The Ministry of Justice Belgium transforms digitally to enhance services

Whether or not we consciously realize it, justice departments do more than mediate civil cases, adjudicate rights, resolve disputes, and support civic reintegration. They are also integral to creating new opportunities and enabling life-changing moments, like adoption, that kindle new possibilities for individuals and families.

This is why innovation in this space is especially important. Innovation across justice has a direct impact on real, meaningful milestones — while also maintaining safe, equitable, reliable communities. And the Ministry of Justice Belgium is setting the example of how it's done. 

“The Ministry of Justice team is on a mission to deliver faster, firmer, and more human service,” said Peter Coussement, Senior Advisor to the Minister, which is no small endeavor when you look at the backdrop:

• Justice has a huge ecosystem of stakeholders. Going back to the adoption example, think about all the people who are typically involved: aside from the judges, prosecutors and clerks, there are legal guardians, biological parents, social workers, lawyers, bailiffs, court appointed experts, translators, teachers, counselors, police, all types of inspection services, and more.
• Each of these teams has their own data, stored in different formats, and managed by different legacy IT systems, which means more time spent collecting paper forms, deciphering handwriting, correcting errors, and uploading data manually. “In one of our applications for Supreme Court cases, ‘Spain’ was spelled 70 different ways across 30 years of cases because of acronyms, languages, etc. That’s challenging to pull data against,” said Coussement. When laws change, these systems make it that much harder to maintain transparency.
• Then, take into account the complex nature legal cases tend to pose and you have quite the challenging landscape in which to deliver faster, firmer, more human service.

“We manage a range of different case types across our entities, meaning we the Ministry have 15 different types of case management systems,” said Jimmy De Laet, CIO. “Adoption, criminal cases, divorce, and more; no two cases are alike, no two case types are alike, and no two timelines are alike. You need to have a global view, to be able to evaluate our caseload holistically. Which means you need to be able to get more granular with the data.”

As the team was starting to discuss next steps, a couple events happened. (1) Coronavirus hit, which forced judges to work from home. If they were missing a file, they had to go pick up the hard copy at the court building or wait for a chauffeur to deliver it before they could issue a judgment and close the case. “They really started to understand that a paper-based system was holding them back. I have been a public prosecutor for 15 years, and this is the first time I saw everyone understand the impact digitization (or lack thereof) can have on the work,” said Coussement. Following that, (2) Next Generation EU was launched by the European Commission, which made large amounts of funding available to stimulate various parts of the economy. Some of that was allocated to digitizing justice – for example, court case management, creating searchable databases, upgrading cybersecurity, and enabling better statistical analysis. “Together with the cabinet, we created a temporary office called the Digital Transformation Office that brought together a team of people from across the business to collaborate and to take action,” said De Laet.

Establishing a dedicated team to take action on specific programs or funding is just one of four best practices the Ministry of Justice demonstrates in their work — best practices that make an excellent starting point or “to do” list for your next digital transformation effort. 

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Coussement, De Laet, and team worked with their Digital Transformation Office to launch a legal case management solution for the Supreme Court on the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform for Public Sector with implementation services provided Salesforce partner and Innovation partner CapGemini. It gives the Ministry the kind of collaborative, purpose-built, digital case management tools the justice departments need to:

• Bring various sets of data and information together in a single, structured format via 1:many vs. 1:1 integration models
• Offer guided workflows configured to fit specific business rules
• Deliver that data and information in a 360-degree, digital case file — complete with unique identifiers and tags at the case, identity, and master data levels

The project criteria behind the Ministry’s justice case management serve as example of how to action common digital transformation concepts in this space:

• Bring various sets of data and information together in a single, structured format via 1:many vs. 1:1 integration models → This enables teams to digitally capture, asses, and manage details as a case progresses through the legal system.
• Offer guided workflows configured to fit specific business rules → This streamlines and operationalizes more parts of the legal process, helping teams to do everything from moving faster to delivering more seamless experiences without sacrificing thoroughness, parametrization, or functionality.
• Deliver that data and information in a 360-degree, digital case file — complete with unique identifiers and tags at the case, identity, and master data levels → This makes data and information more accessible, enabling teams to work more collaboratively between different courts.

Coussement, De Laet, and team then used this platform to deploy two projects:

JustCase

JustCase is a case management system configured to fit the unique needs of the Supreme Court. Authorized legal and justice users log into an online community portal built on Public Sector Solutions - Experience Cloud where they can then access a number of tools to review, update, and close a case. Integrated dashboards provide real-time visibility of each case and facilitate the linking additional case-related information and even other affiliated cases linked to the record. If the user has a specific question or inquiry, they can use the community’s Knowledge articles feature to pull up information and FAQs by topic or key word search. If the user wants to update a case file or attach documents to a record, they can do so via the community’s digital intake forms, built on Business Rules Engine, which guide them through data collection through using “if this, then that” dynamic workflows.

Belgian Bulletin

When a new law is passed, an official is voted into office, or a new business is started, for example, this information is made official when it is printed in Het Belgische Staatsblad / Le Moniteur Belge, Belgium’s national legal newspaper. Instead of manually processing announcements for print, the team can leverage digital intake forms on Business Rules Engine to move information from one desk to the next. Tracking functionality helps the team to follow the status of each request as it moves through the approval process. Any complexities surrounding the publication request (such as specific text and image layouts) can be noted, and text can be actioned in a self-service manner. “This helps dedicate the time and attention needed to address more complex requirements without adding to a backlog,” said De Laet. Workflows help to streamline the data fields through to the publishing step and also sync with the Ministry's document management system, digitizing the process end-to-end.

Updates and newly added data points are captured in a case record or “profile record," creating a 360-degree view of real-time information. Integrated reports and dashboards enable the team to roll up progress reports, spot trends, pinpoint catalysts or bottlenecks, and make data-driven. Shield and Security Center give both apps an additional layer of data security.

This platform will enable the team to:

• Digitize and streamline court cases, providing more visibility to the many stakeholders across the justice system
• Focus their time and energy on delivering mission-critical work, enhancing productivity and collaboration on cases and reducing time spend
• Transfer data between courts so that the right people get access to the right information, and work as one justice team to meet citizens where they are at with answers, advice, and resolutions
• Salesforce also gives the team a flexible foundation to introduce new concepts and bring them to life across new services. They are starting to design JustSign, an application enabling the certified electronic signature of official rulings and other legal documents, JustSend, a workflow that manages documents from electronic signature through to sending to citizens or other stakeholders, and explore AI use cases that would not have been possible without having data standardized or consolidated. “We can start looking at these new challenges and interesting projects in a new way, including making our applications and data available to lawyers and citizens,” said De Laet.

This same shift can be seen throughout the ministry team. “People are starting to ask us ‘how can we work in a new, digital way?’” said Coussement. “They’re starting to see ways to make Justice a better working service for our citizens. They’re starting to see ways to make a real and meaningful difference.”