Court Services

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The former Ministry for Justice and Local Government was the Ministry which spearheaded the development of the information society and the e-Government programme in Malta.

Since its establishment in 1999, the Ministry embarked on a radical re-organisation programme in the field of the administration of justice. Besides the organisational and human resources streams, this re-organisation also focused on the potential of information and communications technologies in the delivery of court services to its clients.

In fact, the Ministry invested heavily in a Law Courts computerisation programme. The administrative processes are now computerised with minimal intervention in the daily processes. This development has contributed to:

• Reduction in administrative overheads
• Reduction of excessive red tape dictated by unnecessary bureaucracy
• Better services to the internal and external clients of the Law Courts
• Elimination of discretionary powers which emanated from loopholes in the manual systems

The Ministry is also striving to exploit its website to provide Court Services to its clients. These services will converge the ease of use of the Internet and the information-management capability of the Law Courts to offer a myriad of services, which previously had to be accessed in person from the Law Courts buildings.

Various legal amendments and the introduction of a number of Ministry initiatives allowing for the better administration of justice and aimed at reducing case backlogs, necessitated the development of enhanced IT programmes. The establishment of the Family Court in 2003 meant that a civil case management system to keep track of family-related cases had to be developed. However, Court judgments in the Family Court are anonymised to ensure the privacy of the parties to the case.

The Ministry for Justice, Dialogue and the Family has further developed the Information Technology programmes at the Courts of Justice and added other services on the MJHA website, most notably the Judicial Sales by Auction providing users with detailed information on future judicial sales as well as the actual extract from the Government Gazette containing full details of the sale.

This website offers a wide range of Court Services intended for use by the Judiciary, members of the legal profession, students, researchers, the press and also the general public. These services are grouped under six categories:

• Judgements Online
• Civil Cases
• Hall Usage
• Statistics
• Civil Forms
• Judicial Sales by Auction