“The Supreme Court will now be able to sit and work from anywhere in the world,” program director for digital strategy, Pauline Diano, said.

“The Judge can call the parties, can refer to the transcript and send a feed out to the Internet so it’s open to the public. 

“They finally cleared their briefcases of all documents.

“It is an ambitious project that lasted five years and ended last February, in perfect timing with the restrictions related to COVID-19. 

“I am in contact with some colleagues in the United States. 

“In Chicago they have closed their courts, they cannot operate; they have literally closed the doors.

“And that means that in a county of 5.2 million people, there are no court hearings being held. 

“So now, all we have done has been justified.”

The changes include the implementation of a new network infrastructure through updating and rebuilding the existing paper-based case management system.

Five years ago, Diano had already run a series of IT projects in the legal system of Victoria’s courts and it was in June 2015 that a strong leadership emerged from the then-president of the Supreme Court, Marilyn Louise Warren, who openly declared her willingness to transfer the whole system to the new millennium.

“They still used to go to the court with large cases full of documents and still stored everything on paper,” she said.

Pauline Diano, program director for digital strategy at the Supreme Court of Victoria

“I joined the project on June 20, 2015, the Court appointed a new CEO and I started working on developing a digital strategy over a five-year plan in which all the parts would be managed electronically; they would be shared electronically and solved electronically.

“The concerns of the Department of Justice and Community Safety focused primarily on the use of a virtual cloud, but also extended to the creation of a completely new network in which all the key applications of the courts would have needed to be rebuilt.  

“My answer was simple: we would have created an innovative project and we did it.

“We have sped up their work. 

“Now everything is managed via digital dashboards and can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

“The last phase was to upgrade the courtrooms. 

“What we have is marvellous, courtrooms dating back to the 1800s, but they are impractical. 

“We have therefore renewed them with a brand new technology that allows anyone, anywhere and on any device, to be able to refer to the court to provide evidence, to perform livestreams and to hear any proceeding in digital audio and video formats.”

Diano and her team have delivered over 55 projects under the five-year plan which cost about $10 million for the digital transformation on the cloud and $11 million for the equipment intended for adaptation to the 34 courtrooms. 

Every single project was delivered on time and worked, without any rollback or failure along the way, and ended February 7, a year earlier than expected, given that the deadline was scheduled for the end of 2020. 

Everything was delivered within the assigned budget.

“I had finished the project and I was on vacation, but I was called back, this time to take care of the digitization of the Children’s Court so they can still hear bail, remand, family violence and child protection matters even during the COVID-19 crisis,” Diano said.

“Regardless of what the Federal and State governments decide, we will be ready to handle an additional quarantine phase.”

In an era where the evidence presented to court is typically in an electronic format - from CCTV footage to photographs, from videos recorded with a mobile to police cameras’ tracking data - Diano has only accelerated a plan which will soon begin in other parts of the world, driven by the current health emergency and working remotely.

“In this terrible historical moment, technology remains the only solution through which we can continue to deliver a service to the community,” Diano said.

“It’s the only way. 

“I strongly believe that at the end of this period, we will take big steps forward, not only in the management of the courts, but in all government services.”