Speech Harm Brouwer: The times they are a changing

Speech by Harm Brouwer, chairman of the Board of procurators-general of the Netherlands, on the occasion of the annual conference of the International Association of Prosecutors, 29 August 2008, Singapore

Chair, dear colleagues, members of the IAP,

Dear friends,

First of all I would like to use this opportunity to thank the IAP on behalf of the Dutch delegation. Not only for the – as ever - impeccable organization of this event, but also for the theme, that has been chosen for the conference, ‘new technologies and challenges in crime and prosecution’.In our line of work we are so often absorbed by our daily caseload, that we forget to take pause and reflect upon the long-term benefits technological innovation might bring.Thanks to the IAP we now have the opportunity to do just that. 

And, of course, I also would like to thank our hosts, for the fact that we are able to hold this conference under such pleasurable conditions. I already had high expectations of what you, our colleagues from Singapore, would achieve, but you have managed to surpass these expectations. My respect and compliments on that!

Now I would like to turn to my own modest contribution to this conference.

We prosecutors tend to be good at language. We have a way with words, or so we like to think. However, people from outside the profession legal often have a different opinion. In their view prosecutors (and lawyers in general) are mainly skilful at saying simple things in a very complicated way.

It is true: in our trade it is not always common to call a spade a spade. An everyday concept, such as ‘theft’, turns into something entirely different,when it is mentioned by a prosecutor. The single word ‘theft’ then – almost by magic - becomes a string of seventeen words: ‘to dishonestly appropriate property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it’. We need such complicated terminology because of the precision our job requires, or at least that is our claim. Often it is hard to explain to the outside world, why we cannot speak or write like normal people.

Some comfort to us, is that ours is not the only profession, that has to struggle with such a language gap. Professionals in the IT-business face the same difficulty. And they have for a surprisingly long time. If you’ll allow me a short historical digression,the digital age did not start in the 1970s in Silicon Valley. Actually, it was an Englishman, Charles Babbage, who invented the world’s first mechanical computer in 1837.His design of the so-called Analytical Engine anticipated virtually every aspect of present-day computers.
However, his vision of a steam-powered, general-purpose, digital computer was never actually realised. He could not find enough investors,who were willing to fund the project. This certainly had to do with communication problems that Babbage experienced. I’ll give you an example of that.

Babbage took issue with a poem by the famous poet Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Tennyson, received a letter from Babbage, saying: "In your otherwise beautiful poem The Vision of Sin, one verse reads: Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born. If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest: Every moment dies a man, Every moment 1 and 1/16 is born.’ Babbage added: "Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry." For obvious reasons Tennyson did not take up Babbage’s suggestion.

Unfortunately such conceptual differences do not only show when IT-specialists communicate with poets. They also occur when they advise legal professionals. The IT-people find it difficult – if not impossible - to explain what a particular technology may bring. We, the prosecutors, also have great difficulty in explaining to the IT-folk, what the complexities of our profession are and why these complexities are so important.

Nevertheless, in spite of this wide communication barrier, there are many examples of succesful co-operation between the worlds of criminal law and Information Technology. Apparently it ís possible that prosecutors and computer specialists can understand each other’s language.

Today I will present to you one such example of a promising IT-project in the domain of Dutch criminal law: our new integrated system for case-management, called GPS. This system is currently being introduced within the Public Prosecution Service of the Netherlands. We have opted for a system of gradual implementation, that should be ready at the end of  2010. My main theme is therefore the not so distant future.

However, in order to deal with that properly, I must first step back in time.Let’s go back to the end of the 1990’s.The Public Prosecution Service of the Netherlands was still a loose collection of 25 relatively autonomous offices spread throughout the country. Yes, there was a small national office with central management, the board of Procurators-General. But the handling of cases was organized almost exclusively along regional lines. The basic assumption was, that every regional office could handle all their standard cases. At the same time these offices were supposed to maintain the expertise and capacity to deal with large and specialist cases. We were in effect the Public Prosecution Services, rather than a single concern, The Public Prosecution Service.

Over the past eight years we have been distributing both our workflow and our expertise more logically over the organization as a whole. In short, we have developed from an organisation of professionals towards a professional organisation. Of course, in this day and age such a development automatically has consequences for the way our IT-facilities were organized. By the year 2000 our case registration system, called Compas, was outdated by any standard. Compas is a typical computer workhorse from the 1980’s. It is neither elegant, nor flexible, but it does its job as long as you keep that job simple.

Compas is a decentralised case registration system, running separately in our nineteen regions. It contains data on cases like who the suspect and his lawyer are and what the important deadlines are. Such a registration system would be acceptable if your need is no more than to monitor the progress of a case. However, as I have outlined before, our current requirements go far beyond that. We want to be able to connect the whole Public Prosecution Service simultaneously to the same flow of information. And not only the Public Prosecution Service, but also our partners within the criminal justice chain, like the police and the law courts.

It will therefore not come as a surprise that in 2000 we decided to replace the Compas-system. This successor of Compas is called GPS. In this case not meaning: Global Positioning System, but Geïntegreerd Processysteem Strafrecht, Dutch for Integrated Process System Criminal Law. Where Compas is mainly a registration tool, GPS makes the whole workflow digital. We have started a joint pilot with the Amsterdam police, where all police reports will be automatically uploaded digitally into GPS. We are also making arrangements to provide other participants in the criminal justice chain, such as defense lawyers and the probation service, with an electronic version of the case file, instead of the usual sheaf of paper.

GPS also automates electronic communication with other systems. For example, it automatically verifies personal data with the central database of the Dutch municipalities. GPS will automatically receive an update when these personal data have changed. This possibility to communicate is more important, because  we often work together with other organizations when preparing a case.

Juvenile crime is a good example. To deal with that type of crime effectively, it is essential that any sanction under criminal law is implemented by welfare workers, educators or parole officers. To make information exchange possible, all partners in the criminal justice chain have agreed on shared standards for electronic messaging. This means that our databases are not directly linked to each other, but communicate automatically.

GPS also features an application, that supports prosecution officers in their decision-making. Our national prosecution guidelines for frequently-prosecuted  crimes are fully integrated into the system. That means,that throughout the country, prosecutors and their law clerks, who are preparing a case, are automatically informed how such a  case is dealt with generally. This feature of GPS promotes consistency in the application of criminal law, whilst maintaining the freedom of prosecutors to deal with a case differently when its particulars justify doing so.

Finally, GPS provides a wealth of management information, that makes it possible to direct the efforts of the organisation much more precisely. How many of a particular kind of cases can a branch office or even an individual employee handle? How many cases of domestic violence were reported in the month of May? These and other questions will easily be answered, using GPS.

Those are the main features of our new GPS-system. The separate features may often not be new to you. For instance when it comes to digitalization of the criminal trial, we in the Netherlands are actually far behind our hosts from Singapore. What ís special about GPS however, is that it is a fully integrated system. That is what makes it a really ambitious project. GPS combines digitalized workflow, a case management system, digital files and trials, data exchange with other organizations, ánd a decision support system.  That makes GPS both  complex and demanding. However, GPS is a necessity, if we want to realize our ambitions. If we really want the organisation to operate as a concern – both internally and externally – we múst have those IT-facilities that enable us to do so.  GPS shows great promise, but it is not fully functional yet. We are still implementing the section that deals with standard cases and the section meant to process more complicated cases will follow later,  in 2010.

GPS has lent more  evidence of that Golden Rule of IT: projects take much longer than planned, even if a pessimist has made the planning.  In fact it might be instructive to share with you some of the difficulties we have encountered while designing and introducing GPS.  We have underestimated the cultural difficulty digitalisation of the workflow would cause. It takes time to get used to new technologies and new procedures. We must never forget that paper itself is a remarkable technological invention, that may still offer some benefits over electronic equivalents. You may organize your work by the arrangement of papers on your desk and you can scribble on paper easily. On hot days you can use a slim file to fan yourself with cold air or you can swat a fly with it. Try doing that with a 21-inch flat screen! Those who want to digitalize must realize, that they also must offer alternatives to the solutions paper has to offer.

Another complicating factor was, that we had to develop the system in close cooperation with our partners in the criminal law system. To facilitate this process, we have decided to let each partner design his own segment to his own needs and specifications. What is important in the end is that we use the same standards and protocols for data exchange. We have to be able to communicate with each other; we do not have to be each other.

Those were some of the major obstacles we have had to overcome in our quest to introduce GPS. So what will happen when GPS is fully-implemented? What will the near future look like? Well, at least those benefits we have planned should materialize. Not only will we be able to work faster; our prosecutors will no longer be bound to a particular place to do their work. They can log in at any branch office, or even - through secure lines – from home.

Moreover, several people can work on the same case file at the same time, without having to send paper copies around. Our prosecutors in Rotterdam can prepare the trial for a human trafficking case, whilst at the same time our asset recovery specialists in Amsterdam are logged in on the same file to do their part of the case.

And this possibility to work simultaneously does not stop at the limits of the Prosecution Service. Judges and defense lawyers who prepare a case will also be able to log into the system to access the file. In essence, as a giant, centralised database with a whole range of functionalities, GPS allows the Dutch Public Prosecution Service to work genuinely as one organisation, in the Martini way: anytime, any place, anywhere.

Those are some of the benefits of GPS in the sphere of efficiency and speed.

But of course there is a lot more to our work, than just efficiency and speed. We are not a logistics company such as UPS or DHL who have done their job perfectly,once they have delivered the package in time and intact. For us the most important part of our work is the quality of justice we administer. Are our decisions and the measures we take, fair? Are they consistent? Are they proportionate to the aim we pursue? Are they transparant and impartial? Are they just, legitimate  and in accordance with the rule of law?

I believe, that GPS will offer a boost in these important respects as well. GPS is not only an efficiency tool; it is a quality tool. To give three examples:

• Throughout the handling of a case all the relevant information is easily accessible, which benefits the quality of decisions; This increased accessibility, does not only benefit the prosecution. GPS will strengthen the so-called ‘equality of arms’. Once it has been decided that a defendant will be indicted, the defense counsel will also get access to the digital case file.
• Secondly, GPS boosts the collective memory of the Prosecution Service, and therefore its transparency and accountability. It becomes much easier to retrace the various steps, that were taken during an investigation and a prosecution. That is very helpful, because much of the debate in court tends to center upon the way in which the pre-trial investigations have been handled.
• Thirdly, GPS fundamentally reduces the risk of errors. As you all know, small moments of forgetfulness may have grave consequences in court. GPS provides automatic checks at significant stages of  the procedure, to prevent such errors. In that way GPS helps prosecutors to concentrate upon the really important part of their job: seeing that justice is done.

These are some of the foreseeable advantages of GPS and of automation and digitalization in general. But there will undoubtedly be other, less predictable, and certainly unplanned, effects. Technology is never neutral. It changes our society and it changes us personally. So in what way will GPS - and digital technology in general - change the way we administer criminal law in the Netherlands? Of course I do not know for sure. As the Danish physicist Niels Bohr said: predicting is very difficult, especially if it is about the future. So I will not give it a try. I have left my crystal ball in The Hague.
Nevertheless, should we rejoice or should we worry? I don’t know. What I do know, is that we must not be afraid to embrace new technology, just because it threatens to change our traditional way of working. In the words of that famous poet, Bob Dylan:

Ahh you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'

What ís important, is that the values we stand for, the integrity of our work, our impartiality and our respect for the rule of law, will not be compromised.

For the time being I am of the opinion, that the benefits of a system such as GPS far outweigh any possible negative side-effects. I expect that GPS will make our work both more efficient ánd more effective.  And of course we must always expect the unexpected. Technology always has a tendency to develop in a way neither its inventors, nor its users can foresee. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he could not foresee, that his invention would actually change the physical capabilities of its users. Research has shown that teenagers, who have grown up sending text messages, have developed such flexible thumbs that they use them for tasks normally done with other fingers. For instance they use their thumbs to ring door bells.

I have described to you our ambitious GPS-project and have made some guesses about how criminal trials will develop in the future. About the latter I am not so sure. What I dó know is, that criminal law will change drastically under the influence of IT-technology, such as our GPS-system. And there is one other thing I dó know for sure. That is, that the prosecutors of the future will have much more powerful thumbs than we have in our generation.

Thank you for your attention.