Oral Answer by SPS Rahayu Mahzam to PQ on Integrated Case Management System

28 FEB 2023

28 Feb 2023 Posted in Parliamentary speeches and responses

Mr Leon Perera (Member of Parliament for Aljunied)

Question
To ask the Minister for Law (a) what is the average timespan of a manually-handled court case as compared to one managed under the Integrated Case Management System (ICMS); (b) what is the number of State Courts cases that have been adjourned over the ICMS system failure on 7 February 2023; and (c) what is the typical frequency and duration of ICMS maintenance.

Oral Answer:

  1. The State Courts’ Integrated Case Management System (ICMS) was officially launched in 2015. The State Courts decide on matters relating to their case management systems, such as procurement and maintenance. The following is based on information received from the State Courts.
  1. The ICMS is used to manage all criminal cases in the State Courts. Judges and litigants may use the ICMS to access case records, schedule hearings, upload documents, file applications, and generate court orders. An average of around 184,000 criminal cases were filed each year from 2018 to 2022 on the ICMS.
  1. The ICMS currently undergoes scheduled weekly and monthly maintenance, which takes about 4 or 10 hours, respectively. Scheduled maintenance is carried out after court operating hours, to minimise disruptions to users.
  1. After the disruption to the ICMS happened, the State Courts activated their business continuity plans to ensure that court hearings could proceed despite the disruption. This included printing hard copy documents (where appropriate) for parties to refer to, and Judges recording their notes on Microsoft Word.
  1. As a result, the vast majority of criminal cases were not affected. The average time taken to manage these cases manually on 7 and 8 February 2023, as compared to the average time if the cases had been managed under the ICMS, was not specifically tracked.
  1. Only 16 of the 2,037 criminal cases scheduled on 7 and 8 February 2023, i.e. less than 1% of the scheduled cases, had to be adjourned. Minimal disruption was caused to these adjourned cases.

Last updated on 28 February 2023