The project in Darmstadt is a pilot for the whole of Hesse. Objective: The judiciary should be closer to the citizens and more efficient. Minister Kühne-Hörmann also sees advantages for employees.
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Mountains of analogue files are gradually being digitized at the Darmstadt public prosecutor’s office.
(Archive photo: dpa)
DARMSTADT/WIESBADEN – (red). At the beginning of March, the public prosecutor’s office in Darmstadt began to completely digitize its file management, according to the Hessian Ministry of Justice. It is the first Hessian public prosecutor’s office to start with the changeover. In the first phase, a department for general criminal law uses the e²A e-file software, which will be used successively in other departments of the authority in phase two.
Hesse’s Justice Minister Eva Kühne-Hörmann (CDU) said, according to the ministry’s announcement: “The piloting of the e-file at the Darmstadt public prosecutor’s office is the starting signal for electronic file management at the Hessian public prosecutor’s offices. The entire Hessian judiciary will benefit from the feedback from users in Darmstadt.”
Advancing digitization is one of the core tasks of the judiciary and a “mammoth task”, Kühne-Hörmann is further quoted as saying. Judicial services must be offered in a citizen-friendly and service-oriented manner, “so that the rule of law is easy to reach for all citizens”. The conversion to the electronic file is a far-reaching intervention in the working methods of the judiciary that have been practiced for decades, but the development also harbors “immense opportunities”.
The minister cites “efficiency, availability and the compatibility of family and career” as examples. Just think of the many employees who can work with the electronic file from home when the school or daycare center is closed without having to move mountains of files every day.”
The e²A software enables processes to be processed completely digitally, from processing incoming mail to creating and sending documents. The electronic file is already being piloted at the regional court in Limburg and the social court in Kassel.
Since the beginning of 2021, the participants in the pilot have had the opportunity to get to know and try out various functions of the software in workshops. The IT office of the Hessian judiciary closely supervised this phase and will continue to do so in the future, according to the message from the ministry.
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