The “Interoperable Criminal Justice System” (iCJS) has been developed for the process of speedy justice by facilitating data-exchange between the courts, police/prosecution, jails and the forensic labs. The application has been developed by NIC for the District courts, prisons and Police stations, namely Case Information System, e-Prisons and Kanoon Vyavastha (based on CIPA software application) respectively. The eFSL application has been developed by NIC Himachal Pradesh for a work-flow based interaction between Police stations and the state forensic laboratories, using online data exchange.
OBJECTIVE The main objective of the iCJS is to provide an online Integrated Management Information System by inter-linking data from courts, police, prisons and forensic laboratories for improving the justice delivery system. All the stakeholders shall have online and instant access to data available in different software applications, which will reduce the time, normally consumed in manual exchange of documents/information amongst related departments. The ultimate objective is to ensure speedy delivery of justice to the common man by interlinking related justice delivery systems and to augment the quality of investigation. The secondary objectives include doing away with the exchange of paper based information amongst the stakeholders and utilization of digitized data of other domains directly in individual s/w applications.
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY/HIGHLIGHTS l Diverse software platforms: The four applications are using two different OS, three databases and scripting technologies. Using Symmetric DS technology, data integration was achieved and a new central software interface has been developed for MIS purpose. l Departmental officials were afraid to link their data and intervention from the highest levels in the departments ensured that a pilot was approved to gain the confidence of employees. l Resistance to complete data entry related to other domains: Court officials were not interested in entering police related data. Only after demonstrating that such data will eventually be useful to all stakeholders, complete data entry could be ensured. l The number of employees to be trained on the s/w was large and was achieved by involving NIC District Centre and creating a pool of master trainers. l Coordination among stakeholders was the greatest challenge as different stakeholders had varying objectives in using domain specific applications. Intervention from the top was required to achieve synergy.
KEY FEATURES & DELIVERABLES l First-of-its-kind initiative in the country l All software applications are in work-flow mode l Generalized query across the 4 domains l Immediate, online and near real-time availability of data across domains through inter-linking l Online VC request by Prisoners’ relatives is a unique initiative, implemented first time in India. It facilitates the interaction between prisoners and their relatives through software based VC. l The initiative is replicable at the national level because of use of standard national level software applications. l The rules and acts related to courts, prisons, police and forensics are uniform across the country. Hence the s/w meets the requirements of all the states for easy replication. l The s/w utilization ensures online transactions between departments by enabling release of case property in online mode. l Alerts are issued automatically in following cases to all stakeholders/users: n whenever some serious crime happens; n forensic report is ready/pending; n an arrest is made; n case is coming up for hearing in the court; n court passes some orders/judgments. l Data mining based on domain specific parameters l Graphical Dashboard for data analysis and MIS decision-making l Innovative applications like mobile based challaning system l Investigative tools for queries related to other domain electronic databases
IMPLEMENTATION STATUS l Courts: 38 in 6 districts (all 100 courts to be linked by end of September 2013) l Police Stations: 114 out of 114 (Common Integrated Police Application) l Forensic Laboratories: 3 (100%) l Prisons: 14 (100%) l VC facility in all prisons for relatives of prisoners, Investigating Officers and courts
TECHNOLOGY USED The core iCJS is a web-enabled software that has been developed using Windows platform with MS-SQL at the back-end and .Net technology at the front-end. The individual s/w applications of ePrisons, Court Information System and Common Integrated Police Application (not web-based) use diverse technologies and databases. The data from individual applications is replicated in almost real-time, subject to availability of connectivity, at a central server for the iCJS application.
Shri J. Satyanarayana, IAS, Secretary, D. I. T., Govt, of India at High Court of Himachal Pradesh during of a meeting on iCJS implementation. (Image description: Shri J. Satyanarayana, IAS, Secretary, D. I. T., Govt, of India at High Court of Himachal Pradesh during of a meeting on iCJS implementation.)