This article was written by Julio Gabriel Mercado and Sandra Elena, advisor and coordinator at the Open Justice Program at Argentina’s Ministry of Justice.

As open data promises to change the way governments around the world work, organisations in the judicial sector still seem to be lagging behind.

Historically seen as distant and obscure, the justice sector has a lot to win by joining other government sectors in developing strong open data ecosystems to foster transparency and innovation.

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What makes this sector unique and how can we help it catch up with the rest of the institutions implementing this philosophy?

Here are five lessons that we have learned from our experience implementing open judicial data in Argentina that might help us find some answers.

First, here’s our story. Over the last few years, the public sector in Argentina has been building up to joining the worldwide open government movement.

As we adopt open government principles – transparency and access to public information, accountability and public participation – which have gained traction among several pioneering justice sector organisations, we are developing an open justice vision for our country.

At the national Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, which is spearheading the Open Justice Program, we have worked together with many of the leading organisations towards establishing the foundation of this collective idea of openness.

So far, we have helped more than 50 judicial organisations embrace an open data philosophy, through which they grant civil society access to previously virtually inaccessible data and information about their work and performance.

As a result, since 2016, our portal datos.jus.gob.ar, Argentina’s first open judicial data portal, has published primary, granular data, as well as visualisations and statistics on more than 2.3 million criminal and 1.5 million civil justice cases, as well as on most key activities developed by our own ministry.

Our contribution to the creation of a vibrant open justice community has left us with some key lessons so far that we would like to share in this piece.

1. Yes, judicial data should be open

In our experience, many justice sector organisations (particularly from the judicial branch) still tend to consider themselves exempt from the need and potential benefits of opening their data (in fact, they tend to believe that open government does not apply to them at all).

“Many justice sector organisations consider themselves exempt from the need and potential benefits of opening their data (in fact, they tend to believe that open government does not apply to them at all)”

We believe this is a mistake and a missed opportunity for a sector where low legitimacy is considered a widespread problem.

Niklas Luhmann, one of the most prominent legal sociologists of the 20th century, defined legitimacy in justice as a product of the actual application of those procedures (in German, Verfahren) that are put in place to create binding decisions. What he meant was that, as societies become more complex, people will be more inclined to accept decisions produced by the judiciary, as long as they are certain that procedures have been duly followed.

That is why we argue that making justice more transparent and accountable through open data is a way of enhancing the legitimacy of its decisions.

On that account, any legislation that grants access to public information should as a rule appertain all three branches of government (at least the Argentine law does), which brings us to the next point:

2. No, judicial data isn’t produced solely by the judicial branch

Similarly to the previous misconception, many public servants feel that data from organisations outside the domain of the judicial branch has no connection with and should not be considered as “judicial data”. After all, only the judicial branch dictates sentences, right?

The flaw in this logic is that it overlooks a massive amount of useful and relevant data, which is directly related to the provision of justice but produced by actors outside the judicial branch. For example, data on reported crimes and police activities, on prison conditions, on audit institutions, on alternative conflict resolution or access to justice services provided by justice ministries or community legal aid.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if all this data was taken into account and even interoperable? As before, this brings us directly to the next point:

3. Open judicial data is essential for justice innovation

The call for active transparency and community engagement to improve legitimacy is a potent argument to open judicial data; however, it shouldn’t be the only one.

The reality is that we are now on the verge of a new era in which any innovation strategy aimed at the justice sector – be it working on a people-centred legal design or developing AI tools for justice – requires data to work.

“You are not only opening your judicial data to make the justice system more transparent: you are also doing it so that an open and collaborative judicial innovation network can have the raw material that it needs to function”

So you are not only opening your judicial data to make the justice system more transparent: you are also doing it so that an open and collaborative judicial innovation network can have the raw material that it needs to function.

This brings us to point number four:

4. Try to centralise as much data as you can in a single portal (or at least agree on common standards)

If each justice sector organisation creates their own online data portal or document repository, they will probably do it in their own way and apply their own standards. This makes data less interoperable and, therefore, less reusable.

We know that publishing all data in a single repository by using the same methodology is nearly impossible; however, it is crucial to try to avoid having it spread across a myriad single-effort initiatives and through unconnected data portals.

Agreeing on common standards will bring the ecosystem closer from the goal of making all data comparable, thus making it worth the effort put into opening them.

In our case in Argentina, we signed a data agreement with every national and subnational higher judicial institution (ours is a federal country). This led us to agree with them on a common protocol and standard, as well as on the publication of all data in a single judicial data portal.

That is why, besides data from our ministry, our portal hosts data and statistics from half of the country’s provincial judicial systems and one federal institution.

Although there is still a long way ahead before the entire system is unified under one standard, this agreement helped make data between courts and jurisdictions comparable, which was one of our primary goals.

5. Be ready to work in and manage interdisciplinary teams

The focus on interdisciplinary teams seems pretty obvious in the context of modern government; however, that is not the case in the judicial sector.

This is in part due to the prevalent “robe model”, which dictates that only lawyers can understand and therefore should work with data related to legal matters.

This represents a problem that we have encountered in many justice sector organisations, as experienced judges and brilliant jurists find themselves struggling to learn data science, statistics or web design from scratch.

Interdisciplinary teams are key for success, making lawyers work along with system engineers, social scientists, designers, IT people, data scientists, mathematicians, journalists and even singular legal system users (basically a wide variety of people who didn’t attend law school), where everyone brings something different and valuable to the table.

We expect the next few years to see the development of a stronger open justice movement, not only in Argentina, but also worldwide, as well as the implementation of this vision to improve justice provision and build more modern, sustainable and people-centred societies.

— Julio Gabriel Mercado and Sandra Elena

(Picture credit: Unsplash)