Collaborative Network Governance Framework for Aligning Open Justice and e-Justice Ecosystems for Greater Public Value

Abstract

An ecosystem is a complex system of interdependent subsystems. The disjointed open justice ecosystem and the e-justice ecosystem, if they fail to coevolve and adapt to changing environments, contribute to the conundrum of understanding enablers and inhibitors for public value creation. Drawing on the formal system theory and the literature review, we developed a collaborative network governance framework for aligning ecosystems and creating public value. This framework is applied to guide case study research to identify enablers and inhibitors of strategic alignment and public value creation in the Federal Court of Australia context. We found evidence for collaborative network governance in facilitating court judges and practitioners to assimilate e-justice subsystems in open justice practice, with impacts on enhanced operational efficiency and service level. These realized economic and social values in turn provided the federal court with political return on investments in digital transformation of the court services and the legitimacy of open justice practice.

Keywords

open justice e-justice open court electronic court file Federal Court of Australia collaborative network governance ecosystems stakeholders alignment

The overarching concept of open justice, which is premised upon British law, has been rigorously examined and debated by researchers in other fields than e-government from legal, judiciary, and public administration of justice perspectives (Bosland & Gill, 2014; Bray & Martin, 2012; Douglas, 2016; Gabbay, 1978; Jaconelli, 2002; Lepofsky, 1985; Moran, 2014; Nettheim, 1984, 1985; Rodrick, 2007a, 2007b, 2017; Spigelman, 2000, 2006). Open justice underscores and promotes openness and transparency in legal and judiciary processes (Elena & Van Schalkwyk, 2016; Jimenez-Gomez, 2016; Jimenez-Gomez & Gasco-Hernandez, 2016). Although the literature on open justice identifies the benefits and challenges of open justice in practice, it does not explicitly delineate potential enabling roles of information and communication technologies (ICT) in implementing greater openness and transparency in legal and judiciary processes. Overall, the literature is largely conceptual, lacking empirical research on mechanisms for achieving or enhancing open justice practice.

In contrast, e-government researchers have recently explored the concept of e-justice by focusing on the use of ICT to improve access to justice, increase collaboration across legal authorities, strengthen the justice system, and improve legal institutions and the overall administration of law (Kasan, Jimenez, & Gasco, 2015). e-Justice systems aim to enhance civic engagement, collaboration, and public value coproduction. e-Justice systems encompass a wide array of web 2.0 and government 2.0 technologies, including judiciary websites (Almazán & Valle-Cruz, 2016), judiciary portals (Sandoval-Almazan, 2016), semantics and machine learning (Fersini, Messina, Toscani, Archetti, & Cislaghi, 2010), and social media (Findlay, 2015). e-Justice systems were implemented in different contexts such as online court records (Conley & Datta, 2012), online dispute resolution (Barral-Vinals, 2016), and transborder judicial proceedings (Cordella, 2015). e-Justice risk factors (Rosa, Teixeira, & Pinto, 2013), e-Justice interoperability (Silveira, Wazlawick, & Rover, 2015), citizen engagement (Cano, Jiménez-Gómez, Hernández, & Ros, 2015), collaboration challenge (Henning & Ng, 2009), and user satisfaction (Oktal, Alpu, & Yazici, 2016) were also examined.

However, literatures on open justice ecosystem and e-justice ecosystem have developed in parallel and still remain rather disjointed. The notion of an ecosystem refers to as a complex system of interdependent subsystems coevolving and adapting to dynamic changes across both internal and external environments. Multiple ecosystems, including a diverse array of human decision-makers with conflicting economic, social, and/or political interests, do not always coevolve and adapt to dynamic changes across both internal and external environments. Disjointed open justice ecosystem and e-justice ecosystem sustain the conundrum of developing a clear understanding of enablers and inhibitors to create greater public value through digital transformation in the legal service environments. Given the existing research/practice gaps, we address in this article the following research question:

What are key enablers and inhibitors for strategic alignment between the open justice ecosystem and the e-justice ecosystem to facilitate effective and systemic use of e-justice systems and advance open justice in society, which in turn would create public value?

In addressing this research question, we draw on the formal system theory (Fortune & Peters, 1990) and systematic literature review (Webster & Watson, 2002) to develop a collaborative network governance theoretical framework for aligning disjoined ecosystems and creating public value. Public value in this article encompasses economic, social, and political values in the open justice and e-justice contexts. This framework is then applied to guide case study research to identify enablers and inhibitors of strategic alignment of the open justice ecosystem and the e-justice ecosystem to create public value in the Federal Court of Australia (FCA) context. Specifically, the framework was applied to guide our research activities: website case data collection, within case analysis, and interpretation of the within case analysis results in the FCA context.

The structure of this article is as follows. The second section presents a review of the relevant literatures: collaborative governance, open justice ecosystem, and e-justice ecosystem. The third section presents a new collaborative network governance framework developed in this article. The fourth section describes our case study research methodology and justification for selecting Australia as our case study. The fifth section presents the within case analysis results of the FCA. The sixth section discusses the key enablers and inhibitors for strategic alignment between the open justice ecosystem and the e-justice ecosystem that would facilitate greater public value creation. Finally, our seventh section presents our conclusions including our theoretical contributions and limitations as well as our future research directions.

Literature Review

Collaborative Governance

In this article, we define collaborative governance “as the processes and structures of public policy decision-making and management that engage people constructively across the boundaries of public agencies, levels of government, and/or public, private and civic spheres in order to carry out a public purpose” (Emerson, Nabatchi, & Balogh, 2012, p. 2). From the definition the capacity for joint action is stressed, with things that can be accomplished working together collaboratively rather than separately, which would deliver better outcomes and create greater public value.

Collaborative governance also brings together multiple stakeholders to build consensus (Ansell & Gash, 2008). Here stakeholders, such as citizens, share the responsibility for policy outcomes. In this sense, collaborative governance is an alternative to the traditional adversarial politics and will promote active citizen engagement in the policy-making process (McGuire, 2006). Collaborative governance also closely aligns with the notion of an ecosystem or a complex system of interdependent subsystems that may coevolve and adapt to changes across both internal and external environments. Such an ecological approach to governance is further reflection of the shift from traditional adversarial politics and traditional public administration toward new and emergent approaches predicated upon the pursuit of public value management through more networked and open governance formations (Bryson, Crosby, & Bloomberg, 2014). In other e-government research contexts, similar terms have been used including network governance (Kellogg & Samanta, 2017) and networked governance (Janssen & van der Voort, 2016; Ojo & Mellouli, 2016) including networked governance of citizen coproduction in turbulent environments (Chatfield & Reddick, 2018).

Collaborative network governance can improve decision-making by more directly linking management decisions to public value. Public value is the rejection of the traditional exclusive foci on efficiency and effectiveness espoused in the new public management movement (Bryson et al., 2014). Instead, it focuses on citizen engagement in democratic and collaborative governance. These wide networks of participants are essential to collaborative governance (Provan & Kenis, 2008).

Collaborative network governance also stresses the importance of leadership capacity and technology capacity. The greater leadership capacity there is, the more willingness to adopt technology, to improve collaboration, and create more public value (Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2015). Importantly, improved collaboration leads to a shared commitment to policy outcomes and hence greater accountability and trust in government (Provan & Kenis, 2008). However, successful collaborative governance can be hard to achieve, since it requires trust, shared commitment, accountability, and a willingness to accept risk (Johnston, Hicks, Nan, & Auer, 2010). In order to create public value through collaborative innovation, there needs to be leadership in finding sponsors, champions, catalysts, and implementers (Crosby, ‘t Hart, & Torfing, 2017). Sponsors have political authority to channel resources and legitimacy to promote change. Champions are able to mobilize the actors in the organization for creating a collaborative process. The catalysts are more of the informal authority that disturbs the organization for meaningful change. Implementers are able to transform the ideas into an action plan.

In a critique of new public management, Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, and Tinkler (2006) argue that there is a movement with e-government from disaggregated decisions, competition, and incentivization to digital era governance which involves reintegration of decisions, needs-based holism, or joined-up government. Essentially, this represents a movement away from the exclusive and central focus on operational efficiency (or economic values) toward examining all dimensions of public value and collaborative network forms of governance and the enabling mechanisms for creating greater public value.

Open Justice Ecosystem

Open justice is an ecosystem inhabited by human decision-makers ranging from the Chief Justice and court judges to court clerks who service court users over the counter or via website (in deciding accept/reject submitted court documents and in deciding the allocation of court docket to a certain court judge). This open justice ecosystem is also inhabited by external court users ranging from police, public defender department, law firms, and legal practitioners as well as media. Theoretically and historically speaking, open justice ecosystem can operate perfectly without e-justice systems, if they want to. But in many countries that have embraced the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies, open justice ecosystems cannot turn their blind eyes to the growing emergence of e-justice systems in particular and digitization of society in general (such as social media and Internet of things). As extant open justice ecosystem start to developing and adopting some of e-justice systems, the existing boundaries between these two ecosystems start to blur, although they may not be perfectly aligned or synchronized as a joined-up ecosystem.

The traditional view behind open justice is the need for publishing court proceedings openly by default that are unhindered and searchable by the public. Before the Internet, open justice has been understood as simply the courts conducting their proceedings in public, not in secret. Now with the prevalence of e-government, there is a renewed call for open justice to improve accountability, effective performance, rights protection, and democracy (Simpson, 2008).

Along with this renewed call, there are the issue of privacy and the issue of unhindered media access to these records (Barrett, 2011). There are tradeoffs between privacy and openness (Bosland & Gill, 2014). This balancing act of safeguarding open access to the court proceedings and protecting privacy issues is of paramount importance. Open justice enables more informed citizenry (Cunliffe, 2012). With regard to open justice, some of the same principles of open government, transparency, participation, and collaboration can be applied to the justice field (Cano, Pomed, Jiménez-Gómez, & Hernández, 2017).

Similar to open government initiatives, open justice initiatives generate vast quantities of data and information. Open justice opens up all of these data for further analysis and review through a “big data” research agenda (Lyon et al., 2015).

e-Justice Ecosystem

e-Justice ecosystem encompasses the application of advanced ICT and the Internet to support the value chain activities in open justice. For example, e-justice ecosystem can include upstream value chain, police use of big data analytics to uncover patterns in police evidences, text analytics in criminal confessions, and even enterprise resource planning in scheduling equitable allocation of uniform police officers to court appearances. However, extant e-justice ecosystems tend to focus more on the downstream value chain application of modern ICT that directly support court administration through web-based electronic court filing system, which can also accelerate the speed of court judges’ decision-making in court to administer the law more openly. So, it is critically important to note that there are a wide array of e-justice systems, a wide array of human decision-makers and system performance monitors, which all together constitute an e-justice ecosystem.

The e-justice literature is diverse and growing. On the one hand, e-justice represents a citizen-centric approach for justice administration by increasing the openness of the justice system to the public (Cano et al., 2015). On the other hand, e-justice focuses on the benefits of the e-justice system in terms of internal management changes that promotes greater efficiency and effectiveness of the justice system (Fabri & Lupo, 2012). In other words, the former focuses on external and social dimensions of public value, which will be discussed later in the next section, whereas the latter focuses on internal and economic dimensions of public value.

Importantly, research in the United States on state and county initiatives shows the potential of e-justice in transforming multiple agencies through strategic partnerships which builds trust (Gil-Garcia, Schneider, Pardo, & Cresswell, 2005). An examination of e-justice systems in Europe and Canada found that offering online processes saved time and resources and more effectively engaged users with the systems (Lupo & Bailey, 2014). Similarly, online access to courts in states in the United States enhanced the legitimacy of the court system (Parkin & Wedeking, 2017), which refers to political dimensions of public value. Court website promoted greater transparency in government, with greater online access to courts predicted practical administrative decisions than political decisions. Finally, European Union use of smart e-justice systems through an e-justice portal showed positive impacts on the efficiency in delivering cross-border justice services (Lupo & Velicogna, 2018).

However, in the case of Cape Verde in Africa, successful adoption requires to pay attention to the risk factors such as careful planning and stakeholder involvement (Rosa et al., 2013). In the Dutch criminal justice system, one of the major challenges is to be able to combine heterogeneous data from many disparate sources such as police, public prosecutor, and the courts (van Dijk, Kalidien, & Choenni, 2016).

The e-justice system in Canadian courts shows that planning for the implementation of these systems is critically important (Bailey & Burkell, 2015). There should be a “big plan” on the overall vision of the system for the long-term success for the justice system. Importantly, this would involve extensive consultation with the court users and a diverse array of other key stakeholders.

Collaborative Network Governance Framework

Given the existing disjointed state of the two open justice and e-justice ecosystems, we have drawn on the formal system theory (Fortune &White, 2006) and integrated this systems thinking approach with the key insights from the literature review to develop a new collaborative network governance framework for aligning the two disjointed ecosystems to create greater public values in open court practice environments. An ecosystem in an open justice services context is defined here as a complex system of interdependent subsystems that encompass a collective of human decision-makers in conjunction with the sociotechnical subsystems of their physical environment in interacting as a joined-up system to provide legal services of greater value to the public.

Figure 1 presents this new conceptual framework that will be described in this section. This article is based upon the premise that the open justice ecosystem and the e-justice ecosystem may not be joined-up without the presence of collaborative network governance structure, although they are expected to interact as an integrated interoperable ecosystem. As our literature review shows, their interrelationships are understudied and poorly understood.

Figure 1.

Collaborative network governance framework.

Open Justice Ecosystem and e-Justice Ecosystem

For this reason, it is essential to examine the degree of interrelatedness (or the lack thereof) of the existing open justice ecosystem and e-justice ecosystem in the court administration and legal service contexts. Figure 1 shows that the open justice ecosystem consists of three interdependent subsystems: open justice subsystem, decision-making subsystem, and performance monitoring subsystem. The framework indicates that a study of any open justice system is incomplete without examining its decision-making subsystem that is responsible for deciding transformations implemented by the open justice subsystem and then provides resources to and legitimizes operations of the open justice subsystem. The framework also indicates that the study also needs to investigate the performance monitoring subsystem so as to understand the transformations being made through the open justice subsystem, which provides the former with performance information.

Figure 1 also shows that the e-justice ecosystem consists of three interdependent subsystems: e-justice subsystems, decision-making subsystem, and performance monitoring subsystem. Similar to the open justice ecosystem, the decision-making subsystem is responsible for deciding transformations implemented by the e-justice subsystems and accordingly provide resources to and legitimize operations of the e-justice subsystems. Here, it is critically important to recognize that the decision-making subsystem and the performance monitoring subsystem of the open justice ecosystem and those of the e-justice ecosystem may be distinct and different in the complex environments of legal services in the Web 2.0 era. Here, it is also critically important to note that while the open justice subsystem such as the federal court in a given country may likely be a singular legal entity (e.g., the FCA by the law is a singular legal entity that administers the law at multiple physical court locations), the e-justice subsystems can consist of a singular e-justice system implemented or multiple e-justice systems that are integrated as a whole.

The formal systems theory suggests that the degree of interrelatedness between the two ecosystems needs to be investigated. The collaborative network governance framework postulates that the central role of collaborative network governance structure in aligning these two (disjointed) ecosystems, engaging court users who are part of the public who may not directly use either of the ecosystem and creating public value for the public.

Public Value

Public value has been shown to be closely reliant on both political legitimacy (often more aligned with open justice) and operational capacity (often more central e-justice) where specific public value outcomes must also be identified and pursued on the basis of dialogue and engagement across a range of stakeholders including the citizenry at large (Moore, 1995). Accordingly, this emergence of a strategic interface of legitimacy, capacity, and public value necessitates an enjoining of open justice and e-justice perspectives within a more integrative ecosystem-based lesson hierarchical structures of traditional government and more on collaborative governance architectures.

Public value creation can be shown in Table 1 in its three dimensions of social, political, and economic values (Wang & Christensen, 2015). As shown in this table, public value for the social dimension is the achievement of societal objectives, political values is seen through consensusand collaboration, and economic value is the promotion of greater efficiency. In Table 1, we show important literatures that addresses each of these values in e-justice and open justice.

Table 1.

Public Value, e-Justice, and Open Justice Dimensions.

Public Values	Public Value Creation Through	e-Justice	Open Justice
Social	Achieving societal objectives	Rosa, Teixeira, and Pinto (2013)	Cano, Pomed, Jiménez-Gómez, and Hernández (2017)
Economic	Enhanced efficiency and performance	Lupo and Velicogna (2018)	Lyon et al. (2015)
Political	Consensus and collaboration	Parkin and Wedeking (2017)	Barrett (2011)

Within such a broad context, our more specific objective is to examine the emergence of innovation that is spurred by open government data policy and governed by collaborative structures, processes, and relational mechanisms as potential key drivers for strategic alignment between open justice and e-justice. Concepts such as open data and new forms of online user and stakeholder engagement via participatory platforms such as social media carry great potential to revolutionize how justice systems are structured with respect to both process accountability and performance outcomes (Cano et al., 2017). At the same time, many e-justice initiatives are undertaken within the constraints of more traditional technology planning and management—often emphasizing proprietary solutions and inward control. In our case study below, we thus examine the space presently afforded to open innovation within efforts to digitize a particular justice system, seeking to better understand the sorts of reform trajectories that presently exist on the one hand, and the prospects for open innovation catalyzing wider system innovation in justice systems going forward.

A joined-up ecosystem consists of an open justice ecosystem and an e-justice ecosystem. It aims to enable the meaningful interplay between the two related but disjoint ecosystems for better court services and greater public values. Key drivers for enabling the joining of the two ecosystems include: a platform such as open government data and social media in government, a type of governance such as collaborative governance for the ministry of justice that is responsible for open justice and the office of prime minister (or other ministry that is responsible for e-justice system development), and open innovation in open justice that engages citizens.

Method

Using the collaborative governance framework developed in this research as a theoretical lens, we conducted case study research to address the research question described in the first section. We collected case data on the framework’score concepts, including open justice ecosystem and e-justice ecosystem, through the federal court website and the Ministry of Justice website in Australia. We analyzed qualitative and quantitative data by performing within case analysis according to the normative guidelines for case study research for building theories (Eisenhardt, 1989).

We have strategically selected Australia, a Commonwealth nation that has adopted British law. In addition, Australia has advanced its e-government and open government capabilities through ICT use. In particular, we have focused on the FCA for our case study. Table 2 shows four national-level measures of the development of Australia: (1) 2016 United Nations e-government development index (global ranking), (2) 2016 United Nations online service index (global ranking; United Nations, 2016), (3) Global Justice Project open government index (global ranking; World Justice Project, 2015), and (4) Global Justice Project rule of law index (World Justice Project, 2016). Table 2 indicates that Australia ranks highly in all four measures, especially with e-government and online services ranked in the top 2.

Table 2.

Characteristics in Openness and Digital Transformation in Australia.

Metrics	Score (Ranking)
2016 United Nations e-Government Development Index (Global Ranking)	0.9143 (2)
2016 United Nations Online Service Index (Global Ranking)	0.9783 (2)
2015 World Justice Project Open Government Index (Global Ranking)	0.74 (9)
2016 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index	0.81 (11)

At the first phase of this research, we used the collaborative governance framework (see Figure 1) as a theoretical lens in performing our case analyses of the e-justice systems implemented in Australia. We have collected case data through the nation’s federal court website and through federal government documents such as information technology project audit reports. At the second phase, we have performed an analysis across of the key enablers and inhibitors for strategically aligning between the open justice ecosystem and the e-justice ecosystem which may have demonstrated similar or different levels of public values through the connected and interoperable e-justice ecosystem to enhance legitimacy and service for Australia.

Within Case Analysis Results: FCA

Open Justice Ecosystem

Since 1990, the FCA has been self-administering, with a separate budget appropriation and reporting arrangement to the Parliament. Under the FCA Act of 1976, the Chief Justice is responsible for managing the Court’s administrative affairs. As Figure 2 shows, the federal court’s open justice ecosystem consists of the Chief Justice, Judges’ Standing Committees, chief executive officer (CEO), National Operations Registrar, Principal Registry, Corporate Services, and District Registries. The position of Chief Information Officer (CIO) located in Sydney reports directly to the executive director, Corporate Services. The Court’s District Registries retain 48 federal court judges who are differently located across six capital cities.

Figure 2.

Organizational structure of the Federal Court of Australia.

Importantly, the Court’s open justice ecosystem also includes a wide range of external stakeholders of the FCA. They are (open justice) court users including litigants, lawyers, police, media, as well as the Law Council of Australia, Law Society of New South Wales, and law societies for other states among others. However, the size of the population of these court users is deemed much smaller than that of the population of Australia’s general public who may or may not be directly impacted by the implementation and operation of the open justice court practice.

Open Justice

The FCA (herein refers to “the federal court”) established in 1977 and sits in all capital cities (http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/about/jurisdiction, November 2015). The objectives of the federal court (FCA, 2017a, p. 321) are to:

decide disputes according to law—as quickly, inexpensively, and efficiently as possible,

provide an effective registry service for the community, and

manage the resources allotted by Parliament efficiently.

The principle of open justice is directly relevant for the first two objectives. Open justice is a fundamental aspect of the common law and the administration of justice. It is seen as “the fundamental attributes of a fair trial” (Australian Law Reform Commission, 2016, p. 231). The Australian Law Reform Commission Final Report states that court proceedings must be conducted openly, “publicly and in open view” and not in secret. Open courts of law activities are distinguished from those of administrative officials, “for publicity is the authentic hallmark of judicial as distinct from administrative procedure” (Australian Law Reform Commission, 2016, p. 232). In summary, according to the 2016 Final Report (p. 232), the principle of open justice is substantiated to address the demands of litigants who “seek highly skilled, expeditious and inexpensive dispute resolution” in three important ways:

Proceedings are conducted in “open court”.

Information and evidence presented in court is communicated publicly to those present in the court.

Nothing is to be done to discourage the making of fair and accurate reports of judicial proceedings conducted in open court, including by the media.

Decision-Making Subsystem

Figure 2 shows the organizational structure of the FCA. The organizational chart reveals the public governance structure in terms of the allocation of decision rights. Within the open justice ecosystem, the FCA’s the decision-making subsystem broadly includes internal executive decision-makers, in particular the Chief Justice. In Australia, the appointment to the position of the Chief Justice of the federal court is transparent so as to sustain the legitimacy of the federal court. Historically, according to the Chief Justice James Allsop, the creation of the federal court evoked political debates on its potentially negative impact on the standing and central importance of the State Supreme Courts.

The appointee for the Chief Justice position is likely to come from the serving Commonwealth judiciary and have already been known to government. The Attorney-General’s Department takes the lead inconsulting widely with State and territory Attorneys-General, Chief Justice and Justices of the High Court, and State and territory Chief Justices, as well as takes responsibility for the approval of the Prime Minister and/or his or her Cabinet (Australian Government Attorneys-General’s Department, 2012). This transparent appointment process seems to ensure that the Chief Justice is well connected to (and may be well regarded by) both legal and political stakeholders: the serving Commonwealth judiciary community and the serving policy makers in government.

In addition to the Chief Justice, the decision-making subsystem includes Judges’ Standing Committee. The federal court’s Policy and Planning Committee advises the Chief Justice on policy aspects of the administration of the Court. Similarly, the National Practice Committee advises the Chief Justice and judges on practice and procedure reform and improvement. The committees provide advice to the Chief Justice and to all federal court judges at the biannual judges’ meetings (FCA, 2017b). Finally, the decision-making subsystem includes the CEO of the federal court (who is also Principal Registrar).

Performance Monitoring Subsystem

For the federal court’s third objective mentioned earlier, the National Court Framework (NCF; The FCA, 2014) is directly relevant. The Court’s open justice ecosystem has implemented fundamental reforms in early 2015. After the ongoing consultation with the Court’s external stakeholders in the legal community, the federal court has implemented the NCF to redress the federal court’s caseload and operational performance issues related to the 48 federal court judges, who are located over eight different court districts nationwide (see Figure 2‘s District Registries).

The NCF is a top–down strategy-driven governance process to transform the federal court into a seamless operation nationwide. By removing the existing variations in court administration, the NCF aims to standardize the way the federal court operates judicial practices, procedures, and case management approaches across the eight district registries so as to meet the demands of litigants more quickly, inexpensively, and efficiently by facilitating the timely and just resolution of disputes according to law (FCA, 2017a). The NCF has four reform goals (FCA, 2017a, p. 1):

To organize and manage nationally the whole of the Court’s work by reference to the great subject matter areas of the Court’s work;

To organize the Court’s resources to meet the demands of the broad range of work done by the Court;

To develop the confidence of the profession and the community, particularly in areas requiring a degree of specialized skill and knowledge;

To broaden the base of judicial knowledge and experience in the Court.

The federal court has implemented the NCF reform goals to affect the changes in court structure, allocation of cases, and practice and procedure including judges’ workflow. According to the FCA (2017a, p. 3), the expected benefits for litigants through the implementation of the NCF reforms are:

Simplified practice and procedure;

Access to judicial experience and expertise;

Early case management hearings;

Enhanced facilitation of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) (including mediation);

Hearings set down, wherever possible, within 6 months of the case management hearing;

Judgment delivered within approximately 3–6 months of the completion of the trial;

Focus on costs processes including encouragement of lump sum or apportioned cost orders at the time of judgment.

These expected benefits are what we refer to as social values that reflect the impact of enhanced Open Court services level on time and cost of the Open Court users, in terms of public value dimensions: “accessibility, quality, and convenience of services” (The World Bank, 2007, p. 1).

Chief Justice James Allsop commented on the NCF reforms: “It’s a big change and an organizational change of some significance” (Low, 2014, p. 1). Importantly, however, the voluminous NCF document fails to mention the principle of open justice.

e-Justice Ecosystem

The scope of the e-justice ecosystem has evolved over time. The e-justice ecosystem in 2014 consisted of the newly rolled out electronic court file (ECF) system, its internal users: judges, judges’ executive assistants, and court administrators within the federal court, and its external users: Australia’s legal community (e.g., law firms and trial lawyers). Over time, this e-justice ecosystem aligned the federal court’s digital services strategy with the federal court’s digital transformation agenda. In consequence, the scope of the e-justice ecosystem grew to include other e-justice systems. They include casetrack system and two court portals which have other court users such as ordinary citizens as self-representing litigants and mass media for reporting the federal court proceedings.

e-Justice Subsystem

According to the 2013 contracts listing (FCA, 2013), a private firm Neurocom Pty Ltd. won the contract with the federal court to develop the ECF, integrate the ECF with extant information systems, namely, casetrack and e-lodgment, and provide other supporting functional requirements. The 1-year project cost was A$647,063 for the project period of April 2013 to April 2014. The ECF system, the first of its kind in Australia, was rolled out in Sydney on October 20, 2014 (Soden, 2014a) in the phased implementation method. This changeover process of migrating to the new ECF system was completed in the remaining capital cities in the second half of 2015.

The ECF allows documents to be lodged online at anytime and anywhere and the Court accepts and acknowledges receipt promptly online during the day. Once accepted, the ECF system enables these digital documents to become transparent within the Court instantly and accessible concurrently by litigants, judges, lawyers, mass media, and the public. In consequence, the ECF system accelerates the legal decision-making process, which can create public value by reducing the costly delays, shortening the court hearing days, and optimizing the Court’s high-value human resources, namely, the 48 judges. The Court is now free from trolleys loaded with large legal document files cluttering court rooms. Both lawyers and judges no longer have to thumb their way through the large piles of paper to find the right document during the court hearings. The ECF has streamlined the way in which the Court operates, which enables the Court users to focus on the Court’s number one objective: to resolve disputes as quickly, inexpensively, and efficiently as possible.

The new web-based ECF system leverages Web 2.0 technology to increase the openness and accessibility of the federal court to the public. The external users of the ECF system, namely, litigants and legal practitioners, can lodge digital court documents online at any time through the federal court website (http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/about/electronic-court-file). The federal court can accept and acknowledge receipt promptly. The assimilation of the ECF system, which is digitally accessible and searchable by the internal users, in particular by the federal court judges, has already brought changes to the court room practices (FCA, 2017c). For example, judge and associate sit in court with two computer screens in front of each of them, while solicitors at table are also supported by laptops. Court rooms were no longer cluttered with trolleys loaded with heavy paper files. Solicitors at table were no longer shifting through large paper documents around. This digitization of the court room through the ECF is viewed by the federal court as “the quiet revolution” in radically transforming the flows of information and accelerating the speed of court decision-making. Of the more than 70,000 court documents the federal court receives per year, more than 50% of these are now electronically lodged through the federal court website. With the increased adoption and use of the ECF system both by the internal and external users, it continues to enhance the operational effectiveness and efficiency of court operations.

Decision-Making Subsystem

As Figure 2 shows, the decision-making subsystem within the e-justice ecosystem aims to govern and provide resources to evolve e-justice subsystem. It encompasses Corporate Services responsible for information technology, eServices, and communications among others. The federal court’s CIO is largely responsible for external and internal stakeholder management and engagement, strategic information technology (IT) planning, IT project management, and IT policy development, although CIO does not directly report to the Court’s CEO (and Principal Registrar). The federal court’s recent appointment of the CIO as an IT governance structure signals the increasing importance of IT in facilitating the federal court’s open justice practice.

IT governance involves allocating decision rights and accountabilities for important strategic IT decisions to influence desirable behaviors in the systemic and effective use of IT across the user community (Weill, 2004). Here, the transparency of IT governance structure and processes is critically important to garner internal stakeholders’ confidence in IT and their wide engagement in governing the desirable IT use behaviors.

Performance Monitoring Subsystem

The Court has been underresourced and subject to further federal budget cuts according to the President of the Law Council of Australia (Bullock, 2016). Despite this adverse funding situation, as Figure 3 shows, the combined caseloads at the FCA and the Federal Circuit Court (FCC) have been on the rise from 2011–2012 to 2015–2016. Since the ECF system was rolled out in the second half of 2015 to all the eight registries in Australia, under the decreasing budget situations, the upward trend of the blue line graph for FCA (the FCA) from 2014–2015 to 2015–2016 in Figure 3 provides evidence for an enabling impact of the systemic use of the ECF system by the Court. As part of the shared services, FCC (shown by the orange line graph) also adopted the ECF system. But we have not studied its use so it is not clear whether or not FCC used it systemically or effectively.

Figure 3.

An enabling impact of the ECF system on court operational efficiency.

The ECF system was integrated with the Court’s casetrack system by Neurocom Pty Ltd. in 2014. This integrated and expanded e-justice ecosystem provides valuable business intelligence. It enables the Court to better manage judges’workload and workflow. Chief Justice James Allsop aptly observed (Low, 2014, p. 2):

That kind of business intelligence at first instance, with all the paper files in the registries is very, very hard to collect. You have to go out and hunt the information down.

Specifically, the National Operations Registrar (see Figure 2) responsible for the Court’s fundamental reforms not only can monitor how many cases any one judge is assigned but also can track of the caseload in real time to answer questions such as how many pre-trial stoushes have been fought and how many cases have been settled early on or before hearing. Prior to the ECF system roll out, the eight Registries have evolved to operate in slightly different ways. Chief Justice (The Hon) James Allsop remarked that these idiosyncrasies had been identified by the legal profession as an urgent area in which the operational performance of the Court should improve (Low, 2014, p. 2). So, the ECF system enabled the Court to redress the primary concerns of its external stakeholders and hence creating public value to this segment of Court users.

The Commonwealth Courts Portal (http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/online-services/commonwealth-courts-portal) provides shared services in eLodgment, eCourtroomonline law search, ECF and transcript search, and case tracking search for users of the FCA, Family Court of Australia, and FCC of Australia. It was first launched in 2004 and was redesigned in 2016 to enhance public information services through better search engine and better access to quality and quantity of judicial and registry services information. This initiative is part of the Court’s attempt to align the Portal with the Australian federal government’s Digital Technology Strategy for optimizing digital services to the public through increased self-service and through a shared digital services intranet. The Court continues to conduct targeted surveys of key stakeholders to measure their satisfaction with the simplified and agile digital Court services (FCA, 2016).

Collaborative Network Governance

In practice, the federal court’s governance networks involve two distinct network structures (FCA, 2017b). The first governance network aims at the management of the Court through its registry structure. The second governance network at policy formulation and implementation through the judges’ committee structure to facilitate the collegiate and collaborative engagement of the judges of the federal court. Judges also participate in the management of the Court through formal meetings of all judges.

The FCA has been self-administering since 1990, with a separate budget appropriation and a direct reporting to the Parliament (Chief Justice’s Chambers FCA, 2016). Chief Justice assumes the overall responsibility for the governance of the federal court’s administration which is managed by the CEO. Importantly, Judges’ Committees play an integral role in governing policies and rules and implementing the court practice and procedure reforms underlying the NCF (FCA, 2017a). The governance structure of relevance to this article is the Judges’ Standing Committee on Information Technology, which collaborates with Corporate Services responsible for information technology and eServices as well as with Principal Registry responsible for services issues, policy, and projects particularly for IT-enabled reforms of the FCA practice and procedure. The Judges’ Committees also collaborate with the National Operations Registrar, located in Melbourne, who is responsible for the implementation of the NCF reforms. The National Operations Registrar is also responsible for allocating cases to the judges, monitoring the individual judge’s docket, and managing workflows more effectively for greater efficiency gains (Low, 2014).

Public Value

The overarching aim of the ECF system is to advance the Court’s eServices strategy and digital transformation of court services through open digital hearings. The ECF system is strategically aligned to “contribute to the overarching performance of the Court” (Soden, 2014a, p. 13). Mr. Warwick Soden, the CEO and Registrar at the federal court, stated at the JCA Colloquium held on October 10–12, 2014 (Soden, 2014b, p. 15; added):

The reason for the implementation of the ECF was not to make savings and not to reduce staff. The ECF project focused upon procedural improvement for judges and the legal profession. Nevertheless, a capital investment should assure a return on that investment, even if not delivering a cost saving immediately it should create productivity improvements for the near future (i.e. more with less).

The federal court’s CEO also asserted:

The ECF is part of a “quiet revolution” to bring about significant savings in time and money. But the ECF is more than operational efficiency gains for the Court. Importantly, it has made impacts on the Court’s stakeholders by radically changing ease of access, retrieval and portability, and improving case management for litigants, practitioners and the Court. The Court is visibly free from the limitations and time-consuming constraints paper files imposed.

Importantly, while the CEO holds that the ECF system provided the federal court with enhanced operational efficiency in terms of reduced time and cost in the administration of court operations (economic value dimensions of public value), the first-order effects of the ECF system were on achieving standardized open justice practices across the federal court judges and the practitioners. Digital transformation in open justice practice may have second-order effects on the public, which would enhance the federal court’s service level on time and cost of the Open Court users, in terms of “accessibility, quality, and convenience of services” (social value dimensions of public value; The World Bank, 2007, p. 1). These second-order effects can radically change the external stakeholders’ interactions with the Court (social value dimensions of public value), which would strengthen the federal court’s legitimacy and relations with the legal professionals, mass media, and the public (political value dimensions of public value).

Discussion

In this article, we have observed the state of disjointed open justice and e-justice ecosystems that sustain the conundrum of developing a clear understanding of enablers and inhibitors for public value creation through investments in e-justice systems to enhance open justice practice. In consequence, we have addressed the research question on the key enablers and inhibitors for achieving strategic alignment between the open justice ecosystem and the e-justice ecosystem to facilitate effective and systemic use of e-justice systems and to advance open justice in society, which in turn would create public value for the public in the new and emergent open court practice context in the Web 2.0 era.

Theoretically, we have developed a new collaborative network governance framework that draws on the formal systems theory and a review of the relevant literatures. This framework holds that open justice and e-justice ecosystems that are strategically and operationally aligned better (vis-à-vis those that are aligned poorly) can engage both internal (e.g., court judges) and external stakeholders (e.g., court users) in adopting, using, and assimilating e-justice systems in the course of advancing the open justice practice more effectively and more systemically. However, the collaborative network governance framework recognizes that better alignment does not automatically happen in today’s complex legal service ecosystems environments and that wider network forms of collaborative governance structure and processes are required.

Empirically,we have conducted case study research in Australia’s open justice practice, with the central focus on the FCA, by applying the collaborative network governance framework as a theoretical lens. We have presented the salient within case analysis results in the previous section. Table 3 shows a summary of these findings. We found, overall, strong evidence for the enhanced operational efficiency and standardization in court administration and operations through the use of the web-based electronic court filing (ECF) system, a subsystem. As of 2016, over 50% of more than 70,000 court documents were electronically lodged via the Commonwealth Courts portal by the Court users. Access to digitized court documents enabled both judges and lawyers in the court room to reduce the duration for case hearings and to deliver judgment within 3–6 months of the completion of the trial; one of the NCF reform objective discussed earlier in this article.

Table 3.

Summary of Case Analysis Results.

Evidence for strategic alignment of ecosystems	Federal Court of Australia
Structure of collaborative network governance for open justice subsystem	Structurally, largely internal (the federal court judges)
Processes of collaborative network governance	Regularly consult external stakeholders (the legal community) but no formal processes for direct involvement for neither citizens nor media Ongoing wide consultations and interactions with internal stakeholders (regular judges’ meetings across registries)
IT governance structures for e-justice subsystem	The Judges’ Standing Committee on Information Technology, which collaborates with Corporate Services responsible for IT and eServices CIO directly reports to Executive responsible for Corporate Services, who in turn reports to CEO
Interactive portal	Commonwealth Courts Portal
Electronic court filing Online	Yes through Commonwealth Courts Portal
Online search for electronic court files (one of the e-justice subsystems) and case status	Yes through Commonwealth Courts Portal
Online search for judgments	Yes through Commonwealth Courts Portal (judgment in full text and updated daily)
Social media platforms for online citizenengagement	No
Electronic case management for judges’workload	Yes (the ECF system is integrated interoperably with casetrack system for business intelligence and effective case management for all judges)
Economic value dimensions of public value	Enhanced operational effectiveness Operational efficiency gains
Social value dimensions of public value through the ECF system	Reduced time and cost of the federal court users Improved service level in terms of shorter trials and shorter decision-making for judgments Social impact on inclusive access to open justice practice; letigants and/or their legal representatives can electronically lodge court cases and documents anywhere anytime in Australia, whereas the physical locations of the federal court are limited to the eight capital cities
Political value dimensions of public value through the ECF system	Political return on investments in digital transformation of the court sesrvices The legitimacy of the federal court as the leader of advancing open justice practice in Australia
User satisfaction	Yes (but survey results were not published online)
Open services innovation	No (although digital audio recordings of court proceedings are supported, no proactive publication of open data online for open services innovation)

Moreover, the integration of the ECF front-end system with extant casetrack and e-lodgment back-end systems in 2014 also provided new ECF-enabled business intelligence on the judges’ caseloads for improved case load management. As mentioned earlier in the previous section, Chief Justice James Allsop aptly observed (Low, 2014, p. 2):

That kind of business intelligence at first instance, with all the paper files in the registries is very, very hard to collect. You have to go out and hunt the information down.

His observation is consistent with another documented evidence. Figure 3 shows the impact of the ECF on the number of caseloads the federal court judges completed. Due to the budget cuts, the number of caseloads completed declined steadily from 2012 to 2014. Against this backdrop, the ECF-enabled number of completed caseloads by the judges increased significantly from 2014 to 2016.

Due to the budget constraints and the increased pressure to deliver the NCF reforms, advancing self-service by litigants and their legal representatives has become important. In order to reduce operational costs and to facilitate more efficient electronic record search, the first order of business is to digitize court filing through the federal court portal in the case of the FCA. Our case study research has found strong evidence for the FCA’s enhanced operational effectiveness and efficiency through the use of the e-justice ecosystem. This finding is consistent with the literature review findings on the reported economic value dimensions of realized public value through the use of e-justice system. These results confirm that the use of an e-justice system is an important enabler for performance enhancement to create economic values, one of the three dimensions of public value as shown in Table 1.

It is clear that the federal court’s e-justice ecosystem had positive impacts not only on enhanced operational effectiveness and efficiency but also on enhanced open justice service level. The ECF system substantially reduced time and cost of the federal court users, while it increased convenience and speed of trial judgment. These are social values realized for the public. So, essentially, by improving judicial services delivery performance, within the budget allocated to the federal court by the Parliament, which was the overriding concern for the Chief Justice and the decision-making subsystem of the open justice ecosystem, the observed better alignment with the e-justice ecosystem enabled the realization of social values. This is consistent with the insight of Mr. Warwick Soden, the CEO and Registrar at the federal court on the realized social values as we quoted earlier in the previous section:

The ECF is part of a“quiet revolution” to bring about significant savings in time and money. But the ECF is more than operational efficiency gains for the Court. Importantly, it has made impacts on the Court’s stakeholders by radically changing ease of access, retrieval, and portability, and improving case management for litigants, practitioners, and the Court. The Court is visibly free from the limitations and time-consuming constraints paper files imposed.

The FCA has implemented a unified collaborative network governance structure involving Chief Justice, Judges’ Standing Committee on Information Technology, CEO, CIO, and Executive for National Operations Registry responsible for the implementation of the NCF for reforms. With the FCA, there is a clear and present focus on ongoing consultations with both internal (e.g., federal judges) and external (e.g., the legal professionals and state-level law associations) Court users to create greater public values in delivering transparent open justice practice through the effective and systemic use of the e-justice ecosystem. However, both countries fail to exploit open data generated by the digital audio recording of federal court proceedings either through machine learning (Fersini et al., 2010) or by students of law, legal professionals, and the public for open innovation. From these results, we do see some evidence of collaborative network governance taking place in the context of the FCA.

Conclusion

This case study research on the federal court in Australia found the criticality of achieving better strategic alignment between the open justice and e-justice ecosystems through collaborative network governance for greater public value creation and realization. Through our central research question shown in the first section, we examined the enablers and inhibitors for strategic alignment of the open justice and e-justice ecosystems. Our initial literature review and framework in Figure 1 showed the importance of wider collaborative network governance structure in achieving high-level strategic and operational alignment of the open justice ecosystem and the e-justice ecosystem that were evolved separately over time. There were some elements of the framework found in our case analysis in the context of the use of ICT to improve performance management of both justice systems. Indeed, the results confirm that it is not the adoption of ICT (such as electronic record and portal) in isolation but the effective and systemic use of an integrated and interoperable e-justice ecosystem that can have an important impact on enhanced court administration operations and enhanced open justice of greater public value in society. There was strong evidence that Australia used collaborative network governance to increase public value creation. However, the FCA has failed to exploit the existing open data generated by digital audio recording of the federal court proceedings for open services innovation through text mining and machine learning. In addition, it has also failed to exploit the technology affordances of ubiquitous social media platforms which Australian governments at all levels have widely adopted.

Our case analysis results have three important policy implications. First, governments that plan to create public value through an electronic court file (or electronic filing) system need to develop a collaborative form of network governance to engage a wide range of internal and external stakeholders. Second, while capital funding for investments in IT infrastructure and network security to support such an electronic court file system is necessary but not sufficient for public value creation. This electronic court file system needs to be integrated with the extant back office systems such as Australia’s casetrack system to create an interoperable e-justice ecosystem. Third but not the least, strategic leadership in government is critically important to be able to align the IT investments strategy with the federal court’s overarching business strategy to administer the law openly and transparently for the public. Overall, it seems apparent that the capacity for open innovation and systemic adaptation of justice systems within increasingly digitized social and organizational contexts necessitates a holistic ecosystem approach (across traditionally separate open justice and e-justice spheres) that effectively leverages collaborative governance approaches. A disconnect between the two would instead yield a technocratic focus on e-justice initiatives lacking wider public and political legitimacy. Toward these policy implications, we hold that the new collaborative network governance framework is useful for policy makers as well as academics who would research the interrelationships between the open justice and e-justice ecosystems.

This research has some limitations that should be mentioned. One limitation is our case study analysis of only one country. As Table 2 shows, Australia is one of the leading developed countries in terms of ICT adoption and use in government and society. Our key findings from the FCA may not be directly applicable to other federal courts in developing countries with the low ICT adoption rate. More studies are needed to verify our initial case analysis findings through an analysis of other leading countries. Another research limitation is the lack of field case interview data since we only examined secondary data. Finally, our framework with its focus on public value creation is missing possibly other important dimensions of public values. Our future research directions include field case studies of a greater number of developed and developing counties and their advancement in the e-justice and open justice ecosystems. The implications of this research show the need for more research on open justice and e-justice. From our analysis, these fields are relatively understudied area, but growing importance given the rapid changes to technology and its impact more broadly on the criminal justice field.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

The data used in this study are available by emailing the authors at akemi@uow.edu.au and chris.reddick@utsa.edu. The various reports are available online.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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