**Authors: Aishani Rai, Mousmi Panda, Sushmitha Vishwanathan
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Acknowledgement: In addition to contributions from the wider Aapti team, in particular Dr. Sarayu Natarajan, this article also draws from the expertise of numerous academicians and practitioners. We are grateful to Siddharth Peter de Souza (Assistant Professor, University of Warwick) and the Team at Center for Justice Innovation, New York- Natalie Reyes (Director of International Justice Initiatives), Tia Pooler, ) Strategic Director, Data Analytics and Applied Research), Darcy Hauslik (Associate Director, Data Analytics and Applied Research) for the insightful contributions and inputs during interviews.
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Technology within the Indian justice system has been perceived to enhance access and efficiency of justice delivery. Visionaries have time and again reiterated the significance of technology in building a citizen centric justice system. The e-Committee, spearheaded by legal luminaries over the past two decades, has tremendously contributed in building this citizen-centric justice system by stakeholder interaction with courts by laying out the framework for a tech-enabled justice system while also overseeing finer aspects such as the design and interface of these solutions (e-Courts, n.d.). Further, its vision is being translated into action by State judiciaries with persistent support from the Department of Justice and the National Informatics Centre. In certain cases, State judiciaries, through their High Courts, have been proactively implementing their own technological solutions developed to cater to State-specific needs.
While the vision of these judges is aimed at leveraging technology to enhance access to justice, there are significant gaps in adoption (Aapti Institute, n.d.). Our research observes that despite persistent efforts of innately motivated judges to drive technological innovation, resistance to adoption stems from the inability of users to optimally leverage technology to their benefit. Technology is built following a top-down approach, with little consideration to user expectations from technology-enabled courts. This invariably results in exacerbation of access challenges for the intended users, especially from underserved communities, hindering inclusive and equitable adoption of justice-tech (Bailey et al., 2013).
This top-down, techno-centric approach in building technology is characterised by a lack of meaningful participation from intended users that prioritises building technology around the needs of its intended users. Frictions in user experience cause breakdowns in adoption of technology, entrenching a sense of detachment amongst users, inhibiting their willingness to adopt.
Where adoption is met with resistance by users, an individual vision of technological innovation, often may not translate effectively to serve its intended purpose. This paper is an attempt to explore strategies to institutionalise innovations by translating siloed visions of individual judges into collective ownership of all intended users.
Institutionalisation refers to the process through which norms and practices are cemented firmly into social structures (Sociology, 2024). In the context of this paper, institutional practices will refer to ways and methods through which individual ideas of technological innovation are embedded seamlessly into the justice system. The intention behind this process is to foster a sense of shared ownership of innovations amongst users, ensuring that the innovation shall persist beyond the tenure of judges.
Through this study, the authors explore the value of adopting the design thinking approach to institutionalising innovations. Keeping ‘people’ as the focal point of the research, we explore design approaches that call for participation, collaboration and decentralisation in decision-making.
Our methodology is driven by a qualitative approach built on understanding the experiences of diverse stakeholder groups. We relied extensively on primary data, consisting of interviews with experts in design thinking, human resource management and justice-tech; and key informant interviews with stakeholders, such as decision-makers, lawyers, clerks, court staff and litigants, conducted during the course of Aapti’s prior research. This paper is further informed by in-depth analysis of secondary data through desk research of literature on intersection of justice with design, access, digital trust, and organisational and human resource management.
It is ironic that despite technology being considered as foundational to build a citizen centric justice system, it is not built in ways that leverages citizen participation. The lens of citizen, or user centricity within the lifecycle of building technology is largely absent. In this paper, we focus on High Courts as the key institutions that drive technological innovation. While they are the driving force implementing the grand vision of the Supreme Court, they also ensure that this vision adheres to the lived realities of citizens and users. They serve as the nodal institution that balances autonomy in decision making, and strive to reflect the local context in implementation of technology. In some instances, the High Courts have even outperformed the Supreme Court in embedding innovation such as the Delhi High Court, which was the first court to go paperless (DeccanHerald, 2022). Embedding human-centred design practices in building technology will only bolster efforts by High Courts in fostering a citizen centric justice system.
The able leadership of various visionary leaders, across the Supreme Court and the High Courts, has proferred technological advancement in justice delivery. For instance, at national level, the then Hon’ble Chief Justice DY Chandrachud led several initiatives that enabled accessibility to technology by litigants and leveraged technology to foster accountability and transparency (Centre for Research and Planning & Supreme Court of India, 2024). While at the state-level, adoption of technologies varies across states, Aapti’s observations from the field indicate that states that have successfully adopted technologies in their Courts have an undeniable involvement of judges who are driven by passion towards technology.
For instance, Delhi High Court was the first to introduce e-filing, supported by the then Honb’le Chief Justice. Currently, Delhi’s e-filing system has been in operation for over a decade. The Delhi High Court has also reimagined access to court services through its unique hybrid e-Sewa Kendra (The Economic Times, 2023). In Odisha, during the tenure of Hon'ble Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar, over 100 paperless courts across Odisha were established (The New Indian Express, 2023). Meanwhile, the High Court of Kerala has pioneered a completely virtual bail process as part of their e-filing system with the guidance of the Hon’ble Justices on the Committee for Computerisation, Destruction of Records and Codification (Aapti Institute, n.d.).
Success at the level of the High Court has also pushed them to evaluate the implementation of these solutions in trial courts, where technological solutions are harder to adopt (Aapti Institute, n.d.). This highlights that the technological advancement of courts is attributable to visionaries at all levels of the judiciary.
While their vision is extraordinary, efforts to institutionalise their vision and innovation must be supplemented by the adoption of human-centred design practices. Evidence indicates that during the development of most technological systems, they are devoid of user participation. Legal systems are more susceptible to operate in similar spaces, as they seek to conform to procedure and hierarchy, with little to no consideration to user needs (Karpen & Senova, 2021). Human-centred design approaches are pathways that visionaries can adopt to implement their vision and institutionalise their innovations by leveraging participation of users and adopting a user lens to build technology, overcoming uncertainty surrounding how their initiatives will be carried forward after their tenure.