Courts keep their distance – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

Not only citizens will be able to file claims online through the State Services, but also organizations through the system of interdepartmental interaction, the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court said on Thursday. But citizens will get access to e-justice before officials: the development of the Justice Online super service is in its final stages, and some of the functions should start working this year. Organizations will have to wait until at least next year.

The development of the Justice Online super service is in its final stages; testing and launch of the service for filing procedural documents with the court through the State Services will begin in the near future. Viktoria Bogdanova, Deputy Head of the Main Directorate for Organizational and Legal Support of the Courts of the Judicial Department, spoke about this, speaking on March 16 at a scientific and practical conference on organizational models for ensuring the activities of the courts. “We have completed the work on our side, coordinated interactive forms for submitting data with the Ministry of Digital Development,” she said. “After testing, they will be published on the single Gosuslugi portal.”

The superservice is being created as part of the Digital Public Administration federal project of the Digital Economy national program. It is assumed that it will allow remotely – through the “Gosuslugi” and the MFC – to submit documents to the court, pay the state fee, get acquainted with the case materials in electronic form, receive judicial acts and even participate in a court session via a web conference.

It is planned that the super service will be fully implemented in 2024, but some of the functions, including filing and receiving court documents online in civil and administrative proceedings, should start operating in 2023.

As they said in the judicial department, the service for determining territorial jurisdiction, the service for notifying participants in the trial by courts of general jurisdiction through the State Services, and the service for calculating the state duty are in a state of readiness. The work on the implementation of the service for filing electronic documents in the framework of civil and administrative proceedings is close to completion. As for the possibility of remote participation in the videoconference mode, it will have to wait until the end of next year. (As previously explained in the Judicial Department, the law requires biometric authentication of participants in the process. The commissioning of a unified biometric system by the Ministry of Digital Development is planned for the end of 2023, and based on the results of this work, it will be possible to introduce a remote process.)

In addition, Irina Dobrynina, deputy head of the Informatization Department of the Judicial Department, said that in parallel, work is underway to organize interdepartmental information exchange. The unified system of interdepartmental electronic interaction (SMEV) will allow authorities, credit and other organizations to exchange data.

GAS “Justice” is already registered in this system as a point of interaction with other departments: for example, courts can receive information from the Federal Tax Service on 19 types of requests, Rosreestr can provide information from the USRN, and interaction with the treasury allows you to confirm the fact of payment of duties and fines. Most of the court decisions are already sent to Roskomnadzor electronically. The possibility of sending requests about a citizen’s passport file to the Ministry of Internal Affairs has been implemented, and data exchange with the Federal Penitentiary Service is being prepared – in order to send there judicial acts on the imposition of punishments not related to deprivation of liberty. In addition, it is planned to develop a system for filing lawsuits through SMEV in 2023 – the Federal Tax Service, the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, Sberbank and other credit organizations will be able to use it to send applications to the court electronically.

Elena Avakyan, vice-president of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers, says that organizations still have no big problems with electronic document management: it has been introduced in arbitration courts since 2010. But with the filing of claims online in the courts of general jurisdiction, even in Moscow, difficulties arise. And if a single window system appears that will allow not scanning and attaching documents, but filling out ready-made forms, this will be a great boon for people and will make life much easier for everyone, Ms. Avakyan is sure.

But you need to understand that the new super service will become a success story only if it “turns to face the people,” the expert warns: this should distinguish it from the Pravosudie GAS, which was created based primarily on the needs of judges and the judicial system.

So, according to Elena Avakyan, the Electronic Guard service, a system for immediately notifying citizens of any actions against them, should become an absolutely necessary element of digital justice. In addition, the judicial service on the State Services portal will work adequately only if the status of a lawyer appears there, because now the defender simply cannot act online in the interests of the client, the expert adds.

Anastasia Kornya