Since the Ministry of Justice launched the Judicial Information System (JIS), a platform allowing electronic exchange of data between judicial institutions, over 4 million electronic queries have been shared and answered, saving close to 1.1 billion dinars. Owing to the JIS, connected institutions no longer have to exchange letters and documents in paper form, or re-enter data into their separate information systems to run searches and for storing purposes, or purchase office supplies incurring costs, thus making large savings.
Since 2017, the Ministry of Justice has inter-connected a total of 19 data bases of 14 government and judicial organs. As a result, 8,569,514 hard-copy documents have been replaced with 4,284,757 electronic queries.
In terms of the effect on the civil servants’ work, 8,208 months of work have been saved resulting in 613,721,669 dinars in savings.
The following institutions’ data sets are now available through JIS: the Mandatory Social Security Central Register, the Business Register Agency, the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, misdemeanour courts, the Republic Geodetic Authority, and the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund. Similarly, data kept by the National Bank of Serbia, the courts of general jurisdiction, the notaries public, the Republic Prosecutor’s Office, the Tax Administration, and the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia are also available through JIS.
A special JIS module is being created to allow access to information about persons under investigation, persons being prosecuted, and penal records on legal entities. Plans for further JIS development include expanding the platform via new web services to data bases run by judicial institutions and other government authorities, and continuous improvement of the overall system with the ultimate objective of connecting it to all important databases to which judicial organs require access for their work.
Electronic exchange of data directly contributes to the advancement of justice sector’s efficiency by shortening the duration of court and other proceedings conducted by judicial organs and by increasing the quality of performance of judges, prosecutors and others holding judicial office, including other types of offices in public institutions outside of the justice system, as it enables immediate and easy ‘one-click’ access to information required in the course of the proceedings, compared to the long paper delivery time.