Custom HMCTS video platform bought as part of £280m digitisation project used less than Zoom, say judges
- Reference: 1623068106
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/07/hmcts_cloud_video_platform_kinly_criticism_judges/
- Source link:
As government bans on leaving one’s home for all but the most vital reasons bit into the nation’s economy last year, courtrooms were no different. Civil and criminal cases alike [2]moved to online hearings , with judges and defendants joining remote video calls instead of attending trials in courthouses. During April 2020 [3]up to 90 per cent of court and tribunal hearings took place over video calls.
While that shift to online hearings was foreseen as part of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals’ (HMCTS’) controversial digitisation strategy, something cost-driven mandarins didn’t foresee was their own video platform being deemed worse than commercial-off-the-shelf technology from Zoom – by no less than their own judges.
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The embarrassing snippet was revealed in a survey of 1,500 judicial office holders* who HMCTS asked to express an opinion on video conferencing tech in use across Britain’s courts and tribunals. The resulting survey, [5]Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on tribunal hearings , said:
Satisfaction with the platforms used to conduct remote hearings was generally high (between 64.4% and 82.9%). Respondents were least satisfied with Skype for Business (only 64.5% of respondents who had used this platform described themselves as satisfied or very satisfied) and most satisfied with Zoom (82.9% of respondents who had used this platform described themselves as satisfied or very satisfied).
Only 69.4% of respondents were satisfied with Cloud Video Platform — which had the second-highest percentage of dissatisfied users after Skype for Business. This may be considered worrying given that Cloud Video Platform has been chosen as the official platform for use across tribunals in England and Wales.
Cloud Video Platform is supplied by Kinly, a firm whose roots lie in a 2018 merger between two SME-sized businesses, Viju and VisionsConnected. The custom HMCTS video platform’s roots [6]lie in the Common Platform Programme , a £280m cost-saving exercise intended to allow the [7]slashing of 5,000 jobs and closures of physical court buildings .
"Respondents indicated that proceeding with hearings remotely has created new practical and attitudinal barriers to accessing the justice system for some parties," noted the rather gloomy HMCTS survey.
[8]Hundreds of millions 'wasted' on UK court digitisation scheme
[9]Courting disaster: Watchdog slams UK justice digitisation plans
[10]Ministry of Justice abandons key plank of £280m IT project
[11]Exodus: Tech top brass bail on £1bn UK courts reform amid concerns project is floundering
[12]£1bn UK justice system digitisation scheme in massive delay shocker
[13]£1bn Brit court digitisation scheme would be great ... if Wi-Fi situation wasn't 'wholly inadequate'
[14]UK minister tries to intervene after Government Digital Service migration mangles Ministry of Justice webpages
1,507 judges completed the full survey, which asked for their views of video hearings carried out between March and July 2020.
“In the early stages of the research it was revealed that no central record was kept of the numbers of judicial office holders who had heard cases remotely between 19 March 2020 and 31 July 2020. The absence of this data makes it impossible to assess the response rate to the survey (i.e., how many judicial office holders who were eligible to participate in the survey chose to do so)” added the HMCTS document.
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In canned commentary accompanying the report, Sir Keith Lindblom, a senior judge holding the post of Senior President of Tribunals, said: “As we consider how best to go forward in the tribunals when the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, we must look back at what has worked well and what has not. With this in mind, I am grateful for the work that the [Legal Education Foundation] have put into the survey and the report on its findings.”
A HM Courts and Tribunals Service spokesperson said:
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“The rapid rollout of remote hearings has helped keep the justice system moving throughout the pandemic, with more than 20,000 hearings now using this technology every week.
“We are carrying out an evaluation of court users’ experiences of video hearings to ensure they work even more effectively in future.” ®
Wignote
* “Judicial office holders” is a catch-all term. Here it refers to full time tribunal judges, part time deputy judges and non-legally-trained tribunal panel members who sit alongside judges and help decide cases.
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/20/pac_hmcts_court_digitisation/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/01/uk_courts_video_conferencing/
[3] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/courts-and-tribunals-data-on-audio-and-video-technology-use-during-coronavirus-outbreak
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YL5CnpudBFNz0BvVhwenDwAAAMQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.judiciary.uk/announcements/understanding-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-tribunal-hearings/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2017/04/03/up_to_200m_wasted_on_court_digitisation_plans/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/09/courting_disaster_watchdog_slams_hmcts_digitisation_plans/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2017/04/03/up_to_200m_wasted_on_court_digitisation_plans/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/09/courting_disaster_watchdog_slams_hmcts_digitisation_plans/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2019/01/08/ministry_of_justice_it_project/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2019/06/14/exodus_of_top_brass_from_courts_reform_programme/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2019/09/13/delayed_1bn_court_digitisation_programme_behind_schedule_nao/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2019/11/01/mps_slam_tech_behind_1bn_court_modernisation_programme/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/25/gds_ministry_of_justice_website_migration_calamity/
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YL5CnpudBFNz0BvVhwenDwAAAMQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YL5CnpudBFNz0BvVhwenDwAAAMQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YL5CnpudBFNz0BvVhwenDwAAAMQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "no central record was kept of [,,] who had heard cases remotely..."
The implication of this is that the official court record is either incomplete or not held in a way that facilitates query.
Justice must be seen to be done
On the basis that in a democracy justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done*, how is that achieved over web video applications? I realise that some tribunals etc. are closed (in that the public are not allowed in to protect the privacy of children or vulnerable adults) but if online judicial hearings are to continue they are going to have to consider this fairly urgently.
I also wonder at the security of the Zoom calls after Boris's little 'mishap' early in the pandemic.
*and, on occasion, must be seen to be believed.
Re: Justice must be seen to be done
Ah - security. The standard answer to the question' Why can't i use this widely utilised industry standard software that JFW - instead of the weird bespoke app that no one has heard of, can't be installed on any normal device, probably doesn't support the latest flavour of Windows/Android/IOS?'
Extra marks for the app that can't be loaded from an official app store, so means you have to switch off some default protections to install it.
Re: Justice must be seen to be done
"Extra marks for the app that can't be loaded from an official app store"
Usually vendors make that very hard to install software from an official app store (official and internal to your company right?). Instead they always want you to use their consumer app store like Apple's AppStore or Microsoft WinStore which is obviously an absolute no-go for internally deployed software.
So an .msi file on Windows, a .deb and .rpm for Linux. Frankly any other device is probably inappropriate for this kind of work.
Re: Justice must be seen to be done
Civil proceedings are usually closed as the only interested parties are the litigants themselves. After a cautious start, the technology seems to have been adopted enthusiastically. Particularly as it means as the cases can proceed and the lawyers get paid.
Criminal law is a different matter and the already-long waiting list for trials has become even lengthier. Additional [1]Nightingale Courts have been provided to partly compensate for the lack of space in most traditional courts for social distancing, but the provision for public access has been somewhat perfunctory although it is in theory permitted. In some cases video conferencing has been used to allow lawyers, defendants and juries to be in physically separate spaces in the same building whilst still allowing the proceedings to be observed.
[1] https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/commentary-and-opinion/on-the-frontline-in-a-nightingale-court/5105647.article
CVP...
CVP...
From inside, the problems seem mostly to be the outside looking in, certainly it does not seem to suffer the afternoon blues like Teams does.
The Court side interface is clunky and has an annoying habit of having a nap and becoming unresponsive mid session.
Oh and i nearly forgot the pathetic and near inability to filter out howl-round feedback, how did i nearly forget that!
Still, Teams and Zoom are more familiar to general users, perhaps that very familiarity is skewing the responses...
Not that i'm defending CVP
jitsi
Why didn't they just download that and create a Courts-only server?
"no central record was kept of [,,] who had heard cases remotely between 19 03 2020 and 31 07 2020"
I would say that that is unbelievable, but this is UK Gov IT, so yeah, par for the course.