Courts’ modernisation making a difference
Moves to modernise the New Zealand justice system are slowly but surely making a real difference to the people we serve, delegates to an international conference heard.
Group Manager, Courts and Tribunals Regional Service Delivery, Jacquelyn Shannon was speaking at the Innovation and Excellence in Courts conference held in Melbourne in March.
Jacquelyn talked about the importance of organising court services around the needs of the people who use them. She told the conference our service delivery has been on the journey of transformation in recent years.
“In recent times we’ve aimed to get people through the courts in the least possible time by simplifying and standardising court processes.”
“We’ve also improved court user experience by centralising jury management and by introducing customer service centres in some of our major courts.”
Jacquelyn also highlighted some of the results that have been achieved, for example:
- Processing times for divorce applications have been reduced to 24 hours rather than 6 weeks
- The time it takes to finalise probates has more than halved from 31 days to 15 days
She said the Ministry will keep working with its partners to continue to modernise our justice system, as more needed to be done to ensure those coming into our system are dealt with in an accessible, people-centric way.
The conference was hosted by the Supreme Court of Victoria in collaboration with the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration and the Law Library of Victoria. It was attended by justice system representatives from Australia, Singapore, Canada and New Zealand – including Judge Doherty and Judge MacKenzie.
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