The Kenya Judiciary is keeping its promise of embracing transparency and efficiency by now including the use of technology among its strategies towards fulfilling the pledge.
This was evident when 28 judges were this week given iPad 3 tablets and BlackBerry Torch phones to enable them keep track of the “numerous cases they handle as well as have better access to law and other resourceful information.”
It is hoped that with the new strategy, Kenyans will access faster and fair justice.
The iPads are Internet-enabled, and come pre-loaded with more than 100 applications, with the Kenya Law Reports, the Black’s Law Dictionary and Holy Scriptures being among them.
The Kenya Judiciary public communications Director, Naim Bilal, said that the allocation of the devices was part of Judiciary’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) strategy, aimed at speeding up court cases that have sometimes been taking long before judgments are passed.
These delays are usually attributed to the manual system currently in use, where records are stored in form of big paper files, which sometimes mysteriously disappear, delaying the closure of cases.
The Kenyan Chief Justice Willy Mutunga said there are over 2,015 pending criminal appeal cases, some of which have not been brought to closure for over 20 years, because files went missing, or records present are incomplete.
Just recently, the Kenyan Judiciary announced plans to launch an SMS service that would enable Kenyans to know the status of their pending cases and at the same time, report lazy judiciary officers to the Judiciary Service Commission (JSC), by calling or sending short text messages.
