Project Showcase: Rule of Law Project, MASAQ (Mizan)

 

Client Overview:

Mizan is a Court Case Processing System (CPS) that was implemented in various courts and judicial departments affiliated with the Jordanian Ministry of Justice, such as the Court of Appeals, the Court of First Instance, and the Public Prosecutor’s office. The Mizan project is a USAID-Funded Rule of Law Project, MASAQ.

Mizan is a centralized case management system that automates the functions of courts and other legal departments in the judicial system. Major functionality covered in Mizan are case registration, case follow-up, notification generation and notification delivery follow-up, minute writing, scheduling, and security.

The Challenge:

 

The first version of the system, known as Mizan Version 1 (MV1), needed an upgrade in order to regulate and automate work in all the judicial courts affiliated with the Ministry of Justice in Jordan.

  • It contained more than 13 different applications that needed client maintenance and source code version tracking. They were installed on more than 50 servers all around the Kingdom.
  • New releases required many resources and consumed much time and effort, as well as the need to travel between different court locations in order to perform installations and configurations for each court location separately, as the system was not centralized.
  • Court-to-court electronic communication was impossible because there was no link or visibility between the courts.
  • The application needed constant enhancement and new functionalities to cater to the Ministry of Justice courts and prosecutor needs.

The Solution:

Optimiza upgraded the old version of Mizan Version 1 (MV1) into a new Mizan Version 2 (MV2). The project involved transforming the existing case management system into a state-of-the-art system while centralizing the information maintained in the database for improved judicial processing and information management.

Phases of implementing MV2 included requirement gathering and system analysis, followed by system design and architecture, prototyping and GUI design, development, quality control, and internal testing. After these phases were completed, MASAQ performed a comprehensive testing and UAT process, and the system was then implemented as a pilot project at West Amman Court for a period of one month.

Consequently, MV2 was implemented in over 157 Jordanian courts, and data migration from MizanV1 to MizanV2 was completed. Furthermore, tuning and enhancements were applied to the system based on customer feedback.

Upon completion of the project, the following objectives were achieved:

  • Reduced Staff and Technology Costs:
    • IT Staffing: Installations and configurations are now done on central servers using smart client technology
    • One software application that serves all legal and geographical jurisdictions
    • Minimized User Support: There is no need to travel to court locations in order to install updates and new releases
    • Technology: The latest technologies in data encryption and compression with robust security standards were implemented
  • Improved Judicial Processing:
    • New functions like ROA (Register of Actions), case transfer, centralized participant, integration with CSPD (Civil Status and passports department), accessing different accounts from one application, and integration with NMS (Notifications Management System)

Increased Security:

  • Fully secured case information, with about five levels of visibility and security implemented on the system
  • Transparency:
    • Access to court records via electronic kiosks

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