CHAPTER VII
COMPUTERS AND OFFICE MACHINERY
1.
The aim of this Chapter is to recommend that management decide upon a strategy for information technology and implement it. There are plans for the computerisation of accounts and jury summoning and there are a very few word-processors. There is also a pilot scheme for the computer-assisted transcription of shorthand notes of court proceedings. Otherwise the field for development is open.
2.
Uses for Computers
This is not to say that mechanisation is by any means solution to all problems. In many areas the cost would not be justifiable and frequently what is really needed is modification of manual systens. The concept that a bad system can be rectified by mechanisation is false. It is true that a system may have to be changed in order to be amenable to computerisation but the soundness of the system itself remains the main essential.
3.
There are, however, many operations in a judicial system which can usefully be considered for these purposes.
Almost anything to
do
4.
with money might be considered. Control of budgets, management accounting, collection of fees, fines and forfeitures, statements of account, payable orders, suitors' cash and court funds may be suitable candidates. A debt-recovery service of any magnitude may be a prime candidate: all claims are indexed;
lezbe ..:
where the procedure for an uncontested-claim is invoked every transaction in connection with the claim is fed into the computer and the whole can be retrieved without searches for a card index or other papers; these processes can be limited to the computers of corporate claimants with many claims and also to computerisation
to computerisation of the courts' enforcement
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