In the Federal Court’s most recent annual report, Chief Justice Debbie Mortimer explained:
“Since March 2024, CourtPath is now the primary tool used by Federal Court judges and registrars for managing files and documents and is working well.
With its third and final phase of development now underway, 2025 will see the system fully replace remaining case management tools, providing a simple, flexible solution that can continue to adapt to the needs of the Court.”
The final phase includes the replacement of the Commonwealth Courts Portal with a new whizz-bang system for judges, court staff, and consumers.
However, full replacement of the existing technology this year is looking optimistic. Our field agents advise that no servers have been decommissioned and nothing has been migrated to the cloud.
The chief information officer Nathan Price is the man in charge and is known internally as Mr CourtPath.
The lead developer, employed to assist the migration team, recently departed.
In July 2024 the court told Cardinal Pelly at the Financial Review:
“CourtPath is working at optimum level at its current stage of development.
It is progressively replacing the case management and digital filing systems in use at the court with a single, intuitive platform.
It is already delivering efficiencies and will deliver further efficiencies and allow for the decommissioning of outdated legacy systems, resulting in a modern and simplified technical landscape.
CourtPath is a world-leading innovation and multi-year transformational project that is complex and will take time to complete.”
This week, we asked the court whether the next stage of this complex technological advance was running behind schedule and whether it would still be fully functioning this year, as the CJ assured us.
We were provided with this reply:
“CourtPath has been in operation since October 2022 within the FCFCOA and was successfully expanded to all Federal Court Judges and Registrars in March 2024, with enhancements being progressively added to leverage the new platform’s potential.
The system has been very well received, with surveys showing positive sentiment across all user groups.
Building on this success, additional program stages have been funded to expand the system’s reach and value to court operations and further improvements will be launched throughout the 2025/26 financial year.
The total spend on CourtPath to date has been $14.3 million.”
Obviously, more money is needed.
Tech heads have been seconded to the court from the Administrative Review Tribunal and others have now been cross-pollinated back to the tribunal to reboot its operating system.
Field agents at ART advise that full development of a upgraded, seamless, computerised filing and case management system is stuck in a rut – years late with multiple funding rounds.
We received an update from the tribunal’s media muffin:
“The Administrative Review Tribunal has been funded to build a single Case Management Solution (CMS) which will replace multiple existing case management systems.
The Tribunal is delivering the CMS progressively with funding of $29.64 million over several years.
Further information about the CMS program is available in the Tribunal’s most recent corporate plan.”
Over and out.