V Effectiveness of Judicial Services

In 2019，the people’s courts carried out informatization construction in a practical manner. They have stressed the effectiveness of application of information technology，adhered to the principle of being oriented by questions，problems and results with the goal of meeting realistic needs，and provided targeted services to judges and police officers in handling cases，to the public in litigation，to the party and government in decision-making，and to the society in governance.

（I）Effective Service to Trial and Enforcement

The people’s courts have always carried out informatization construction by focusing on the core of serving the front-line trial and enforcement，providing information support for the establishment of a fair and efficient multi-level litigation system. The work of trial and enforcement has become more intensive and efficient with the aid of information technology.

Smart trial has gradually become accessible in courts at all levels，and a series of progress have been made as follows：Supported by the speech recognition technology with the accuracy rate close to 100% speech by the litigation participants may be transcribed in real time. Trial transcripts may be checked and confirmed by the parties concerned online. The electronic cross-examination function may be used in the online projection of the physical evidence，convenient for evidence submission and cross-examination. Laws and regulations may be accessed at any time，and used for reference when writing legal documents with dual monitors. The basic database used for pushing similar cases have been expanded，with increasingly accurate factors. The legal documents may be generated with smart assistance，errors corrected intelligently，and electronic files generated synchronously. In addition，assisted by the information-based system，the court proceedings may be recorded in real time and uploaded to the cloud storage service. Thanks to smart court trial，judges have greatly improved court hearings in efficiency and quality.

Jiangxi High People’s Court has created an intensive service mode. It has set up an “e-Center for Collecting and Forwarding”，the first intensive provincial service center，further breaking the limitations between courts at different levels and improving the management mode. To be specific，it has upgraded the separated intensive service of each court to the centralized intensive service of the whole Province，bringing about a leapfrog development.

In order to solve the problem of the court personnel limited by workplaces in handling cases，such platforms as “mobile case handling platform” and “mobile enforcement and case handling platform” have been established in succession. Thanks to deep integration between cloud desktop system and mobile terminals，judges may handle public affairs and cases anytime and anywhere through such mobile platforms that rely on cloud technology. The enforcement officers in Sichuan courts have achieved data synchronization between the “smart phone + App”-based “mobile enforcement” system and the enforcement case process management system. The enforcement judges may have real-time access to electronic case files when handling a case. Meanwhile the whole process of case handling may be supervised through taking photos，audio and video recording and automatic data transmission.

（II）Effective Service to Realization of Justice for the People

Justice for the people is the starting point and goal of the people’s courts，and the modernization of litigation service centers is an important part of meeting the new demands of the people for judicial work in the new era and enhancing the people’s sense of access to justice and allowing them to experience fairness and justice in every judicial case. The people’s courts，aiming at the development of an intensive litigation service mechanism with “access via one network” online and “one-stop service” offline in informatization，have assisted courts and judges with new technologies to provide the parties concerned with universal，equal，convenient，efficient，intelligent and precise litigation services. The litigation service centers have not only integrated the human resources of both alternative dispute resolution and mediation，arbitration and adjudication，and the trial assistance resources of centralized service. More importantly，the centers have also，by information-based means，created the data basis and data channels for integration of various resources，forming a unified platform access point. Then through platform distribution，the information required by each section will be re-integrated，so as to achieve the goal of solving multiple problems via one platform. As a result，things have been made convenient for litigation participants and the litigation service center staff，as well as other auxiliary personnel related to the trial.

Courts at all levels have conducted various explorations in building litigation service centers. In order to solve the problem of litigation difficulties in different places，courts at all levels have accelerated the reform of cross-regional filing. Using the Internet to promote cross-regional remote handling of relevant litigation items and cross-level handling with joint efforts，courts at all levels have opened up online channels for the construction of a convenient filing mechanism that can be accessed “nearby，anywhere in the city and in different regions”. As of December 23，2019，people’s courts across the nation had provided docketing services for 19，471 cross-regional cases. Among them，15，810 cases were provided with filing services within provincial-level administrative regions and 3，661 with services cross-provincial-level administrative regions，and 73% of the courts with jurisdiction over the cases have responded within 30 minutes. In addition，AI technology has been used in the field of legal counseling and the development of relevant intelligent assistance software to provide litigation risk assessment，legal inquiry and consultation，pre-litigation mediation advice，online processing，process disclosure and other judicial services to the parties concerned.

Information technology has played an indispensable role in the judicial organs’ innovative development of the Fengqiao experience in promoting social harmony in the new era，improvement of the governance mechanism of litigation sources，promotion of alternative dispute resolution，and maintenance of social harmony and stability. Courts in many regions have taken the lead and jointly established ODR platforms with governments and other relevant departments. The functions of online consultation of conflicts and disputes，risk assessment of losing a case，online mediation，online separation of cases and online judicial confirmation have all been put into operation，and integration and unification of online alternative resolution platforms for conflicts and disputes will further expand the existing achievements of ODR in future.

（III）Effective Service for Administration of Justice

Information-assisted judicial administration is a concrete manifestation of the people’s courts’ implementation of the big data development strategy in China. Human factors in trial and enforcement management，control and management of processes and nodes and deployment of personnel，property and materials have been excluded in an increasingly more thorough way，while the information-based means have been applied to a larger extent and big data has been used more effectively.

In 2019，the Supreme People’s Court Information Center promoted an ecological mode of knowledge-based data for the people’s courts and comprehensively improved rigorous judicial administration and decision-making. The Information Center has actively researched and developed intelligent components to enhance the intelligent level of human-computer interaction on big data platforms；strengthened joint development of data resources and built a knowledge service platform based on judicial big data；improved intelligent functions of the system and enhanced intelligent level of judicial administration，and added modules for automatic identification of “four types of cases”，automatic tracking of key cases and automatic generation of portraits to mark misconduct. The Center has basically built a unified “judicial chain” platform with the ability to preserve evidence from both internal and external networks. On the platform，the whole process is supervised，with all core applications，tamper-proof data and tamper verification，so as to guarantee the data security. In addition，by “data health check” it has launched a pilot project on “data-assisted decision-making” in 53 pilot courts.

Lanzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Gansu Province has used information technology to innovate its trial management mode. It has established standards of coefficients of difficulty，calculation system and supporting system for cases. Furthermore，it has set up a caseload calculation and trial performance quantification and evaluation system and reformed the traditional mode of evaluating the performance of judges subjectively and based on the number of cases handled. Instead，it has taken the trial performance data automatically generated by the platform for judges as the basis for objective and fair evaluation of the judges’ performance in trial and enforcement. In this way，it has successfully solved the old court management problems of caseload distribution，quantification and evaluation of performance.

（IV）Effective Service for Social Governance

The people’s courts have taken proactive steps to practice big-data development strategy by providing information-based service for social governance. General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed the need to promote the implementation of the national big data strategy and the use of big data to enhance modernization of national governance.^[5] The Supreme People’s Court has required courts at all levels to dig deep into the value of judicial big data，adhere to the goal of serving the modernization of the country’s governance system and governance capacity，and take regular monitoring and early warning and effective support for scientific decision-making as the core. It has also required to establish and improve the judicial comprehensive index system，study and discover the intrinsic connection between judicial activities and economic and social development，and provide scientific reference for the Party committee and government in decision-making. In addition，the Supreme People’s Court has required to actively promote transformation and application of judicial big-data results，form objective and authentic，pertinent，feasible，authoritative thematic analysis reports on the contentious issues of concern to the public in the economic and social development on the basis of comprehensive analysis of data in adequate amount，and reveal the nature of the problems，as well as put forward solutions to better serve social governance.

In addition to directly serving social governance with judicial big data，the people’s courts have also made contributions by indirectly improving the business environment through informatization. Doing Business 2020 report released on October 24，2019 by the World Bank shows that China’s global ranking in ease of doing business has improved significantly once again，to which the judiciary of China has made outstanding contributions. The remarkable improvement in China’s judicial quality and efficiency is largely attributed to the informatization of the people’s courts. According to the assessment on the judicial indicator of “Resolving Insolvency” in the World Bank report，the Chinese courts have used information technology to significantly improve the efficiency and transparency of insolvency-related cases. For example，the smart system for handling insolvency-related cases developed by the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court has functions such as insolvency-related cases handling，bankruptcy fund management，online supervision and evaluation，and its blockchain collaborative platform for bankruptcy trial may support 600，000 creditors to participate in online creditors’ meetings and vote online.