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Article - Secure Electronic Court Lodgement Pilot Project (February 2001)

Executive Summary

Peter van Dijk, Richard Weatherley, Sally Kay, Ron Walker

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Executive Summary

Project Summary

This document reviews the Secure Electronic Court Lodgement Pilot Project undertaken between the NSW Attorney General’s Department, the Law Society of NSW and the NSW Land and Environment Court. The project’s aim was to pilot an implementation of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to aid the secure exchange of documents between the Courts and its customers.

The project delivered a proof of concept of PKI technology and provided a basis for the further refinement of the Attorney General’s Department’s Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) plan. The project was funded by a grant under the NSW Office of Information Technology connect.nsw program.

Project Participants

Project Group

The NSW Attorney General’s Department jointly coordinated the project and provided technical services to the Land and Environment Court, including network security configuration. The web server was hosted in a public area of the AGD network known as the De-Militarised Zone (DMZ).
The Law Society of NSW jointly coordinated the project. It acted as the Registration Authority (RA) and liaised with customers of the Court (selected solicitors from law firms).
The NSW Land and Environment Court pilot trialled the electronic lodgement of Class 4 documents. This required a court administrator to perform appropriate manual tasks when documents were lodged. The pilot was run in parallel with the existing paper-based lodgement system.
Solicitors from eight NSW law firms participated as customers and lodged a total of about 50 documents. Participants were issued with digital certificates and certificate storage software from Baltimore, whose Security Domain subsidiary acted as the root Certificate Authority (CA). The participants were able to digitally sign and encrypt Class 4 documents and lodge them with the Land and Environment Court via the Internet.

Technical Assistance

Baltimore Technology provided the software and technical expertise in setting up the Public Key Infrastructure and acted as the Certification Authority.
Galexia provided the end-to-end solution integration including user interface design, document storage and retrieval, on-line payment processing, server configuration and documentation.

Project Structure

Project Sponsors

Her Honour, Judge Mahla Pearlman - Chief Justice, Land and Environment Court
Mr Russell Cox - Director, Finance and Administration, NSW Attorney General’s Department
Mr Mark Richardson - Chief Executive Officer, Law Society of NSW

Project Management Group

Mr Ron Walker, NSW Attorney General’s Department
Phone: 9228 7019
Email: ron_walker@agd.nsw.gov.au
Ms Sally Kay, Law Society of NSW
Phone: 9926 0279
Email: sxk@lawsocnsw.asn.au

The Project

The pilot comprised three parts:

1. A Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) employed to securely submit documents from solicitors to the Court;

2. Lodgement of documents at the Court via a secure web page; this also included notification to the Court that a document had been received; this step also involved the Court receiving payment; and

3. Receipt of the document by the Court with notification of document receipt sent to the firm that lodged it.

Objectives

The primary objective of the Pilot was to remove the requirement for Solicitors to physically lodge documents with the Court and for the Court to dispense with, as far as possible, the requirement to keep a physical file of Court documents. The aim was to prove the concept of the secure electronic exchange of documents between the courts, Government and the legal profession. The Broad Objectives related to the establishment, through consultation, of policies and standards relating to the secure electronic exchange of documents. The more specific objectives related to the technical methods of achieving secure electronic exchange.

Broad Objectives

Identify court processes requiring re-engineering to exploit secure e-commerce transactions.
Identify court processes requiring re-engineering to take advantage of the benefits of electronic lodgement.
Allow the Law Society to gain an insight into the requirements of setting up a Public Key Infrastructure for the legal profession that will enable the legal profession to exchange secure documents with clients and government.
Dispel fear barriers related to security for the growth of e-commerce within the legal sector.
Provide a mechanism for the Attorney General’s Department and the Law Society to define policies and standards for the on-line exchange of data between the legal profession and other Government agencies as well as between Government agencies.

Specific Technical Objectives

At the conclusion of the Pilot the aim was to have:

Examined and proved the concept of the use of public key technology by solicitors to lodge court documents.
Examined and proved the concept of the electronic lodgment of documents at the Land and Environment Court.
Examined and proved the concept of the Land and Environment Court receiving payment with Court documents.

The Pilot is not intended to evaluate or model Court document management systems. This Pilot is a ‘Proof of Concept’ and is not scaleable to a production system.

Conclusions

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