About the Finish Ministry of Justice

New winds are blowing through Finland’s public administration: eServices have made queuing and paper forms a thing of the past. User friendliness for both clients and employees and a better, faster service, lie at the heart of this transformation. Long-standing partner CGI is helping the Ministry of Justice to develop and realize this process.

The Ministry of Justice maintains and develops Finland’s judicial system and legal safeguards. It also maintains the country’s democratic structures and the fundamental rights of citizens. The Ministry is responsible for the drafting of key laws, ensuring that the judicial system functions well, and overseeing the enforcement of sentences. Approximately 10,000 employees work within the Ministry’s administrative sphere.

The Department of Judicial Administration is one of the Ministry’s three departments. It provides and improves the basis for well-functioning courts and state legal aid offices, as well as developing their activities. The National Administrative Office for Enforcement, concerned with activities such as the enforcement and collection of court-imposed fines, also falls under this department.

The challenge

The Ministry of Justice needed to reorganize its activities in response to Finland’s public sector productivity program. In practice, this meant performing the same duties as before, but more efficiently and faster. As the older generation move towards retirement, they would also have fewer people to do the work.

eServices for State legal aid offices and civil enforcement is the only way to guarantee a prompt and fair service. It also presents the opportunity to exceed the Ministry’s productivity goals. The civil enforcement system was renewed at the beginning of the 2000s.  Alongside legislative changes, this has only increased the need for direct electronic interaction with citizens and companies.

Our answer

Together with the ICT-service center serving the Ministry, CGI has built operative systems that include eService portals. Since spring 2010, the Romeo application allows clients, or their lawyers, to file legal aid applications online. From there, the applications move directly into Romeo’s data warehouses, making the interaction with legal aid offices faster and easier for clients and lawyers.

Romeo has also streamlined workload planning. In addition, this online system handles the payment of court-related fees and expenses.

Login is based on TUPAS IDs, (TUPAS is the general identification service used by Finnish banks). The software covers all aspects of application form management, from application handling to decision-making and invoicing details. Payment issues are handled via online connections to billing and accounting systems.

At a national level, another information system, Uljas, handles civil enforcement. This system has proven its worth by exceeding its goals for speed, cost-effectiveness, legal safeguards and reliability.

As a result, the Ministry can focus on the essentials: legal safeguards for debtors and efficient debt recovery. Payment collection has also improved. A new feature is eServices for citizens and partners. In both content and scope, during its creation this system was one of the public sector’s largest IT system development projects.

A success story

The chief benefit of Romeo and Uljas is greater efficiency. While application handling times have shortened, the HR savings target has been reached.

With the system taking care of routine work, resources and effort have been freed up for more challenging tasks. The Department of Judicial Administration has seen an even more wholesale digitization of its services.

New services allow citizens to set issues in motion online, which means faster services for them and lighter processes for the authorities. In the future, all judicial administration eServices will be based on a shared architecture and platform.

Together with the Ministry, CGI has developed an eService platform based on SOA architecture. Using this, the new systems can benefit from joint services and components. The service architecture allows the seamless combination of different information systems and data warehouses into a high-performing service. This means higher efficiency and productivity through open, flexible services provided across organizational boundaries.

Key benefits

eServices enable:

  • Faster, higher quality services for citizens and employees
  • Smoother application handling and better anticipation of workloads
  • Cost-efficiency by freeing staff from routine work to focus on expert tasks.

“eServices have enabled us to meet the project’s efficiency goals. In practice, this shows in faster, smoother application handling. We’ve also achieved the HR savings we were seeking, which has improved productivity.” Merja Muilu, Senior Counsellor, Ministry of Justice

Contact us for more information