High quality and modern judicial services, capable of answering to all of society’s needs, cannot be achieved without information and communication technology (ICT). Informatization of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) judiciary has been a long process, but today, the state of the art judicial information system in BiH is the most thorough and modern of any country in the region and brings with it immense benefits for the delivery of justice.

As late as 2004 judicial institutions functioned in a similar way as in the early 20th century. Before the introduction of ICT reform in the judicial system, courts and prosecutors’ offices had just over 500 computers, with almost no licensed software. Developments in cases were logged manually and all information had to be retrieved from mountains of paper files.

The BiH court system was already labouring under the weight of numerous and complex cases arising from the fallout of conflict in the1990s. In an increasingly litigious environment based on the rule of law, such out-dated and inefficient practices threatened to exacerbate the backlog problem even further. A dramatic change in the working operations of courts was needed. ICT provided that change.

And so a demanding project of introducing cutting-edge tailor-made ICT solutions was launched by the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH (HJPC).