The E-Dossier as a Tool to Optimize Civil Courts: The Cuneo Case

Ilaria Angela Amantea

1 a

, Marinella Quaranta

1 b

, Marianna Molinari

2 c

, Christine Peduto

and Francesca Demarchi

University of Turin, Computer Science Department, Corso Svizzera, 185, Torino, Italy

University of Turin, Department of Law, Via Giuseppe Verdi, 8, Torino, Italy

Tribunal of Cuneo, Piazza Tancredi Galimberti, 7, Cuneo, Italy

Keywords:

Business Process Management, Justice, Modelling and Simulation, E-Dossier.

Abstract:

This article presents a framework to integrate Business Process Management and Simulation to Civil Court

proceedings in order to support the telematization of the dossier, starting from the paper dossier. To speed

up Civil proceedings while maintaining high level of efﬁciency of the Court, the introduction of the e-dossier

has been fundamental in Italy. The article revolves around the virtuous case of the Court of Cuneo, analyzed

through Process Analysis and Process Reorganization Models, to estimate which changes and improvements

the telematization has brought.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, both at European and national level

there have been many laws, reforms and projects to

improve the efﬁciency and productivity of judicial of-

ﬁces and courts. One of the latest and biggest projects

in Italy, at a national level, is NGUPP

. As a part of

“the Unitary project for the dissemination of the Of-

ﬁce for Trial and the implementation of innovative

operating models in the judicial ofﬁces for the dis-

posal of the back” promoted by the Ministry of Jus-

tice, the project aims at enabling the judicial ofﬁces

of the Macro Area to acquire a more efﬁcient method

of handling litigation, in order to reduce the backlog.

The project proposes to test new collaborative

schemes between universities and judicial ofﬁces in

order to offer multidisciplinary skills to judicial of-

ﬁces employees, maintaining the efﬁcient operation

of the contemporary court system and offering sup-

port to the digitization and innovation process.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1329-1858

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2691-0611

https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1832-8135

The Project is called “New Collaborative Schemes

between Universities and Judicial Ofﬁces for Improving

the Efﬁciency and Performance of Justice in Northwestern

Italy” - ≪NEXT GENERATION UPP≫ and has involved

35 judicial ofﬁces from most courts from the northwest of

Italy.

Despite all these efforts, the e-dossier is still a

work in progress. In courts of many Italian cities the

dossier is still on paper, or even half on paper and

half telematic. In order to support this change man-

agement we will show the process the Court of Cu-

neo, a virtuous example of a court completely able to

telematize, and sometimes dematerialize ﬁles of Civil

Litigation and of Labour. The goal is to show the pro-

cess beforehand and the current processto underline

which activities allowed the telematization and the

consequent savings of time, costs and resources. The

ﬁnal objective is to provide a model to be exported to

support the change in other Italian, and maybe Euro-

pean, tribunals.

In order to analyse the business processes of the

Courts, we exploit a Business Process Management

(BPM) methodology (Dumas et al., 2018; Van der

Aalst et al., 2010; Abo-Hamad and Arisha, 2013).

One of the central issues of BPM (Dumas et al., 2018;

Amantea et al., 2018; Van der Aalst et al., 2010; Abo-

Hamad and Arisha, 2013) is change management

(Amantea et al., 2020; Di Leva et al., 2020a; Amantea

et al., 2022; Amantea et al., 2018). Using a process-

centric approach, to describe the diagram of the pro-

cess, we will adopt the Business Process Model and

Notations (BPMN) standard language (Di Leva et al.,

2020b; Allweyer, 2016). The adoption of a process-

centric approach relying on a process-aware informa-

tion system combining with a simulation tool (iGrafx

Amantea, I., Quaranta, M., Molinari, M., Peduto, C. and Demarchi, F.

The E-Dossier as a Tool to Optimize Civil Courts: The Cuneo Case.

DOI: 10.5220/0012133200003546

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH 2023), pages 425-431

ISBN: 978-989-758-668-2; ISSN: 2184-2841

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

425

LCC, ) allows the redesign of business processes in

an organization. This integration of techniques al-

lows to analyze activities and related resources, time,

and cost, and evaluate delay and bottleneck (Martinho

et al., 2016; Mans et al., 2015; Fern

andez-Llatas et al.,

2011); all based on real data stored in the information

System (IS) (Amantea, 2022).

In the following section, we introduce our

methodology. In the third chapter, we contextualize

the Court of Cuneo, its processes activities on pa-

per, its digitalized activites and the simulated process

with the data analysis results. The two different busi-

ness process will be discussed. In the last section, we

provide our concluding remarks with some consider-

ations about future work.

2 METHODOLOGY

The methodology is made of three different phases:

• Context and Data Analysis: the analysis of the

context aims at understanding what the current sit-

uation is and what could be the needs for improve-

ments at different levels: organizational, techno-

logical and legal level. This stage aims at setting

the overall strategic scenario relevant to the com-

pany and determine the functional components re-

lated to the processes under analysis setting some

KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), like cycle

times, costs, resource allocation, etc., in order to

measure the process performance (Van Looy and

Shafagatova, 2016).

• Process Analysis and As-Is Model and Simula-

tion: the goal is to create a visual model of pro-

cess by determining the sequence of activities and

the various crossroads (gateways), which lead to

different routes depending on choices made. The

process is then reconstructed as it is in the current

situation, formalized in BPMN language and thus

validated by Court ofﬁcers. The process diagram

is then integrated with information concerning re-

sources (and their capabilities), execution time of

the activities, costs, queue policy management,

and other features that allow to build a virtual rep-

resentation of reality that is as accurate as feasible.

The model must be simulated with the real work-

load of the process extracted from the IS, thus ob-

taining an evaluation of the KPI to be compared

with the current values of these indicators and al-

lowing the model validation. The model obtained

in this way is called the As-is model of the process

under analysis.

• Process Reorganization and To-Be Model: the

objective is to introduce in the As-Is model of one

or more corrective actions in order to show dif-

ferent evolutionary scenarios (and the respective

models). This stage includes solutions for restruc-

turing the process, improving the detection and

the understanding of inefﬁciencies, bottlenecks,

constraints and risks (Mans et al., 2015). The sim-

ulation, with the same workload, of the different

scenarios (What-if analysis) allows comparing the

scenarios among themselves and with respect to

the starting As-Is model. The comparison is made

on the KPI of the scenarios and of the As-Is model

until an acceptable solution is reached. In this

way, a new model of the process (To-Be model) is

obtained, and it should be therefore implemented.

In particular, we are interested in monitoring the

business performance related to the throughput

time and costs between the activities performed

in the chancellor’s ofﬁce in the As-Is on paper

process and the To-Be telematic model. Thanks

to iGrafx simulator it is possible to use monitors.

Monitors are elements that can be placed on cer-

tain activities, thus allowing the time from one ac-

tivity to another to be measured. When during the

simulation the token will pass through the activ-

ity with the monitor, the monitor will be activated

and will detect the time traveled by the token from

the starting monitor to the arrival monitor (includ-

ing waiting for resources, bottlenecks and time for

various activities). By inserting various monitors

during the process, it will be possible to measure

only the cross-sections of the process that involve

all the administrative tribunal stuff activities, ex-

cluding the not-optimizable times foreseen by the

complaint for the performance of speciﬁc activi-

ties or parts of the process.

3 THE CASE STUDY: COURT OF

CUNEO

At European and at Italian level there have been many

norms in order to improve the efﬁciency and produc-

tivity of judicial ofﬁces and courts. At a more prac-

tical level some rules have imposed the telematiza-

tion of ﬁles of Civil Litigation and of Labour sections.

Despite this, the e-dossier is still not implemented in

the majority of the tribunals. A virtuous example of

a Court that was able to telematize, and sometimes

dematerialize all of these ﬁles is the Court of Cu-

neo. The process of telematization-dematerialization

started in 2010/2012 and developed slowly until re-

cent years (2021/2022).

In order to support these changes we will show

SIMULTECH 2023 - 13th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications

426

the paper process used till 2010-2012 (in Figure 4)

and the telematic process later developed, from 2012

to 2019 (in Figure 5).

In recent years, some reforms have also reduced

staff and at the end of 2023 the latest reform will also

eliminate the Clerk’s ﬁgure.

There are some terms are set by law, such as the

terms within which the Judge has to deliver the judge-

ment or the terms to be awaited until the effective

date. Furthermore, some waiting times are due to the

interval needed for the release of documents or stamps

(like the ones by Lawyers or Public Prosecutor (PP)).

For this reason, we are focusing on the activities

from the perspective of the Chancellor’s ofﬁce, and in

particular, we are focusing on proceeding about sep-

aration and divorce by mutual consent, since they are

less subject to the whims of external parties.

Judgements related to the kind of proceedings,

hanging between 2010 and 2012 and between 2021

and 2022, have been estimated on the average 800 per

year: so this is our generator for both As-Is and To-Be

processes.

Initially, the Chancellor’s ofﬁce had at its disposal:

1 Ofﬁcer, 10 Chancellors and 2 Clerks. Currently,

there are 1 Ofﬁcer, 5 Chancellors and 1 Clerks (ﬁg-

ure which is going to disappear).

Comparing the two processes of Figure 4 and Fig-

ure 5, is visible that the workﬂow of the Informa-

tion System (IS) implemented in the telematic pro-

cess allows to make all the communications at its in-

side. Therefore, all the dossier delivery activities to

the different authorities are deleted, thus, the clerk’s,

the driver’s and the UNEP’s activities are expired (and

the lanes related to these functions are deleted too in

Figure 5). Also the PP stamps are done by the IS and

not anymore by the Clerks.

In this way, the activities of the To-Be process are

signiﬁcantly reduced respect to the As-Is model, and

the cycle times are generally reduced as shown in Ta-

ble 1.

Table 1: Comparison of the input transactions and the aver-

age cycle time measured in weeks of the whole process by

As-Is on paper and To-Be telematic.

Transactions Av Cycle Time (W)

Paper 800 67.98

E-Dossier 800 22.12

This has occurred thanks to the possibility through

IS to have the archive of documents always available

and the cancellation of paper communications or in

presence. This has facilitated the cancellation of the

waiting times between the happened communication

and the reception of the notiﬁcation of the same one.

Moreover, by eliminating the presence of the lawyers

for the delivery/withdrawal of the documents, the job

of the operators can be better organized, more ﬂowing

and without continuous interruption. Furthermore,

these structural changes promotes smart working for

operators.

As the number of the activities are reduced, the

monitors of the two processes show a relevant differ-

ence in the average throughput time of the Chancel-

lor’s activities. In detail, we put the simulations mon-

itors in order to exclude the time that is not directly

related to the Chancellor’s activities (such as the wait-

ing for the PP stamps or the communication from the

lawyers or from the municipalities).

For clarity, we have split the processes into three

parts related to the three main part of the process:

Investigation stage, Introductory stage and Decision-

making stage in order to better allow the time com-

parison. Watching at Figures 4 and 5 there are two

colored activities. The investigation stage starts from

the beginnin of the process and ends to the activity

”First hearing + Minutes”, the Introductory stage

starts from the activity ”First hearing + Minutes”

and ends to the activity ”Publication”, ﬁnally, the

Decision-making stage starts from the activity ”Pub-

lication” and ends to the end of the process.

In particular, related to the Investigation stage, in

Figure 1 is shown the average working time express

in hours of the Paper dossier a) (Figure 4) and of the

e-dosseier b) (Figure 5). In particular, Monitor 2 mis-

ured the ﬁrst part of the inscription of the dossier from

the beginning of the process until before the commu-

nication at the judge, while Monitor 4 misuread from

when the dossier retourn in charge of the chauncellor

until the end of the chancellor’s activities before the

dossier arrive again to the judge.

Figure 1: Comparison monitor average cycle time measured

in hours of the Investigation stage between the As-Is on pa-

per process a) and the To-Be E-Dossier process b).

Respectively, in Figure 2 is shown the average

working time express in hours related to the Inves-

tigation stage of the Paper dossier process a) and of

the e-dosseier process b). In particular, Monitor 6, 8

and 10 are related to the activities before the judge de-

cision and avoiding the steps related with entities out

of the administrative staff. Monitor 12 measured the

activities from the judge decision to the publication.

Finally, Figure 3 shows the average working time

express in hours related to the Decision-Making stage

of the Paper dossier process a) and of the e-dossier

The E-Dossier as a Tool to Optimize Civil Courts: The Cuneo Case

427

Figure 2: Comparison monitor average cycle time measured

in hours of the Introductory stage between the As-Is on pa-

per process a) and the To-Be E-Dossier process b).

process b). In particular, Monitor 13 start from the re-

ceiving of the judge decision and represent the time of

the publication and the starting point of the notiﬁca-

tion to every interested part. But while with the IS is

possible to send all the communication together and

it is not necessary to note the receiving notiﬁcation,

in the paper process there are a lot of steps for dif-

ferent communications sending and receiving. Thus,

while for the e-dossier the instant communication is

included in Monitor 13, the different communications

activities in the paper model are indicated in Monitor

15, 17 and 19. At the end of the legal waiting time

for the prescription, Monitor 21 a) and Monitor 15 b)

show the average time necessary for archiving ﬁle.

Figure 3: Comparison monitor average cycle time measured

in hours of the Decision-Making stage between As-Is on

paper process a) and To-Be E-Dossier process b).

It is important to underline the drastic reduction of

communication activities, besides a saving of work-

ing times, has carried to a considerable cost reduction.

Although it has not yet been possible to estimate the

reduction in the number of printed copies of each of-

ﬁcial document and accompanying documents, it has

been possible to verify a reduction of approximately

5,000 euros for every year regarding the year prece-

dence from 2019 to 2022 only for the postal expenses.

Nevertheless, when in January 2024 the reform

that will abolish the ﬁgures of the clerks comes into

force, this model will allow the continuation of the

normal duties of the court avoiding bottlenecks for

lack of staff.

4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORKS

This paper draws the threads of the process imple-

mented at the Court of Cuneo, so as to capture its up-

standing practices, mainly where it has been possible

to fully telematize (and in some cases dematerialize)

the dossier of the Civil Litigation sector. To highlight

the actions that permitted telematization and the time,

money, and resource savings that resulted, the work’s

goal is to depict how the operation was done in the

past and how it is done today, in order to export the

model.

These relevant outcomes can be taken as a model

for all the other courts from Italy, which will en-

counter the same issues in telematizing proceedings

and dematerializing dossiers. As a matter of facts,

the legislative decree d.l. n. 13/2023, approved by

the Council of Ministers on February 21st, has estab-

lished the obligation of telematic deposit, the obliga-

tion of using PCT for the judge and the public pros-

ecutor, for decisions and the minutes of the hearing.

On this note, it is fundamental for Italian Courts to

update their current proceedings and switch from pa-

per proceedings to telematic proceedings. Therefore,

the features and results presented in this paper have to

create an archetype of an Italian telematic civil court

that can be sustained, transplanted and reproducible in

other courts, to enable the same cost-efﬁciency gains.

As future works, we would like to apply these cur-

rent optimization ﬁrstly, to the several other sections

in the Civil Court and in the Criminal Court of Cuneo,

and secondarily to other Italian Courts as desired by

the Ministry with the creation of this project. Further-

more, to evaluate different aspects and for a higher

and more complete vision, experiments of integrated

techniques of BPM and Process Mining (Aalst et al.,

2015) will be conducted in order to extract more use-

ful information for further process optimizations.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was conducted in the ﬁeld of Italian

Miniserty project “NGUPP - NEXT GENERATION

UPP. New Collaborative Schemes between Universi-

ties and Judicial Ofﬁces for Improving the Efﬁciency

and Performance of Justice in Northwestern Italy”

and thanks to the collaboration of the Court of Cuneo

(Italy), of the President of the Court Paolo Giovanni

Demarchi Albengo, and all the Court’s staff.

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Figure 4: Paper process. As-Is process.

The E-Dossier as a Tool to Optimize Civil Courts: The Cuneo Case

429

Figure 5: Telematic process. To-Be process.

SIMULTECH 2023 - 13th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications

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