Abstract
What does the making of a trans-national information infrastructure in the Justice domain entail? How is it designed? How is it implemented? The analysis of the e-CODEX, a large-scale pilot project to improve cross-border legal communication in the EU, sheds some light upon these questions. The purpose of e-CODEX is not just creating a technical system supporting transborder data exchange, but developing a functioning infrastructure that supports a legally valid, electronically mediated judicial communication system that can produce legal effects across different EU national jurisdictions. The e-CODEX case provides a flavour of the complexity entailed by such endeavour. It illustrates the clash between the attempt to organize and assemble the technological components on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the attempt to cope with the unexpected events and drifts that occur as the project progresses. It shows how the multi-layered legal and organizational dimensions (at the national and European level) become ever more relevant, and how cultivation strategies must be enacted to successfully implement the platform.
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The observation and investigation of the e-CODEX project were carried out by the author while he was involved in it as IRSIG-CNR research team scientific coordinator and while he was supporting the Italian Ministry of Justice in the e-CODEX work package 7 (Architecture) coordination. The author wishes to thank Giulio Borsari, e-CODEX work package 7 coordinator for his fundamental role and the many insightful conversations. The author also wishes to thank all e-CODEX participants who are fighting to make e-CODEX happen, and without whom this chapter could not have been written. The opinions expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the aforementioned persons and institutions.
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e-CODEX is an EU co-funded project (Ref. CIP-ICT PSP 2010 no 270968). The e-CODEX project is the first European Large Scale Pilot of the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) in the domain of e-Justice. Within the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP), the ICT PSP is part of the European Union effort to exploit the potential of the new information and communication technologies.
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In addition to the Justizministerium des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen (JM NRW) GERMANY, the project sees the participation of: Bundesministerium für Justiz Österreich (BMJ Austria) AUSTRIA; Federal Public Service Justice (MoJ Belgium) BELGIUM; Fedict Belgium (Fedict Belgium) BELGIUM; Ministry of Justice of the Czech Republic (MoJ Czech Republic) CZECH REPUBLIC; Ministry of Justice (MoJ Estonia) ESTONIA; Ministry of Justice France (MoJ France) FRANCE; Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis (AUTH Greece) GREECE; Italian Ministry of Justice—Directorate General for IT (MoJ Italy) ITALY; Malta Information Technology Agency (MJHA/MITA Malta) MALTA; Ministerie van Justitie (MoJ Netherlands) NETHERLANDS; Instituto das Tecnologias de Informação na Justiça (MJ—ITIJ Portugal) Portugal; Ministry of Communications and Information Society (MCSI Romania) ROMANIA; Spanish Ministry of Justice—Directorate General for Modernisation of Justice Administration (MJU Spain) SPAIN; Ministry of Public Administration and Justice (KIM Hungary) HUNGARY; IT Department of the Ministry of Justice of Turkey (MoJ Turkey) TURKEY; Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) BELGIUM; Conseil des Notariats de l’Union Européenne (CNUE) BELGIUM; the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) ITALY.
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A ‘use case’ is a cross-border procedure selected for the piloting of the e-Codex e-Delivery platform.
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In particular, the Building Interoperability for European Civil Proceedings Online project (BIECPO). The project is a research project co-funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the IRSIG-CNR. The project objective was to contribute to e-justice development in transborder cases with research findings coming from in-depth case studies of national and European e-justice applications, and with an analysis of the legal, institutional, organisational and technical conditions in which e-justice can successfully support and handle national and transborder civil cases. The participation of IRSIG-CNR researchers in the e-CODEX project was useful for cross-fertilisation between BIECPO and e-CODEX.
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e-CODEX Standards and Architectural Guidelines are based on the European Interoperability Framework for European public services (EIF version 16.12.2010 COM(2010) 744 final) and the Architecture Guidelines for Trans-European Telematics Networks for Administrations (IDABC Version 7.1) (Borsari and Velicogna 2011, 10).
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Typically, e-service users need to identify and authenticate themselves in order to be recognised by the system and use the services, i.e., signing in to an email account through user name and password.
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Small Claims and EPO: Dusseldorf, 7 July 2011; EAW: The Hague, 20–21 September 2011; Secure cross-border exchange of sensitive data: The Hague, 12 December 2011.
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Indicating also whether a Qualified Electronic Signature or an Advanced Electronic Signature is used.
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An advanced electronic system is defined as an electronic system that meets the following requirements: the created document is uniquely linked to the user; the system is capable of identifying the user; the document is created using means that the user can maintain under his control; any subsequent change to the data of a created document is detectable.
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‘DG Market’s Digital Signature Services (DSS) Tool provides a solution to create and validate signatures that follow the ETSI standards and thereby should be accepted across Europe. The close collaboration with ETSI is reflected in both signature creation and signature verification. WP4 decided, together with the e-Justice portal, that DSS offers the most appropriate solution for e-CODEX needs. This decision is based on the results of the comparison of DG Market DSS and PEPPOL’ (Klar et al. 2012, 18).
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Velicogna, M. (2014). Coming to Terms with Complexity Overload in Transborder e-Justice: The e-CODEX Platform. In: Contini, F., Lanzara, G. (eds) The Circulation of Agency in E-Justice. Law, Governance and Technology Series, vol 13. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7525-1_13
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