IV. Scientific Management

Judicial management means the people's court, through organization, leadership, guidance, evaluation, supervision, restriction and other methods, makes reasonable arrangements for judicial work, strictly regulates judicial process, examines and evaluates trial quality and efficiency scientifically, and effectively integrates judicial resources, so as to ensure judicial justice, integrity and efficiency. As an important part of judicial work, judicial management consists of three factors-process management, quality supervision and performance assessment. In the pre-information age, the people's courts conducted judicial management mainly with hand-written ledgers and judicial statistical statements, and the data were heavily affected by human factors and not objective enough. They couldn't timely and accurately display the dynamics of judicial work, or comprehensively reflect quality and efficiency problems in the judicial process. The employment of big data concept and method to reform the court's judicial management approach overcomes weakness of the traditional management model and meets the new requirement on judicial management in the big data age.

i. Optimizing and reshaping judicial enforcement process

Information technology reshaped the judicial enforcement process and realized synchronous collection of case information. Paper materials are scanned and the electronic version is uploaded to the system synchronously, covering such judicial activities as court trial, identification, evaluation, auction and preservation. Litigation materials are input into the system at the first opportunity and the system can automatically record the time of collection. The work platform of organs of the Supreme People's Court has a wide range of powerful functions including automatic and synchronous disclosure of judicial process information, online disclosure of valid documents with one click, process approval, management and control of judicial time limit, and performance display. It primarily achieves the goal that the various documents generated when the judge handles a case are completed on the platform or uploaded to it synchronously, and initially forms the new working mechanism characterized by online transmission of case files, online approval, synchronous supervision throughout the process, and all-process recording while improving the efficiency of enforcement and case handling with modern technologies.

Meanwhile, the Supreme People's Court pushed full-process online case handling at a faster pace and a unified online case-handling platform was set up in all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government). Courts of three levels (provincial, municipal, and of district and county) in Liaoning Province comprehensively upgraded the judicial system and continuously expanded its functions. To support business coordination and data sharing within and without the court and to provide judges with more direct, convenient, intelligent and accurate information and application support in handling cases, a judicial assistance system was completed that covers all businesses including appraisal, evaluation and auditing and connects with the judicial system seamlessly. In light of the different ways of handling judicial assistance cases, the system has multiple case distribution sub-systems and covers the entire business process. Different departments can enter the system directly and carry out the judicial assistance procedures they applied for, and give feedback on the results when the case is completed. The system also conducts unified management of all third-party agencies, so the departments can choose third-party agencies from multiple candidates. Besides, leveraged on the three-level court network across the province, Liaoning realized business transmission among courts of three levels, whereby court of a lower level can apply to court of a higher level for judicial assistance directly, and court of a higher level can undertake and guide such cases from court of a lower level. This reinforced the working process of judicial assistance cases, bettered working standards and raised work efficiency.

ii. Timely supervising the quality and efficiency of judicial enforcement

The quality and efficiency of judicial enforcement concerns whether judicial justice can be truly realized. The real-time case data facilitates the supervision over judicial enforcement throughout the process and information technology raises enforcement quality and efficiency by serving judicial management.

Take the important indicator of case closed with court trial for example.Courts at all levels have the common phenomenon of “loose first, tight later” in case handling and “hitting the break on case acceptance at year end”. To solve this problem, the Supreme People's Court issued the Emergency Notice on Further Strengthening Case Handling, which demanded people's courts at all levels to scientifically study the current situation of trial and enforcement, carefully analyze prominent problems, make plans for solving accumulated cases, intensify service guarantee, supervision and guidance, and urge frontline judges to focus on judicial enforcement and serve them in that regard, so as to make sure the annual task of case handling is accomplished. Judicial big data provide technical support for supervising and guiding the courts to accomplish their annual task. Since 2015, the Supreme People's Court has produced the Judicial Situation Analysis Report every quarter, which, supported by judicial data, assists leaders and judges in identifying and solving problems in a timely manner. Many local courts also adopted this practice to solve problems in trial and case closure.In 2016,Anhui High People's Court released the Report on Judicial Enforcement by Courts in Anhui Province, which, with detailed data, comprehensively summarized the general situation of judicial enforcement by courts across the province, new cases they took in, and cases closed and unclosed by them. The report also included in-depth study and analysis of those data on multiple levels city by city, and pointed out existing problems in case closure with trial, such as tight control of case acceptance and sudden closure of cases at year end, uneven distribution among various cities in the number of cases and intensity of case handling, and the necessity of improving the quality of basic data for judicial statistics of courts in all cities. The report put forth four targeted measures for improvement.

Another example is that courts in Beijing set up a special judicial management office that assumes ten duties, including collecting information, studying issues and making judgement, providing suggestions and references for decision making, and process monitoring. By regularly collecting, analyzing and releasing evaluation data that reflect the trial quality and efficiency and editing and releasing judicial management bulletin, the office provides references for leaders at all levels to make decisions. By establishing the judicial quality assessment system that comprises 35 indicators at four levels and covers all courts, judicial tribunals, judges and cases across the city, Beijing urged them to identify problems against those indicators and actively take measures to solve the problems.

iii. Accurately summarizing performance of court statf

Many local courts built the work quality and efficiency evaluation system with big data and information technology. The Supreme People's Court will launch a new version of local court's personnel information management system to realize online transmission and real-time update of personnel information in all courts across the country, providing stronger technical support for better team management and more scientific decision-making.

The Guangdong court trial system includes a performance assessment subsystem. It provides data inquiry and statistical analysis of all court business in the province, including a number of functional modules such as provincial indicator plans and those of the local jurisdiction and court, plan evaluation and redefinition, indicator management, allocation of evaluation plan, and daily statistics management. Using objective and impartial data, the system assesses the performance of judicial personnel. Sichuan set up the judicial quality and efficiency evaluation system to manage and analyze the judicial quality and efficiency of courts, judicial departments and judges at three levels in the province. Regarding the performance assessment indicators for each court, department and judge, the system automatically calculates and generates data according to assessment needs, which makes the evaluation of judicial quality and efficiency much more efficient, eliminates the interference of human factors, and realizes automatic and intelligent evaluation.