Public Services News Portugal leads Europe on Dematerialisation and Use of ICT in Justice Portugal leads Europe on Dematerialisation and Use of ICT in Justice
- 11/06/2009
According to the Report on Dematerialization and the Use of ICT, Lisbon 16-17 March 2009, of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice Council of Europe (CoE), published in Strasbourg on June 11, 2009, Portugal is in the top position of the 47 European countries that are members of the CoE in dematerialization and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Justice.
The report states that several projects initiated since 2005 have led to very positive results, namely: by the end of February 2009, the enterprises created by the Enterprise on the Spot program reached more more than 67,900 companies and this system is used for about 70% of all enterprises being created in Portugal, 4,373 enterprises were created completely through the Internet (with the system developed by the Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) and in operation since June 2006, see The Enterprise’s Portal which was also developed by UMIC and is in operation since June 2006), more than 1,400 associations were created completely through the Internet, more than 31,260 acts of Commercial Registry were done online, more than 1 million permanent certificates were issued via the Internet, about 1.5 million acts of enterprises were published in the Internet instead of the III series of the Portugal Official Journal (Diário da República), as it was the case before. Since it was created in December 2006 until the end of January 2009, the service providing permanent certificates to enterprises on the Internet, issued more than 1 million permanent certificates. By the end of 2008, more than 792,000 Simplified Business Information (IES) declarations were reported through the Internet in a single form instead of the paper forms that previously required to be submitted annually to four different public organizations (Fiscal Administration, Commercial Registry, National Statistics Institute, Bank of Portugal).
According to the CoE report, in February 2009 approximately 98% of the applications for trademarks, 70% of applications for patents and 99% of the applications for logos registration were made through the Internet.
The report also refers to CITIUS (from Latin “quicker”, “faster”), the dematerialisation project of court processes that was developed by the Ministry of Justice since 2005. It began being used by court officials and was later extended to judges and lawyers in 2006-2007. In early 2009, 1,356 judges have the application installed, 2,283 laptops were distributed in the court system, there were 173 training sessions for 1,341 judges and 113 sessions for 1,142 other magistrates. Since April 2008, more than 827,000 procedural documents were issued, more than 10,000 people now use simultaneously the application, 2,419 cards were issued with electronic signature certificates (1,295 to judges and 1,124 to other magistrates), and all judicial officers attended training sessions.