In the wake of an unprecedented period of mobile technology dissemination in developing countries, notably through the use of cell phones and other information and communication technology (ICT) innovations, it has become possible to use those technologies to eliminate or greatly reduce barriers to access to justice in those countries. This recent spread of mobile technology in developing countries has literally transformed communication habits. The World Bank estimates that there were 6.8 billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide in 2013.1 When it comes to the justice system, one of the biggest challenges or barriers for people living in developing countries remains physically accessing the justice system. In this context, one has to refl ect on the role played by mobile technologies and other ICT initiatives in providing a solution to the global problem of poor access to justice. For instance, with the mobile technologies available today, it is possible to use text messaging to inform clients of the date of their hearing because in some parts of the world people still have no postal address at which they can be reached, but they usually have access to a mobile phone. This chapter argues that the justice system should capitalize on this spread of mobile technologies and that cyberjustice, through the use of ICT, can reduce the costs and delays of the judicial process and provide beĴ er access to justice through the science of delivery.
Trang 1ICT-Driven Strategies for Reforming Access
to Justice Mechanisms in
Developing Countries
KARIM BENYEKHLEF, EMMANUELLE AMAR, AND VALENTIN CALLIPEL
In the wake of an unprecedented period of mobile technology dissemination
in developing countries, notably through the use of cell phones and other information and communication technology (ICT) innovations, it has become possible to use those technologies to eliminate or greatly reduce barriers to access to justice in those countries This recent spread of mobile technology
in developing countries has literally transformed communication habits The World Bank estimates that there were 6.8 billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide in 2013.1 When it comes to the justice system, one of the biggest challenges or barriers for people living in developing countries remains phys-ically accessing the justice system In this context, one has to refl ect on the role played by mobile technologies and other ICT initiatives in providing a solution to the global problem of poor access to justice For instance, with the mobile technologies available today, it is possible to use text messaging to inform clients of the date of their hearing because in some parts of the world people still have no postal address at which they can be reached, but they usu-ally have access to a mobile phone This chapter argues that the justice system should capitalize on this spread of mobile technologies and that cyberjustice, through the use of ICT, can reduce the costs and delays of the judicial process and provide be er access to justice through the science of delivery
Two concepts—“cyberjustice” and “science of delivery”—that are fre-quently used in this chapter should be defi ned at the outset “Cyberjustice,” simply put, “refers both to the integration of information and communication technologies into dispute resolution processes and to the networking of all stakeholders in the informational chain for judicial cases.”2 With the network-ing of virtually all actors of the judiciary, cyberjustice contributes to an inte-grated justice system Cyberjustice initiatives include a wide range of actions such as community radio, text messaging, videoconferencing, digitization, and networking The “science of delivery” is a multidisciplinary approach aimed at gathering and distributing knowledge that countries can use to get
1 World Bank, The Li le Data Book on Information and Communication Technology (World Bank
2013).
2 François Senécal & Karim Benyekhlef, Groundwork for Assessing the Legal Risks of Cyberjustice,
7(1) Can J L & Tech 41, 44 (2009).
325
Trang 2delivery in a specifi c local context.3 In the legal fi eld, this approach explores
“how law and justice concepts, tools and knowledge can be used to improve development delivery and help translate the values of voice, social contract and accountability into development impact.”4
The fi rst part of this chapter makes the case that by using a methodology based on two pillars, modularity and collaboration (both comprising many diff erent elements, which are explained throughout this chapter), ICT innova-tions can play an important role in providing eff ective access to justice in devel-oping countries Since 2011, the Cyberjustice Laboratory, a nonprofi t research center affi liated with the University of Montreal, has used this methodology
to develop successful prototypes5 in the fi elds of online dispute resolution and modernization of judicial proceedings The second part of the chapter argues that the World Bank’s Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development and its partners, as well as the Community of Practice on Alternative Dispute Resolu-tion (which operates under the auspices of the Global Forum), through their multidisciplinary approach, are eff ective platforms for developing ICT-driven strategies to modernize and reform mechanisms for access to justice in devel-oping countries The second part also highlights how mobile technologies can have an impact on transitional justice,6 thereby illustrating how ICT initiatives can eff ectively improve access to justice This chapter thus provides food for thought about solutions to improve access to justice in developing countries and stimulate the use of ICT in the judicial process of those countries; this chapter does not try to off er precise solutions, because, as the modular and collaborative methodology points out, any solution must be tailored to the needs and circumstances of each country
3 World Bank, Law, Justice and Development Week 2013—Concept Note, h p://siteresources
.worldbank.org/INTLAWJUSTICE/Resources/LJDWeek2013_ConceptNote.pdf.
4 Id.
5 These prototypes include an Online Dispute Resolution Platform; an Interface for courtroom management that allows the networking of all actors in the trial and allows them to con-trol the courtroom; a digital agreement as to the conduct of the proceeding (Entente sur le déroulement de l’instance; EDI) in accordance with the rules of the Code of Civil Procedure
of Quebec; the Metadata Cyberjustice Management, a tool that allows for the defi ning and
cate-gorizing of information being a ached to fi les generated during a hearing for the purpose of indexing this information; and fi nally, a Moot Court application, a case management system designed to allow the electronic fi ling of memoranda during Moot Court activities hosted
by the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Law For more information about the
Cyberjus-tice Laboratory and its ongoing projects, see CyberjusCyberjus-tice Laboratory, Software, available at
h p://www.cyberjustice.com/en/software-presentation/.
6 Transitional justice is used after situations of armed confl ict or generalized violations of human rights in order to bridge the gap between peace and justice “Transitional justice is a leading rite of modern political passage and draws upon both legal innovations and ritual acts that enable the passage between two orders—the predecessor and successor regimes.”
See Lisa J Laplante & Kimberly Theidon, Transitional Justice in Times of Confl icts: Colombia’s Ley de Justicia y Paz, 28 Mich J Intl L 49, 50 (2006–2007).
Trang 3Using a Modular and Collaborative Methodology,
the Model Chosen by the Cyberjustice Laboratory
Many of those involved in judicial processes and proceedings express deep dis-satisfaction regarding costs and delays, which put the protection of the court system beyond the reach of many of who need access to it These obstacles contribute to a lack of trust on the part of litigants in the judiciary as a whole.7
This dissatisfaction provokes people to avoid formal justice and turn to alter-native dispute resolution mechanisms A recent survey, for example, asked people in France to identify cases in which they would prefer fi nding a negoti-ated solution or compromise rather than going to court The results speak for themselves: 97 percent responded affi rmatively in the case of troubles with their neighbors, 92 percent in the case of commercial disagreements, and 87 percent in the case of purchases made over the Internet;8 a similar preference for negotiation and compromise over litigation was observed in Quebec.9
The computerization of judicial processes and the networking of stake-holders in the legal world, which constitute a vital part of the transition to cyberjustice and a more-integrated justice system, contribute to reducing the costs and delays of the judiciary process and hence improve access to jus-tice as a whole Activities such as using paper to present procedures, making multiple copies of documents to be sent to all parties, and requesting parties
to be physically present in the courtroom all have a defi nite impact on the costs and delays of the judiciary process Allowing for offi cial documents to
be sent to parties via e-mail, eliminating the need for parties to be physically present in the courtroom, and allowing testimony to be presented via vid-eoconference, among other cyberjustice solutions, signifi cantly contributes to improving access to justice by reducing delays and costs However, successful cyberjustice initiatives remain the exception, and the a achment to paper and
to parties’ presence at all stages of a procedure remains the rule In fact, some projects aim at developing technological solutions to make the judicial process more effi cient and transparent, as was the case of “Courtroom 21,” a project developed at the Center for Legal and Court Technology in the United States.10
The aim of the project was to identify and evaluate technologies that would be useful to the judicial system The Cyberjustice Laboratory goes farther; it tries
to understand why some jurisdictions have successfully implemented high-tech case-management solutions,11 while in other jurisdictions millions of
dol-7 E Allan Lind & Tom R Tyler, The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice (Plenum, 1988).
8 France, Ministère de la justice, Sous-direction de la statistique et des études—Secrétariat
général, Enquête: Opinions des Français sur la justice—2013, 8 (2013)
9 The majority of average-income households in Québec (53 percent) said that they were in
favor of fi nding alternative solutions to the courts See Observatoire des services profession-nels, L’off re et la demande de services juridiques: Les besoins des ménages à revenus moyens (2013).
10 For more information, see William & Mary Law School, Center for Legal and Court
Technol-ogy, h p://law.wm.edu/academics/intellectuallife/researchcenters/clct/.
11 For example, British Columbia’s JUSTIN project In 2004, British Columbia adopted elec-tronic fi ling software—the Justice Information System, or JUSTIN—to manage records in
Trang 4lars were invested without ge ing satisfactory results.12 The failure of some ICT initiatives shows that implementing technological solutions for some of the judiciary’s problems (such as costs and delays) is pointless if the parties refuse to use the technology
The premise underlying the Cyberjustice Laboratory’s research projects
is that ICT solutions that respect and understand the human and sociolegal reasons for being apprehensive about using technologies will be implemented successfully, resulting in a reduction of costs and delays associated with the judiciary process Accordingly, the Cyberjustice Laboratory is studying the legal parameters and sociocultural barriers to the adoption of technological solutions in the fi eld of justice In other words, it is important to understand that there are legal, cultural, psychological, and social reasons that can block the implementation of ICT solutions for reducing costs and delays This chap-ter explains how using a modular and collaborative methodology can help surmount these obstacles
This part of the chapter shows that ICT initiatives using a modular and collaborative methodology can contribute to the reduction of costs and delays
in the judicial process, providing more eff ective access to justice13 and a bona
fi de delivery of justice in emerging countries through the science of delivery The World Bank’s conception of the science of delivery is composed of four basic features:
First, delivery is about problem-solving with emphasis on
context-specifi c solutions Second, delivery is concerned with addressing
social goals in complex and interpenetrating systems in a way that
identifi es capacity gaps as well as intervention points Third,
deliv-ery is collaborative and interactive Lastly, a future delivdeliv-ery science
will necessarily be multidisciplinary and thus, will require expertise
from various disciplines to measure results and triangulate data that
will help discover what is driving success or failure 14
The modular and collaborative methodology advocated by the Cyberjus-tice Laboratory encompasses these four basic features of delivery described
in the above quotation Since 2011, the Cyberjustice Laboratory, with its team
of 36 researchers and its international and multidisciplinary background, has been working on the identifi cation of sociolegal barriers to the adoption of technological solutions in the justice system The team has conducted many socio-legal observations, such as testing ICT tools and holding mock hearings,
to evaluate new technologies that may be useful in modernizing the judicial
criminal ma ers JUSTIN was later adapted to civil proceedings See British Columbia
Min-istry of Justice, Integrated Corrections Operations Network (ICON) II Project, h p://www pssg.gov.bc.ca/corrections/about-us/technology.htm.
12 The Integrated Justice Project is discussed in the next section.
13 Nicolas Vermeys, La cyberjustice et l’espace OHADA: Des outils virtuels pour une avancée réelle,
Journal Africain du droit des aff aires, Numéro spécial 102, 104 (2013).
14 World Bank, supra note 3.
Trang 5process and rethinking the justice system to meet the needs of individuals The project’s innovativeness lies in its capacity to make concrete socio-legal observations thanks to the development, in cooperation with the primary stakeholders in the justice community, of a new generation of open-code, interoperable software modules designed to facilitate dispute processing and resolution in ways that are adapted to the needs of users and legal actors One
of the main goals of the Cyberjustice Laboratory is to take advantage of tech-nological advances to make the justice system more accessible and effi cient.15
To achieve this goal, the Cyberjustice Laboratory has chosen to use a modular and collaborative methodology This methodology comprises many diff erent elements, which are explained in the following sections after a brief clarifi ca-tion of why some past ICT initiatives have failed This chapter thus sheds light on why this methodology, which is in the continuum of the science of delivery, would be eff ective for implementing ICT initiatives in developing countries
Failure of Past Cyberjustice Initiatives
Before considering the development and implementation of new ICT initia-tives in emerging countries, it is important to analyze and understand the reasons why some of the initiatives launched in North America have not been
eff ective Understanding the reasons behind these failures helps to ensure that the same mistakes will not be made again and that diff erent methods will be used when implementing cyberjustice initiatives in developing countries With the growth of computer technology, many ICT initiatives have been launched to help courts ease the backlog of cases and improve access to justice for ordinary people Unfortunately, many of these initiatives have failed, due mainly to high expectations, improper implementation of new technologies
by the courts, and misidentifi cation of the needs of stakeholders
Prior ICT initiatives that were ineff ective often used a technology-driven
or top-down approach In the context of cyberjustice, this approach refers to
a complete overhaul of the system using new technologies The approach requires a high initial investment and subsequent gap-fi lling measures As many authors have stated, in a complete overhaul, there can be resistance from the main stakeholders because of a lack of willingness to learn a new sys-tem in a timely fashion.16 This is exactly what happened with the Integrated Justice Project17 in Ontario, where stakeholders and litigants were reluctant
15 Cyberjustice Laboratory, The Project, available at h p://www.cyberjustice.ca/en/the-project.
16 Karim Benyekhlef & Nicolas Vermeys, Buenas practicas en Applicaciones de Ciberjusticia, in Bue-nas practicas para la implementacion de soluciones tecnologicas en la administracion de justicia, 29–49
(Antonio Caballero, Carlos Gregorio de Gracia, & Line Hammergren eds., IIJusticia 2011)
17 The Ontario project was launched in 1996 by the Ministry of the A orney General and the Ministry of Public Safety and Security “The objective of the Project was to improve the in-formation fl ow in the justice system by streamlining existing processes and replacing older computer systems and paper-based information exchanges with new, compatible systems
and technologies.” See Offi ce of the Provincial Auditor of Ontario, Integrated Justice Project,
Trang 6to use the interesting technological solutions off ered.18 The reluctance of the main stakeholders was not due to an inability to develop appropriate techno-logical solutions for the judicial process, but to psychotechno-logical, social, political, and cultural barriers19 that inhibited research, implementation, and the use
of advanced ICT solutions Thus, to get all parties on board, it is necessary
to understand the barriers to the use of new technologies and fi nd a way to circumvent them Properly identifying the needs of the stakeholders to ensure the successful implementation of ICT initiatives is also essential
The failure of some past ICT initiatives was also due in part to poor assess-ment of costs This was especially true in cases involving complete system overhauls because, as with any project of signifi cant size, the possibility of hidden costs always exists When identifying costs, it is important to take into account not only the initial acquisition costs but also the potential costs in rela-tion to expansion and upgrades As new technology becomes available, it is crucial to take into account the hidden costs related to hardware and software upgrades.20 Therefore, at the onset of a project, a signifi cant cost-benefi t analy-sis is helpful in avoiding any surprises, and contingency plans should be in place when fi nalizing a budget in order to alleviate any fears of future costs Achieving a proper budget analysis is easier on smaller-scale projects or on pilot projects as advocated by the modular methodology
In sum, the failure of cyberjustice initiatives implementing a technology-driven approach or undergoing a complete overhaul of the justice system occurred mainly because the stakeholders were not prepared for such huge changes and stakeholder needs were not properly identifi ed Furthermore, given the complexity of the justice system, fi nding an answer to the problems
in a homogenous, simple manner is implausible One of the answers to the complexity of the justice system can be found in modularity
Modularity: A Defi nition
As previously discussed, past ICT initiatives failed because they tried to solve a complex situation using a single software solution in a technology-driven approach For this reason, the Cyberjustice Laboratory advocates using
an “incremental or modular approach where compatible and interconnect-ing technological solutions are found in order to address precise problems rather than to construct complex networks.”21 Another important aspect of the Cyberjustice Laboratory’s work is that all the modules are developed in open-source code to facilitate the sharing and adaptability of those modules
283 (Annual Rpt., 2003).
18 For more details, see Carl Baar, Integrated Justice: Privatizing the Fundamentals, 42(1) Can Pub
Administration 42 (1999)
19 These aspects will be detailed later in this section.
20 Benyekhlef & Vermeys, supra note 16, at 12.
21 Id., at 7
Trang 7The open-source code allows stakeholders to make the changes they consider necessary given their specifi c situations.22
The goal is to develop justice system–friendly software modules that will contribute to delivering be er access to justice.23 Therefore, it is important when developing those modules to make sure that they are compatible and complementary, ensuring a smooth transition to cyberjustice and avoiding overlapping issues.24 To deliver be er access to justice in developing coun-tries, it would be useful to develop or use existing ICT solutions to create dif-ferent modules or platforms that would allow, for example, the use of mobile phones for intake, referral, and case management.25 Small-scale changes, made one at a time, enable ICT initiatives to be implemented eff ectively Again, the purpose of this chapter is not to provide a precise ICT initiative for developing countries; rather, it suggests that the methodology used by the Cyberjustice Laboratory in the development of ICT initiatives in Canada could be used, where the context is found to be appropriate, in implementing and develop-ing cyberjustice initiatives in these countries
Nor is the purpose of this chapter to argue that the modular and collab-orative methodology is a miracle solution to the problem of access to justice The point is to take advantage of ICT innovations to improve access to justice everywhere, including in developing countries—and having a modular and collaborative tactic optimizes the implementation of those innovations As Nicolas Vermeys argues in his article on cyberjustice and the Organization for the Harmonization in Africa of Business Law (OHADA), even in developed countries, few substantial investments have been made in the fi eld of cyber-justice, which means that currently the gap between the North and the South
is not signifi cant.26 It should be kept in mind that when implementing ICT initiatives in developing countries, a ention must be focused on the specifi c context in which the initiatives are to be implemented, and that they must be adapted accordingly27
Identifi cation of the Judiciary’s Factual Needs
When developing a cyberjustice system or proposing an ICT initiative, it is es-sential to properly identify the needs of the stakeholders Judiciary stakeholders have often been resistant to change; therefore, “the successful implementing
of said change will necessarily require stakeholder approval This approval
22 Cyberjustice Laboratory, supra note 15.
23 Id.
24 Benyekhlef & Vermeys, supra note 16, at 7.
25 Sean Martin McDonald, Law in the Last Mile: The Potential of Mobile Integration into Legal Services (blog entry, Leg Info Inst., Corn U L Sch., Dec 22, 2011), h p://blog.law.cornell
.edu/voxpop/2011/12/22/law-in-the-last-mile-the-potential-of-mobile-integration-into-legal -services/
26 Vermeys, supra note 13, at 103
27 Further explanations on the topic are found later in this section.
Trang 8obviously hinges on whether or not the provided cyberjustice solution cor-responds to the needs of each stakeholder.”28
From the Cyberjustice Laboratory’s point of view, implementation of a new technology should be done in a modular way to ensure that stakeholders are comfortable with the tool created for them In this manner, wasteful tech-nology and redundancy can be averted, and funds spent optimally.29
Generally speaking, ICT initiatives could help to meet some of the basic needs of the judicial system in Latin America and Africa The Study Center for Justice in the Americas (Centro de Estudios de Justicia de las Américas; CEJA) has highlighted some of those general needs in developing countries in regard
to ICT and how ICT initiatives could help improve the delivery of justice:
ICT would bring a positive impact on improving levels of
trans-parency in the operation of the institutions of the justice system,
improving access to the justice system by the citizenry, improving
effi ciency and effi cacy in the performance of multiple tasks, enabling
and enhancing innovation processes in the delivery of justice and
in judicial management, enabling citizenry scrutiny over the justice
system, facilitating accountability of the judicial authorities by the
citizenry, among others 30
When assessing the actual needs of the judiciary in developing countries,
it is also important to determine the “ICT readiness” of the countries31 for the implementation of technological innovations in the judicial or extrajudicial system In recent years, developing countries have improved and increased their ICT capacities, but not all countries are at the same level In order to eval-uate the ICT capacity of a country, three sets of indicators must be considered
First, infrastructure indicators compute the number of personal computers, mainline and mobile subscribers, Internet users, and 3G subscribers in a
coun-try This group of indicators also analyzes the broadband usage, the num-ber of Internet hosts, and the security of the Internet servers available in the
country Second, capacity indicators focus on the education level in a country
28 Benyekhlef & Vermeys, supra note 16, at 10.
29 Cyberjustice Laboratory, supra note 15.
30 C Hernández & R Adelardi, Perspectivas de uso e impacto de las TIC en la Administración de Justicia en América Latina 5 (working paper, CEJA & Microsoft n.d.) Original text in
Span-ish: “Las TIC podrían tener un alto impacto en mejorar los niveles de transparencia en la operación de las instituciones del sistema de justicia, en mejorar el acceso de la ciudadanía
al sistema de justicia, en aumentar los grados de efi ciencia y efi cacia en el desempeño de múltiples labores, en posibilitar y potenciar los procesos de innovación en la impartición
de justicia y en la gestión judicial, en posibilitar la auditoria ciudadana sobre el sistema de justicia, en facilitar la rendición de cuentas de las autoridades judiciales a la ciudadanía,
entre otros ámbitos.” Cited in Gabriela R Szlak, Online Dispute Resolution in Latin America, in Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice, A Treatise on Technology and Dispute Resolution,
534 (Mohamed S Abdel Wahab, Ethan Katsh, & Daniel Rainey eds., Eleven Intl 2012)
31 Mohamed S Abdel Wahab, Online Dispute Resolution for Africa, in Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice, A Treatise on Technology and Dispute Resolution, 562 (Mohamed S Abdel
Wahab, Ethan Katsh, & Daniel Rainey, eds., Eleven Intl 2012).
Trang 9and analyze the illiteracy rate, public expenditure on education, and interna-tional Internet bandwidth Third, fi nancial indicators study the economy of the
country (e.g., gross domestic product (GDP), foreign direct investment (FDI), and public and private investments in telecommunications).32 Mohamed S Abdel Wahab, who has elaborated on the topic of ICT readiness, explains that according to these indicators, African states’ readiness to implement ICT ini-tiatives can be described as falling into three diff erent groups:
(1) ICT ready States such as South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and
Tuni-sia; (2) ICT progressing States such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Tanzania,
Algeria, Seychelles, and Ghana and (3) ICT potentially progressing
States such as Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Central Africa, Chad,
Niger, Guinea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Ivory
Coast, Burundi, and Rwanda 33
ICT-ready states are states where all three groups of indicators are at high levels For instance, most people in the country have access to a computer
or have a mobile subscription; the illiteracy rate is very low, the education system good, and the fi nancial situation satisfactory Implementing an ICT pilot project in such a country should not be very diffi cult because everything
is in place to facilitate implementation, given that the needs of the stakehold-ers are fully undstakehold-erstood and the solution off ered is tailored to the realities
of the country ICT–potentially progressing states are states that have the willingness to implement ICT initiatives but that are not yet ready in terms
of all three sets of indicators A good example would be Somalia, a country that experiences internal political confl ict.34 It would be very diffi cult to suc-cessfully implement an ICT initiative in such a context because the realities and conditions on the ground do not allow for it to happen The country fi rst needs to improve crucial areas such as peace, stability, health, and food secu-rity before beginning to consider implementing cyberjustice initiatives As for ICT-progressing states, these lie somewhere in between the ICT-ready states and ICT–potentially progressing states This means that in ICT-progressing states, the three groups of indicators are somewhat present, but further adjust-ments have to be made before implementing cyberjustice initiatives, and these initiatives might have to be more basic in design and implementation than in
an ICT-ready state
32 Id., at 563
33 Id., at 567.
34 The country has been without a strong central government for many years and is facing regular a acks from an extremist group, Al Shabab The World Bank classifi ed the coun-try as “low income” and indicates that only 29 percent of children are enrolled in primary school The population is estimated at about 10 million people, of whom only 0.045 percent
are connected to the Internet and 0.11 percent have a subscription to a mobile phone See World Bank, Data by Country, “Somalia,” available at h p://data.worldbank.org/country /somalia; UN Somalia, Fact Sheets, available at h p://www.unsomalia.net/infocenter/fact sheets.htm; BBC News, Who Are Somalia’s al-Shabab? (May, 16, 2014), available at h p://www
.bbc.com/news/world-africa-15336689.
Trang 10Whether a developing country belongs in the fi rst, second, or third group will have a defi nite impact on the needs and realistic goals of that country when it comes to improving access to justice through ICT initiatives Thus it
is important to be able to eff ectively identify the needs of the judiciary and to distinguish needs from wants Involving the stakeholders in the development phase of a cyberjustice initiative is another aspect to consider when identify-ing the factual needs of the judiciary
Collaboration: Involving Stakeholders
For ICT initiatives to refl ect the reality and needs of the legal fi eld, judiciary stakeholders must be involved in the projects from the beginning The legal
fi eld includes many diff erent actors, and to be faithful to their needs, they all have to be involved, not just lawyers Judges, law clerks, Department of Jus-tice professionals, lawyers, and court administrators, as well as civil society, all have diff erent needs Computer programmers, software and application developers, and other IT professionals must be able to establish the needs of the judiciary when developing cyberjustice solutions.35
Being involved from the beginning in cyberjustice projects minimizes stakeholders’ resistance to technological changes and promotes their under-standing and ownership of the project Another way to limit resistance is to develop ICT initiatives that use tools people are familiar with It follows that, given the huge number of cell phone subscribers worldwide, using mobile cellular technology-driven initiatives would help ensure that stakeholders in developing countries are on board and willing to collaborate.36
The online dispute resolution platform known as PARLe (Plateforme d’Aide au Règlement des Litiges en ligne; Online Dispute Resolution Plat-form) serves as a good example.37 For this project, the Cyberjustice Laboratory team conducted consultations with mediators, representatives of Quebec’s Consumer Protection Offi ce, the Ministry of Justice, and Educaloi, a local non-profi t organization that aims to improve access to justice in Quebec These consultations allowed the Cyberjustice Laboratory team to gather valuable information on what the actual needs of the stakeholders and actors were PARLe uses ICT tools to improve the resolution of low-intensity disputes
by reducing costs and delays This web-based dispute resolution platform adapted to consumer disputes involves a three-step process The fi rst step is the negotiation stage, where the litigants try to solve the issue on their own The second step is the mediation stage, which becomes available to the parties only if the fi rst step is unsuccessful The last step is employed if the litigants
35 Benyekhlef, & Vermeys, supra note 16, at 11.
36 McDonald, supra note 25.
37 It is interesting to note that this application was developed by the Cyberjustice Laboratory
in consultation with stakeholders in order to get their opinions on what services the future platform should off er Implicating the stakeholders from the beginning contributed to
get-ting them on board with the project See Cyberjustice Laboratory, ODR: PARLe, available at
h p://www.cyberjustice.ca/en/odr-parle.