Issue 14 - Head of Court Operations, Jacqui Durkin

The Northern Ireland Court Service has undergone a modernisation programme that has seen a transformation in the way it does business. Owen McQuade met with Jacqui Durkin, Head of Court Operations, to discuss how this has come about and what the future holds for this key part of the criminal justice system.

Perhaps we could start by you outlining the role of the Court Service and your own role.

The role of the Court Service is to support the administration of justice in Northern Ireland and that’s why our overarching business aim is to serve the community through the administration of justice. We’re there to provide services in each of the courthouses, the Coroners Service and the Enforcement of Judgments Office (EJO) to support the smooth running of the courts and some of the tribunals. In my role, as Head of Court Operations, I have leadership and management responsibility for all the court venues in Northern Ireland including the Civil Processing, Jury Management and Payments Centres.

I am also responsible for our Human Resources Unit, the Communications Group, the Business Development Group and Judicial Services Group, so it’s quite a wide remit, all aimed at delivering quality services that support the efficient running of the courts.

Describe the modernisation programme.

Over the last five years, we’ve had a huge investment in our Integrated Court Operations System (ICOS) and that system is our ICT platform to support better services and will also be our gateway into the Causeway system which will provide for the sharing of information across the key criminal justice agencies. ICOS supports the business in the civil, family and criminal courts. Although Causeway is only connected to the ‘criminal’ side of our business we have an integrated system that case manages and processes the business across all court tiers, all venues and all types of business. It’s a single operating platform for court administration and we believe one of the very few systems in Europe, if not the world, that does that. Each piece of the business interacts with each other, we are able to share and exchange information without duplication, centralise similar processes and produce uniform documents and outputs.

ICOS was developed in modular form – civil, family and criminal – through our PFI contract with Fujitsu Services and with a dedicated in-house project team. The journey started with the implementation of the civil module in 2002 and was completed in 2007 with the final part of the family module being put in place. The biggest change to the business has really been through the criminal module. We didn’t have any technology to support the business of the magistrates’ courts outside Belfast and very limited support in the Crown Court. Now we have a single ICT platform to support the business in all those courts.

What about the change process that underpinned the programme?

It’s been a huge change programme. It’s not just about fitting software; for our staff there’s now real-time ‘in-court resulting’ as opposed to a fragmented manualbased system throughout the whole of Northern Ireland. We’ve had to change the staff skill set and obviously that has been challenging but has improved the information and services that we provide to court users. We’ve developed a lot of interfaces with other organisations that are interested in case outcomes, to minimise duplication between different government departments and to exchange appropriate information on court proceedings. The ICT has enabled this but it’s been a huge change programme that’s provided us with an ICT platform on which to build better services for our customers and for the public.

Online services have been developed because we’ve been able to use ICOS as the ICT platform. We have court lists, small claims and copy orders online and media lists will soon launch online. We used the technology that ICOS has provided us with to look further and say: ‘How can this change the business and how can it deliver better services?’ And obviously, we are always mindful of what information can we share in a wider domain and make sure there’s appropriate controls in place so that it’s only the people who should have access to that information that do have it, a particularly pertinent current issue.

We certainly are using the technology to deliver better services and will use it further when Causeway Data Sharing Mechanism 1 is implemented. That will bring further benefits for us as well in that charge information will reach ICOS electronically rather than input manually from the Public Prosecution Service.

Small claims online went live in October 2005. It has been particularly successful with regular users of the small claims default system. We’re trying to enhance awareness and promote more use of it particularly with members of the public or small businesses who might have only one or two applications a year. Through the online service, you don’t have to come to court to lodge an application – you can, instead, log in from a PC at home or in your office and manage and track the case from there. If the case is not contested, it can be dealt with end-to-end without you ever having to appear in court. We feel that’s a significant advantage for people. Small claims cases tend not to be disputed, the person who’s making the application tends to get a quicker result than in other cases.

As well, ICOS has enabled service centres to be established for economies of scale across similar types of processes and business in all the court venues. We have one for fine payments, for example. Prior to ICOS if you were convicted for speeding at Dungannon Magistrates’ Court, you could only pay your fine in Dungannon Courthouse or by post. Now you can pay fines either at the payment centre or at any court venue in Northern Ireland, and you can pay by phone or credit or debit card.

We also have a Jury Management Centre established in Derry which deals with all the pre-court and post-court aspects of juror summonsing and jury management including paying allowances. And we have our Civil Processing Centre in the Royal Courts of Justice which is amalgamating case entry and order production for county court and small claims business. We have looked for opportunities to use the technology to deliver better services and efficiencies where you have similar types of activities going on in different parts of the organisation.

Previously, everything was replicated throughout 20 magistrates’ court venues. Because you can look across at all the similar types of business throughout Northern Ireland, ICOS gives you the opportunity to say: ‘Is this the best or most efficient way of doing this? Is it giving our customers choice in how they interact with us?’ If you have a fine for a motoring offence, you want to be able to pay it in the same way as you would for other types of public services, never mind the private sector. We had to open up the choice of how our customers were able to interact with us and make payments more easily.

The Jury and Payments Centres are colocated in Derry and the Civil Processing Centre is in Belfast. Establishing the centre in Derry was important to us to prove the concept that it didn’t have to be Belfast-based. ICOS enabled back office processing to be amalgamated and done in other locations.

How has customer service been improved in recent years?

In the court offices, we’ve adopted Charter Mark as a public service standard in all our courthouses, our HR Unit, Information Centre and Court Funds Office. Charter Mark is changing and there’s a new standard being launched and we want to make sure that we sustain that accreditation. We’re looking closely now at the new standard criteria and the changes that it will bring. It’s been vital for court offices, particularly where they are dispersed regionally, that there’s a common and continuous business improvement goal, a benchmark that we’re all working towards.

Also, the Enforcement of Judgments Office has adopted the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model for business improvement and I’m very delighted to say that they’ve been awarded the Mark of Excellence. That’s been a real journey for the staff and I am very proud of what they have achieved.

The business improvement mechanisms that we’ve used are all brought under the auspices of the Customer Service Strategy. We’re in the third year of our current strategy which is overseen by the Customer Service Board, which I chair, and it reports into the Management Board.

In the EJO, the business was significantly reorganised as a result of EFQM and now it’s structured in such a way that the teams follow the process through from start to finish, as opposed to one team doing one bit of it and passing it to the other part of the business. There have been efficiency gains but it has also made staff question how they’re actually processing business and delivering services, as opposed to saying: ‘Well that’s the way we’ve always done it so we’ll keep doing it that way.’ They now have regular process audits to reaffirm how services are delivered and foster meaningful engagement with customers.

Is it hard to get people enthused about it? It’s hard to get people being positive about it, to be honest! What you find with a lot of services we deliver is that a high percentage of our customers are quite reluctant customers. People tend not to interact with the Court Service for terribly positive reasons, in the main – whether that’s because of a civil dispute or a family trauma or because they’re involved in the criminal courts. We have tried to engage with key stakeholders who use our services regularly to get feedback on how they think we can deliver services better.

The judiciary, legal profession, other justice organisations, and NGOs are key to how we run our business and how we improve our services in the future, so we have established court user forums both in the court offices and in the EJO. They provide us with regular feedback which is fed through our Service Improvement Team structure i.e. through the managers on the ground who are managing the dayto- day business, and that filters through to the Customer Service Board so that we use that feedback to look at our Customer Service Strategy and say: ‘Where do we need to go with this next?’

We are particularly interested in the Victims and Witnesses Strategy, and making sure that we provide the best possible facilities that we can for the more vulnerable people who use our services, obviously bounded by the finance and resources that we have. We also want to maintain meaningful engagement with key NGOs like Victim Support, NSPCC and Women’s Aid.

How have court delays been tackled?

In my view tackling delay effectively requires minimising avoidable delay and maximising good communication between all parties affected including prosecutors, legal teams, the judiciary and the Court Service. Most importantly, in criminal cases, victims and witnesses need to be kept informed at each key stage of a case. In my experience, if people are in a courthouse and their case doesn’t proceed they tend to associate the reason for that with the court even though it might be because the prosecutor, defence or another party to the case isn’t ready to proceed. The inter-agency Delay Action Team is critical to the delivery of the Delay Strategy and the Court Service holds the team’s chair for this year. We are piloting four court located case progression officers and their work will be evaluated soon to try and facilitate more efficient management of cases as they go through the system. The officers are there to support the judiciary and interact with the various parties to make sure if specific facilities or technology is required or there are issues about the case not progressing in the way that they should then there is an early alert about that that there’s more efficient use of court and judicial time.

Obviously the objective is to manage a case so that it does proceed if it’s meant to proceed, and the time of all involved is not wasted at court.

Working in partnership with judiciary, is the relationship always clear?

Absolutely. The independence of the judiciary is paramount, however, it is vital we effectively support them in pre, in and post-court administration and that we have good working relationships with the judiciary which at times can be challenging! A common misperception is that the judiciary aren’t as eager for cases to progress as efficiently through the courts as the administrators are. There’s been a huge focus on delay in recent years by the Lord Chief Justice and various judicial committees – for all types of business – to progress all types of cases through the system without compromising justice. That’s where the main focus is, to spend more time on cases that are ready to proceed rather than adjournment applications so it makes best use of judicial time and our resources.

It’s vital that we’re working together in partnership to make sure that business does flow through the courts efficiently. There’s no point in wasting their time or wasting resources on behalf of the Court Service and neither we nor the judiciary want to be seen as the reason for cases being delayed.

Would you outline the Courts Service outreach programme?

We need to think about how we engage with the wider community to make them aware of the services that we deliver. If you don’t need to have contact with the Court Service, you don’t tend to be aware of exactly what we are doing. For more than four years we have had an Outreach Strategy that’s been very successful in bringing school groups into court venues for inter-agency justice system awareness days and facilitated the Mock Trial Competition. Certainly in the future through a social responsibility strategy we want to see how we can extend that to the wider community. In Criminal Justice Week we are running seven events throughout Northern Ireland. If schoolchildren are at an age where they are thinking about their career, or working through their citizenship module, we want to make them more aware about the court system and the role of the Court Service.

Take us through the reform of the Coroners Service There has been an extensive reform programme in coronial services over the last few years. We have a Presiding Coroner, and full-time coronial judiciary now – three full-time coroners and soon to be a fourth fixed term one – as well as three Coroners’ Liaison Officers (CLOs) who work with bereaved families after a post-mortem has occurred and keep them informed about the progress of cases.

We were inspected quite recently by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Court Administration and received positive report on how the service has been reformed and the value of the CLO role.

One of the key priorities for me is, no matter the reason for contacting the Court Service, that people have access to the type of services and information that they need and they are treated with respect. If someone has been a victim of crime, involved in a child custody dispute, need to settle a debt or recently bereaved, they need to get access to quality services and information in a way that they can absorb information and understand what’s going on.

We need to make sure that we underpin that with information on the internet and through information leaflets or, if they prefer, over the phone or face-to-face.

All-in-all Jacqui Durkin has a lot on her plate, with the modernisation of the Court Service in Northern Ireland and it has to be remembered that the existing system has to be run smoothly as well as delivering an ambitious change programme.