Electronic government from the legal point of view: methods

Abstract

This paper analyses the working methods used by those jurists who are dedicated to the drafting of proposals for Electronic Government. As will be shown by several practical examples, the best method to perform this task—and, in general, to deal with an innovation such as Electronic Government—consists of proposing, to those interested, a detailed and careful research of the legal activities enabling and improving the reality behind this name. This should be considered as the starting point to building up coherent regulation proposals, in compliance with the fact of the Electronic Government and the rules appropriate to a democratic State.

Notes

Correspondence: Fernando Galindo, Zaragoza, Spain; E‐mail: [email protected].

The author thanks Daniel Oliver for the valuable help given to the review and translation of this paper.

The European Union attends to these needs in different ad hoc meetings. It was, for example, the topic in Spain in the Seminar of 27 and 28 June 2002 in Madrid http://www.mju.es/modernizacion/seminario.pdf. Another recent conference (26 and 27 May 2003) in Paris had the title: ‘The administration of justice in Europe and the evaluation of its quality’ http://www.gip-recherche-justice.fr/actualites/colloques/prog-ENM-anglais.pdf.

The initial possibilities remain (check the agenda, case distribution, information on the procedure status …). This is directly related to the limitations that the technological resources have in order to be used in sensitive matters such as the information related to the Administration of Justice. All the surveys on Internet underline the low level of trust in the use of Internet regarding the transmission and use of personal information—the usual content of the judicial documents.

This is the case in Spain: the comparison between the distribution of the budget related to ICT in the Administration of Justice and in other Public Administrations in Spain comes from many years of highly different procedures. See, for example, the expenses made in ICT in the several Spanish Ministries in ‘Informe REINA’, statistic date of the spents made in 2003 http://www.csi.map.es/csi/pg5r10.htm#6. The same ocurred in the previous years (see ibid).

There is a recent Law on Civil Procedure (7 January 2000) and a General Agreement of the Political Parties on the Reform of the Administration of Justice (28 May 2001) related to these subjects.

Seventeenth section of the cited Instruction 2/2003 of the 26 February of the Governing Body of the Spanish Judiciary by which a Code of Conduct for users of IT equipment and systems in the service of the Administration of Justice is approved.

It is well known that the number of European Internet users is lower than Internet users in the USA, but the percentage of Internet users is not too important here as the article is looking into the sites mainly used by Law professionals, and by anybody who may access the Internet. For this reason increasing transparency is discussed.

http://www.poderjudicial.es/CGPJ/default.asp.

http://www.poderjudicial.es/tribunalsupremo/.

http://www.poderjudicial.es/organosjudiciales/.

http://www.mju.es/.

http://www.justizia.net/JustiziaExtranet/Default.asp?Idioma=SP.

In the Basque Country example it is the IT service that it is in charge of assigning usernames and passwords to professionals who make use of the pages dedicated to access of the Professional Intranet.

On Codes of Conduct in Internet, see: J Berleur et al (eds) Gouvernance de la Société de l'Information Bruylant, Bruxelles, 2002.

Estévez Araujo refers to this in J Estevez ‘La globalización y las transformaciones del Derecho’ in V Zapatero (ed) Horizontes de la Filosofía del Derecho. Homenaje a Luis García San Miguel, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, 2002, pp 311–320.

See: G Covarrubias ‘El proyecto INFORIUS del Ministerio de Justicia’ in Generalitat de Catalunya (ed) Curso de Gestión automatizada en el ämbito de la Justicia, Department de Justicia, Barcelona, 1983, pp 325–377.

See in this respect: E Diaz ‘Cultura e ideología (objetividad del conocimiento y praxis política)’ in Zapatero, op cit, pp 297–309.

‘The more the statements belonging to a given theory approximate a perfect supportive structure, the more coherent the theory’, A Peczenik ‘Law, morality, coherence and truth’ Ratio Juris Vol 7, No 2, July 1994, p 367.

F Galindo ‘The communicative concept of law’ in A J Arnaud and M Chiba (eds) Legal concepts in cross‐cultural perspectives. Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law Vol 41, 1998, pp 111–129.

R Alexy Begriff und Geltung des Rechts Alber, Freiburg, 1992, p 201.

The objective of this reflection is not the problem of the ‘digital breach’ nor that this question is not that common: truly this question can be come across by the scarce number of people using electronic mail in Europe.

The Regulation and its implications are studied in: N Marchal El nuevo régimen de la notificación en el espacio judicial europeo Editorial Comares, Granada, 2002.

The Directive on electronic signature (13.12.99), art. 1, paragraph 2 does not affect ‘the rules and limits included in national and communitarian legislations on the use of documents’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fernando Galindo

Correspondence: Fernando Galindo, Zaragoza, Spain; E‐mail: [email protected]. The author thanks Daniel Oliver for the valuable help given to the review and translation of this paper.