissemination and consolidation of ministerial systems having an intense and copious production linked to contemporaneity with the computerisation process in place, and the absence of a finalised online criminal procedure.

Referring to the interpretation of Annex 2 for detailed aspects, some results can be highlighted that appear to be of extreme interest:

a) the latest study of best practices adopted by the offices illustrates a trend reversal when compared to the past: the main area of intervention is no longer I.T. (although it continues to represent a significant and relevant area) but the planning of the process in the various facets of the planning of workload management, the planning for reducing the backlog and the adoption of suitable systems to ensure a reasonable length of proceedings. In other words, judicial offices are focusing efforts and ingenuity on the core business of the judicial system that is, on the quantity and quality of the judicial response, seeking above all to reduce the length of such response.

b) the planning of the procedure is structured differently between criminal and civil law: the data of the plurality of stakeholders involved in the management of the criminal procedure has made the establishment of interchange measures between the activities of investigating and judicial offices important (over 1/3 of the total of best practices), thus introducinginter-organisational processes in the justice system between offices and planning by objectives that represent an absolutely innovative and previously unknown methodology;

c) the initiatives of judicial offices targeting the sourcing of resources in the face of an ongoing reduction of resources of ministerial origin are in net growth; these multiple initiatives are characterised by one common thread, consisting in the involvement of the territory in which the office operates or, in any case, of institutional stakeholders that are external to the judicial office itself;

d) connected to the issue of resources is the matter of assistance to the magistrate on which the first pilot experiences of the Proceedings Office are introduced; it is, however, important to note that, in the context of assistance to the magistrate, 46% of the projects are related to the use of trainees or other external human resources: the data shows how, in fact, trainees are becoming a constituent element of the judicial organisation; however, the persistent lack of structured models for the use of trainees in most of the offices should also be interpreted as the objective difficulty to make trainees, as regulated today, the office’s definitive basis for the process and the need to make further progress;

e) in I.T. best practices, we are finally witnessing a substantial change in the objectives pursued by the offices when compared to the past: from an activity, specifically of the previous best practices’ cycle, characterised by high substitution with respect to the ministerial initiative, it has moved to an activity of co-assistance for the dissemination of ministerial solutions through actions aimed at spreading the automation programmes of the criminal and civil sectors (such projects account for 50% of actions in the field of I.T.).

Still relevant are the offices’ actions in designing systems for assistance to the judge for awareness of the acts (22% of interventions in the field of I.T.) - an area in which the ministerial initiative is currently most lacking.

f) as regards the territorial distribution of best practices, if the difference between the North and the South is altogether mitigated, the differentiation between individual districts and individual offices remains rather more evident; in fact, the prevalence of reports from 2 Lombard districts remains clear (equal to 1/3 of the total number of reports received) and, more generally, the fragmented dissemination of best practices is conspicuous.

5. The Best Practices Ministerial Project - ESF

With the resolution of 17 June 2015, the Council consulted the offices in relation to the so- called ministerial best practices that were implemented under the NOP 2007/2013 project which saw the involvement of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Public Administration, the Regions and offices through contracts to external companies for approximately EUR40 million financed with European funds.

In particular, the Council noted that many virtuous practices were developed in implementation of the Best Practices Ministerial Project or complementary to it, and therefore requested notification on:

- whether the best practice was still ongoing and the result of full participation in the Best Practices Ministerial Project or whether there was further development;

- which specifically verifiable results were obtained as a result of the ministerial project, both from the perspective of internal organisational improvement and, in particular, on the optimisation of administrative staff use, as well as on the widespread level of the relationship with public and private users and the facilitation of access to Justice.

The monitoring result was not the one that was hoped for, in the sense that only fragmentary information was sent.

It should be recalled that the project involved six lines of intervention offered to judicial offices:

• The analysis and the reorganisation of the offices, with the aim of improving the quality of services and reducing the costs of service provision;

• The assessment of existing technology levels in the office for the implementation of electronic management mechanisms for user requests;

• The introduction of the Service Charter;

• The drafting of the Social Budget;

• Guidance to ISO 9000 certification for services;

• The effective use of websites even for online service provision.

However, from the information received from the offices - fragmentary but adequately integrated with the data taken from the RID reports and from the same consultation of the monitoring undertaken by the Ministry for Public Administration consultable on open sources – certain data has emerged that deserve more careful reflection and sharing within the Joint Committee between the High Council for the Judiciary and the Ministry of Justice.

In particular, it should be noted that several offices have experimented with organisational forms aimed at improving transparency, the relationship with users and the more general verification of the effectiveness of the office’s action according to four of the aforementioned lines of intervention (Guide and service charter; social responsibility budget; guidance on quality certification; web sites). Simultaneously, it should be reported that several experiences were later halted or complicated at the time of the project’s termination and, therefore, with a loss of the resources that were financed for the study and implementation. Once again, in many cases, it was experienced that offices are able to improve services and efficiency, yet the ordinary state of resources does not allow the stabilisation of projects that are based on the extraordinary supply of resources (for example, with reference to the social budget it results that, once the presence of the offices’ experts was depleted out of about 140 offices who had proposed the budget, only 13 continued in the second year).

As regards the other two lines of intervention, it should be noted that, on the one hand, in many projects they were the CISIA’s (Inter-district Coordination of Automated Information Systems) often too inadequate support interventions or substitutes to the offices’ computerisation activities (especially in the criminal sector) in support of the same activities and, on the other hand, the field testing that appears more suitable for stabilisation and dissemination seems to be that aimed at the study of the organisation of staff and registry offices.

These brief but significant considerations should be the subject of careful reflection at the time of the new project’s re-proposal.

6. The project’s successive phases

The fact-finding manual closes a significant phase of the project which the Seventh Committee and the STO initiated in the early months of the tenure. The next phase will, above all, be characterised by the need to introduce new and different data collection methods, the certification that will be provided to the whole project through the service implementation that is scheduled for the coming months, and the High Council for the Judiciary’s new public Portal that will contain a comprehensive redesign of the databank and its usability.

The resolution of 17 June 2015 required judicial offices to unambiguously clarify measurable results in terms of the jurisdiction’s effectiveness and efficiency and the relationship with users.

They were also required to set out the current and new best practices that can be reported in terms of clearly measurable effectiveness with respect to the pre-established initial objective, in the context of considering the organisational practices where that office is able to attest to the capability of a positive impact on the pre-existing organisation as being "good", so as to induce the same Council to establish it as a model to be exported. There is no doubt that the approach to a culture of planning by objectives founded not on formal and introspective statements but on the clear measurability of processes and results, is made arduous by the difficulty of attributing a measure to certain activities that are internal to the judicial organisation and due to the persistent unavailability, despite many developments, of a definitive and reliable ready-to-use statistical management system.

There is also no question that planning by objectives is a cultural and policy choice which has by now become stable in the council’s work. It is, therefore, necessary for the Council to further refine the evaluation method of practices, by proceeding to integrate what is already set up and regulated by the previous resolutions and by applying it to all future reports, as indicated in Annex 3 and in the format in Annex 4: which are here being fully referred to.

For the purposes of the dissemination of future best practices, the best practices’ interface was revisited, involving the input of the information referred to in Annex 4 with effect from 1 August 2016.

In this regard, it should be noted that the entire databank and its input system will be fully computerised as part of the reengineering project of the High Council for the Judiciary’s I.T.

system. However, until the new system is launched, the notification of best practices will take place by means of the current system.

The validation of best practices will be carried out periodically by the STO, every three months at the end of the months of September and December, March and June.

It should be noted that, any reports relating to matters that are not attributable to the classification contained in this Resolution and its Annexes, may also be forwarded to the Council, which will assess them according to the general validation criteria referred to in the Annexes.

7. The publication of Best Practices on the Council’s new website as part of the broader

"Innovation, Organisation and Statistics" section

The Council had already laid down the guidelines for the automated management of information relating to best practices on 17 June 2015 with Resolutions Nos. 54/VV/2008 and 751/VV/2014. The restructuring of the databank within the reengineering project and the issuing of the new portal will further refine these rules by providing:

1) the creation of a special section within the "Judicial Office’s Digital Archive", dedicated to the office’s direct input of all the practices and the initiatives implemented and to be submitted to the Seventh Committee’s assessment;

2) the automatic notification to the Presidents of the Court of Appeal, the Prosecutors General at the Court of Appeal and the RIDs with regard to the best practice inserted by an individual office: in this way, a real-time update will be possible on all the district’s activities and with the possibility, for the top executives of the relative offices, to implement actions for the dissemination and the raising of awareness on the initiatives considered to be the most interesting;

3) the creation of the new databank of best practices which will encompass all the practices that the offices have entered under their intranet page as referred to in Point 1); the databank’s population will occur automatically through direct input into the "Judicial Office’s Digital Archive"; the RIDs can, of their own initiative, also input the best practices identified in the territory into the databank;

4) the creation of a historical archive of "best practices", based on the STO’s indications, through the migration of data already contained in the current databank of best practices and their re-entry in the new I.T. system;

5) a function to classify new best practices by the Seventh Committee, on a proposal from the STO, according to the criteria laid down by the resolutions of 27 July 2010 and 16 March

2011 and recently specified in this resolution and in the preceding resolution of 17 June 2015, with reference to the indicated areas and monitoring as described to-date and how it will take place in the next generation of manuals;

6) a function for the update of already-notified best practices, the integration of documentation, and information on its development;

7) a function for the insertion of periodic reporting on the trend of best practices, in addition to the final reporting where the project has a specific duration in time.

Among the practices entered in the Intranet, those that are more relevant in relation to the categories mentioned in this resolution and reported in the manual, will be chosen and published in the High Council for the Judiciary’s public portal.

This publication will take place within the section of the portal entitled "Organisation, Innovation and Statistics", managed by the Seventh Committee, the STO and the High Council for the Judiciary’s Statistical Office. The creation of the "Organisation, Innovation and Statistics"

section is an option of great value under the more general choice of transparency and sharing that has been implemented with the High Council for the Judiciary’s new public portal. This area’s objective is, in fact, to above all enable the maximum leverage and dissemination of the judicial offices’ activity, while also drawing the public’s attention to the organisational and management effort which the offices have been putting in place for some time in order to improve the service rendered, despite the progressive reduction of available resources. At the same time, this area is destined to be a sharing point for the organisation’s issues and judicial offices’ Best Practices in order to provide these judicial offices with a source of direct knowledge on best practices and a point of comparison also through the implementation, in a second phase, of online discussion tools.

The first organisation of the material on the subject of court management, to be published on the website, includes the macro-areas that follow the preparation of the fact-finding manual and are indicated in para. 4.1. of this resolution.

The “Best Practices Project” section will also include the publication of the general principles, the evaluation criteria, the studies and the scientific contributions in the field.

Moreover, the complementarity with the sections dedicated to the online civil procedure and the online criminal procedure (rectius computerisation of the criminal sector) will be inevitable in the new site given the content’s transverse nature.

8. Further verification and integration of the material analysed

The manual’s publication - with an indication of the reference models – ascertains that due to the offices’ possible omitted responses following the request for clarification of 17 June 2015, the

Best Practices Databank does not contain all the initiatives implemented by the judicial offices.

Some of them are well-anchored in the General Organisational Document (DOG) (given that it is a best practice which has now become part of the office’s permanent structure) or in the report attached to the management programmes as per Art. 37 of Decree Law No. 98/2011 (as best practices related to the planning of performance targets and business management), suggesting a new request for clarification that is not designed to impact on the manual’s structure but to complete the fact-finding in view of the new portal’s publication.

Annex 5) contains the instructions for the submission of the practices by 31 July 2016 which will be examined by the STO for the fact-finding manual’s integration.

9. Promotion of the fact-finding manual

The narrowing of the Council’s objective towards specific areas of interest is necessarily aimed not only at the selection of Best Practices but, above all, at their dissemination. The task undertaken for collection, analysis and selection, lasting over a year, highlighted a criticality, albeit known, arising from the fragmented dissemination of these initiatives. Various factors contribute to this situation including, not least, the greater availability of resources in some territories rather than in others. The Council must start disclosing and raising awareness on the issues identified here in order to disseminate a broader knowledge and application of the selected models on the basis of the effectiveness, innovation and creativity, exportability and accountability parameters already indicated in the resolution of June 2015 and again highlighted in Annex 3. It will be advisable to organise a first national meeting for the presentation of the manual and the portal’s innovation and organisation area, and possibly subsequent meetings for territorial macro-areas. This is an activity that must be accompanied by a steady dialogue with the Superior School for the Judiciary because the subject of organisational best practices surveyed by the High Council for the Judiciary (and not only those of the ministerial projects) is a consistent part of the training courses for executives and magistrates both at the central level and the networking level for decentralised training. A similar comparison should continue with the Ministry of Justice in the overall innovation and computerisation sector, both in the Joint Committee and in ad hoc project development.

The High Council for the Judiciary

resolves

a) to publish the attached “Fact-finding Manual of Best Practices and the more widespread organisational models in Italian judicial offices” on the Council's new communication portal and in hard copy format;

b) to validate the best practices relating to the 33 selected models indicated in the appendix of Annex 1 of the Resolution;

c) to indicate additional validation rules for best practices in accordance with Annex 3;

d) to invite judicial offices to the online integration of best practices that are not yet reported, or in any case not yet surveyed, by 15 September 2016, in accordance with the indications in Annex 5 as part of the models referred to in the fact-finding manual, even by extrapolating from applicable organisational documents;

e) to invite judicial offices, with effect from 16 September 2016, to the online transmission of other best practices that are believed to be valid according to the new validation rules indicated in Annex 3;

f) to request the Best Practices Working Group referred to in the Resolution of 17 June 2015, to pursue a further phase of the project that will lead to more comprehensive and structured manuals, supported by an analysis and a scientific study (statistics, technical, juridical and I.T.) including through the contribution of resources and specialised expertise, that are possibly to be found through conventional instruments with external parties such as universities;

g) to proceed, with the Best Practices Working Group, on the organisation of meetings at central level and in decentralised sites for the presentation of the "Organisation, Innovation and Statistics" section in the portal, the dissemination of the models’ fact-finding manual and to support the organisation’s culture at the judicial offices;

h) to request the Ministry of Justice to consider the best practices and organisational models indicated in the aforementioned Manual, for the development of initiatives in innovation and in continuation of the Best Practices Ministerial Project; and to assess the opportunity of sharing online areas in innovation, computerisation and best practices;

i) to request the Superior School for the Judiciary to use the results and the content of the High Council for the Judiciary’s Best Practices Project as part of the overall initial, permanent and executive training; and to assess the opportunity of sharing online areas in innovation, computerisation and best practices.

j) to invite the judicial offices and the RIDs of the criminal sector, in cooperation with each other, to verify the current compatibility of the practices indicated in the manual with specific reference to the progressive implementation of the ministerial applications in the computerisation of the criminal procedure, and to communicate the outcome in a written memorandum to the Seventh Committee before 15 September 2016 – the offices with reference to the individual practices, and the RIDs for the respective districts;

k) to request the Best Practices Working Group to obtain further information on the validity of organisational models and best practices in the macro-areas indicated in the attached manual (for example, by consulting with civil observers or other sources of knowledge); and, on the results of the aforementioned consultations, to definitively complete the fact-finding manual by 30 September 2016 for its publication and dissemination.

LIST OF ANNEXES:

Annex 1 Fact-finding manual of best practices and the more widespread organisational models in Italian judicial offices

Annex 2 Statistical study of the best practices surveyed Annex 3 Explanatory note on validation requirements

Annex 4 Format for the communication of best practices to the High Council for the Judiciary Annex 5 Integration of the material for publication by 31/07/2016

High High High

High Council Council Council Council for for for the for the the J the J J Judiciary udiciary udiciary udiciary A A A

Annex nnex nnex 1 nnex 1 1 1

F

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THE MORE WIDESPREAD ORGANISATIONAL MODELS IN

I

(Resolution of 7 July 2016 “From best practices to "models": a first fact-finding manual of the more widespread organisational practices in Italian judicial offices")

Prev. Resolutions 27 July 2010 "Definition, Recognition, Classification, Evaluation and Dissemination - Methodological notes" and 16 March 2011 “Establishment of the National Best Practices Databank", resolution of 17 June 2015 ''Updating of Best Practices at the Judicial Offices")

Summary

1. LEVERAGING EXPERIENCES IN COURT MANAGEMENTErrore. Il segnalibro non è definito.

2. MACRO-AREA 1: COOPERATION WITH THE TERRITORY... 5 2.1. The “Tables (or pacts) for justice”. Protocols with external parties and Agreements with the Public Administrations (Model 1) ... 7 2.2. The “Offices for Innovation” (Model 2) ... 9 2.3. The Online Civil Procedure Standing Committees (Model 3)... 10 2.4. Conclusions: collective governance as a response to the complexity of the judicial world and to the applications of justice from the territory. A fourth model: the social budget... 11 3. ORGANISATION OF THE PROCESS ... 12 4. MACRO-AREA 2: ORGANISATION OF THE CRIMINAL PROCEDURE ... 13 4.1. Planning for the handling of the business and the timing of the process. Priority criteria and work in sequence (Model 5) ... 13 4.2.Office organisation and the regorganisation of work processes: operating models adopted in the Offices of Public Prosecutors ... 15 4.2.1. Offices for the definition of simple affairs (Model 6) ... 15 4.2.2. Offices for the management of Art. 415-bis of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the issuing of digital copies (Model 7) ... 15 4.2.3. Dematerialisation procedures of access requests as per Art. 335 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Model 8) ... 16 4.2.4. Interception Listening Systems (Model 9)... 17 4.2.5. Information exchanges between the Public Prosecutor and the Bankruptcy Division (Model 10) ... 17 4.3. The advanced management of information exchanges in the criminal procedure: the dematerialisation and transmission of documents and the different offices’ activity coordination

……….. ... 17 4.3.1. Digital archiving and online transmission of judgments (Model 11) ... 19 4.3.2. Online transmission of documents to the Court of Review (Model 12) ... 19 4.3.3. Notification of the minutes of hearings in digital format (Model 13) ... 20 4.3.4. Transmission of documents from the civil court to the Public Prosecutor (Model 14) ... 20 4.3.5. Other dematerialisation experiences of procedural documents (Model 15) ... 20 4.3.6. Conclusions... 20 4.4. Cooperation with offices that are external to the judicial administration for the management of criminal proceedings ... 21

4.4.1. Transmission of criminal records (Model 16)... 21 4.4.2. Protocols for preliminary investigations (Model 17)... 23 4.4.3. Management of probation and community service (Model 18)... 23 4.4.4. Protocols on the settlement of fees in legal aid (Model 19) ... 24 5. MACRO-AREA 3: ORGANISATION OF THE CIVIL PROCEDURE ... 24 5.1. Workload management: reducing the backlog falling beyond a three-year period and priority criteria in the civil sector (Model 20) ... 24 5.2. Work in sequence (Model 21) ... 25 5.3. Management of the Online Civil Procedure’s (PCT) impact: PCT protocols (Model 22)

……….26 5.4. Protocols in the family sector (Model 23) ... 26 6. MACRO-AREA 4: ORGANISATION OF THE OFFICE FOR ASSISTANCE TO THE MAGISTRATE AND THE PROCEEDINGS OFFICE (Models 24 and 25) ... 28 7. MACRO-AREA 5: ORGANISATION OF THE OFFICE FOR ASSISTANCE TO

CITIZENS ... 32 7.1. The Public Relations Office experience (Model 26) ... 32 7.2. The new Front Office Models of the judicial offices (Model 27) ... 33 7.3. Proximity helpdesks (Model 28) ... 34 8. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (I.T.) PRACTICES ... 36 8.1. MACRO-AREA 6: I.T. PRACTICES IN THE CIVIL SECTOR ... 37 8.1.1. Training on the Online Civil Procedure (PCT) (Model 29)... 37 8.1.2. Minutes of hearings (Model 30) ... 38 8.2. MACRO-AREA 7: I.T. PRACTICES IN THE CRIMINAL SECTOR (Models 31-32-33)

38

9. CONCLUSIONS... 39 A LIST OF THE 33 MORE WIDESPREAD ORGANISATIONAL MODELS IN ITALIAN JUDICIAL OFFICES BY MACRO-AREA... 41 APPENDIX... 43

1. LEVERAGING EXPERIENCES IN COURT MANAGEMENT

In the context of the focus that the Council sought to achieve with the resolution of 17.6.2015 on court management experiences, it was found that despite the differences that exist between the investigating and judging sectors and, within the latter, between the criminal and civil sector, the various practices reported are united by the choice of researching and proposing organisational models for new work patterns, even in synergy with stakeholders that are external to the judiciary, both for the planning of work management processes and for an innovative organisation of the office and the management of its resources. Reported practices indicate converging intervention prospects in modifying the traditional office structure and its operating model. From over 700 practices received in the period 17 June 2015 - 30 May 2016, the Council decided to flag 251 of them as being worthy of particular attention, also to encourage the dissemination of the relative models. The selection phase was followed by a classification of practices in seven areas, that is, the so-called macro-areas which will be available in the new internet portal. Overall, 33 organisational models as listed in the Appendix, were identified within the 7 macro-areas.

1. Cooperation with the territory, including cooperation with parties that are external to the management of the judicial offices and with particular reference to the adoption of collective governance models;

2. Organisation of the criminal procedure, including the inter-organisational processes between offices and the coordination between offices in workload management and information flows;

3. Organisation of the civil procedure, including planning by objectives, with particular reference to the backlog falling beyond three years, the adoption of priority criteria and the adoption of strategies to manage the impact of the Online Civil Procedure (PCT);

4. Organisation of the Office for Assistance to the Magistrate and the Proceedings Office;

5. Organisation of the Office for Assistance to Citizens.

Added to these areas are I.T. practices, namely those initiatives in which I.T. is not the instrument serving good organisational practices, but is the object of best practices.

The considerations that follow are aimed at a summarised and reasoned analysis of the surveyed situation, classified into seven macro-areas.

The survey led to the flagging of 251 best practices divided by macro-area as follows.

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140

Cooperazione con il territorio

Organizzazione del processo

penale

Organizzazione del processo

civile

Organizzazione dell'ufficio per l'assistenza al magistrato

Organizzazione dell'ufficio per l'assistenza al

cittadino

Buone prassi informatiche - settore civile

Buone prassi informatiche - settore penale

Buone prassi validate per macroarea - Valori assoluti

Best Practices Validated by Macro-Area – Absolute Values

Cooperation with the territory Organisation of the criminal procedure Organisation of the civil procedure

Organisation of the Office for Assistance to the Magistrate Organisation of the Office for Assistance to Citizens I.T. Best Practices – civil sector

I.T. Best Practices – criminal sector

In percentage terms, 48% of the selected practices relate to the macro-area concerning the organisation of the criminal procedure, 18% to cooperation with the territory and 10% to I.T. best practices in the criminal sector. In the other macro-areas, the percentage of selected best practices was less than 10%.

Cooperazione con il territorio

18%

Organizzazione del processo penale

48%

Organizzazione del processo civile

7%

Organizzazione dell'ufficio per l'assistenza al

magistrato 6%

Organizzazione dell'ufficio per l'assistenza al

cittadino 5%

Buone prassi informatiche - settore civile

6%

Buone prassi informatiche - settore penale

10%

Buone prassi validate per macroarea - %

Best Practices Validated by Macro-area - %

Organisation of the civil procedure 7%

Organisation of the Office for Assistance to the Magistrate 6%

Organisation of the Office for Assistance to Citizens 5%

I.T. Best Practices – civil sector 6%

I.T. Best Practices – criminal sector 10%

Cooperation with the territory 18%

Organisation of the criminal procedure 48%

2. MACRO-AREA 1: COOPERATION WITH THE TERRITORY

The "cooperation with the territory" macro-area includes cooperation initiatives with parties that are external to the management of the judicial offices and, in particular, the adoption of good

"collective governance" models.

These are organisational tools that provide for consultation between the various internal and external stakeholders, or within the individual judicial offices, or as part of the coordination between district offices, pertaining to the organisational and innovation profiles of the judicial activity that may be adopted.

The two orders of experiences are in some way parallel and complementary:

• The first (cooperation with external stakeholders) is linked to the need for "external"

synergy between judicial mechanisms and stakeholders that are extraneous to the Administration (e.g.: the Regions, Local Authorities, Universities and Companies);

• The second (cooperation between internal stakeholders) is aimed at the search for coordination "within" the individual offices - or within the offices of a district - of the various innovation activities between all stakeholders (magistrates, executives, administrative staff, I.T. staff, lawyers, etc.).

They are systems that have acquired stability and reliability and which appear as collection and promotion centres of the virtuous experiences replicable in other locations. Both categories of experiences play fundamental roles in the field of technological innovation, representing the preferred structure to manage, for example, the innovations and criticalities represented by the online civil procedure and the computerisation of the criminal sector. This profile is considered to be of high strategic value, characterised by the need to address the shortage of resources through synergies with external parties. Virtuous examples of "cooperation with the territory" include the entering into agreements and/or the adoption of organisational protocols aimed, on the one hand, at sourcing human or material resources and, on the other, at simplifying working procedures so as to make the use of already available resources more efficient.

The development of cooperation initiatives with the outside world has led to the stabilisation of three models. A first systematic and continuous model, has taken the form of tables (or pacts) for justice and round tables, with the support of agreements or protocols with parties that are external to the judicial office.

A second model, within the judicial administration, has taken on the characteristics of committees or offices for innovation.

A third and distinctive model, between the two, was established in the experience subsequent to the introduction of the online civil procedure and, in view of the online criminal procedure,

proves to be replicable through the involvement of other stakeholders such as the Judicial Police Force. The Online Civil Procedure (PCT) Standing Committees model provides for the full participation of lawyers in the governance of the new process’ organisational and procedural impact.

In practice, the reference models take on different names but it is useful to have a cataloguing that provides a common name to facilitate consultation, developmental stabilisation and exportation. This is being suggested by the High Council for the Judiciary to the offices.

2.1. The "Tables (or pacts) for justice". Protocols with external parties and Agreements with the Public Administrations (Model 1)

The first model is, therefore, made up of "tables (or pacts) for justice" in which a systematic comparison is being undertaken for the first time with the outside world, especially with public and private territorial organisations. This is a model designed for the sourcing of additional resources for the justice system and for the concertation of the judicial activity’s governance models that take into account and are enriched by the contributions and requests coming from the various representatives of society.

In this context, the experience of the Table for Justice of the City of Milan, dating back and organised in 2009, deserves a special mention. It proposed the optimisation of the ensemble of judicial services and the offering of greater guarantees for efficiency, transparency and bureaucratic simplification under a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Public Administration, the Region of Lombardy, the Prefecture, the Municipality, the Province, the Chamber of Commerce, the Bar of Milan and the Milan judicial offices, among which the Court of Milan assumed the role of president. The "Pact for Civil Justice" of the City of Bologna of 2012 can be similarly mentioned. This was signed by the Bolognese offices, local authorities and by a series of institutions from the territory: in this case, several working tables were activated with the aim of simplifying access procedures to the Judicial Offices’ data, streamlining the influx of users at the Judicial Offices, and optimising the management costs of the involved stakeholders’ activities, thus ensuring a greater availability of skilled resources and a reduction in the overall procedural timing.

The conventional tool, initially used mainly by the investigating offices, opened the way for the creation of a local public and private organisations network. These are "protocols" signed between judicial offices and local financial administrations, universities or health authorities; or with private entities that have progressively assumed an increasingly important role by participating in the governance of the justice system’s organisation. This is a model of "collective governance" in

which the territory, in its various representatives, participates in the justice system’s governance and, therefore, comes into direct contact and enters into discussion with the judicial office on issues in respect to which internal stakeholders in the past have always appeared to be very cautious - if not altogether resistant- to opening up to the outside world.

The conventional tool is generally adopted to implement those regulations that allow forms of mobility or, in any case, the outplacement of human resources coming from sectors that are different from the administration of Justice. It is the case of agreements signed with local authorities for the secondment of staff, for the inclusion of socially useful workers and staff on mobility lists;

with voluntary organisations; or agreements for the employment of young people in the civil service and for the use of scholarships and traineeships with the registry offices¹. Experiences were reported by the Court of Appeal of Milan (BP 1897), the Court of Pistoia (BP 2227), the Court of Reggio Calabria (BP 2563), the Supervisory Court of Florence (BP 1684, 1691, 1703 and 1705), the Supervisory Office of Lecce (BP 1645), the Supervisory Court of Venice (BP 1486), the Court of Locri (BP 2615 and 2676), the Court of Isernia (BP 2694), the Juvenile Court of Brescia (BP 2106 and 1658), the Court of Appeal of Bologna (BP 2075), and the Supervisory Court of Brescia (BP 1895). Experiences on the application of external work for prisoners at the judicial offices (BP 1981 Public Prosecutor of Milan) and that of the reorganisation of administrative staff (BP 2361 Court of Brindisi) were also reported

In a different but equally important context, it is opportune to mention the numerous agreements concluded by the courts for online access to databanks containing personal data (BP 2359 Public Prosecutor of Reggio Calabria; BP 2181 Public Prosecutor of Sciacca; BP 2305 Public Prosecutor of Oristano; BP 1676 Public Prosecutor of Nola; BP 1800 Public Prosecutor of Trapani;

BP 2415 Court of Imperia; BP 1750 Court of Taranto; and, BP 2149 Public Prosecutor of Bergamo). The pressing need manifested by the judicial offices will require an appropriate in-depth study: it is necessary, on the one hand, to verify the status of ministerial projects on the national population register and of the judicial system’s accessibility; on the other, it is necessary to evaluate the possibility of providing support, as a result of the short, medium and long-term prospects, to the

1 Through agreements with local authorities (pursuant to Law No. 241 of 7 August 1990 which, in Art. 15, provides that public administrations may conclude agreements to regulate performance in the collaboration of activities of common interest, as well as pursuant to Legislative Decree No. 468 of 1.12.1997 on the use by the public administrations of suspended workers and workers on mobility lists who are the recipients of wage subsidies and unemployment benefits) and with the regional Bar Councils, it is possible to allow the acquisition of services from advocacy bodies that consent to the acquisition of benefits to lawyers in terms of rapidity and homogeneity of the decisions. This includes the use of socially useful workers and interns within work qualification pathways in regions marked by economic crises and employment, who are assigned by the local authorities for fixed terms at judicial offices to support current staff in addressing the serious shortage of judicial administrative staff. The agreements do not involve the establishment of employment relationships with the judicial offices, which are obliged to comply with legislation on occupational safety, while the insurance coverage for accidents and civil liability towards third parties is ensured by the authorities that assign the staff.

judicial offices through, for example, the signing of a framework agreement with the ANCI (National Association for Italian Municipalities) whereby each judicial office could contact the municipalities in their area to obtain online access to the population register pending the creation of a centralised system. Moreover, the subject is symmetrically connected with that of communications towards the civil State.

2.2. The 'Offices for Innovation" (Model 2)

The second model is composed of the "offices for innovation", which are oriented towards the collaboration and research of coordination, within the offices or the district, especially in the field of innovation. They operate with the involvement of various stakeholders (magistrates, administrative staff and technical staff) regardless of the hierarchical lines they pertain to, with the goal of finding a shared, and in some way collective, administration technique. The Office for Innovation’s experience at the Court of Appeal of Milan is known. This was established through the directive of March 2012 as a support body to the Presidency and the management of the Court of Appeal of Milan with district jurisdiction. Composed of magistrates and administrative officials, the

"Office for Innovation" conducts research, development, coordination, management and the monitoring of innovation projects. Examples of actions carried out are:

• the management of technological innovations and cyber security, both for the Court’s internal offices and for district judicial offices;

• support for the implementation of innovation projects promoted by the Court’s strategic governance bodies;

• assistance to the offices through accompaniment in the launching and monitoring of innovation projects;

• the annual preparation of the Court’s Social Responsibility Budget;

• the monitoring of ministerial applications;

• the coordination and management of activities related to the online civil and criminal procedure;

• the production of statistics and management reports also linked to the office’s performance plan and carried out in collaboration with the administrative district representatives;

• the coordination and management of training activities and the updating of administrative staff;

• the inspection service.

The corresponding Committee at the Court of Milan has a similar structure and function.

Inaugurated and initiated in 2009 as a staff service to the Presidency and the Management of the