Review by the Parliamentary Ombudsman of the Swedish National Courts Administration’s introduction the operational support system Digital Criminal Decisions (‘DiBa’)

In this case, the Parliamentary Ombudsman investigated the Swedish National Courts Administration’s introduction of the new operational support system for the management of criminal cases in the district courts, ‘DiBa’. The Parliamentary Ombudsman makes several criticisms.

According to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, DiBa suffered from several errors and deficiencies when it was launched. Some are significant and some have still not been resolved. The Parliamentary Ombudsman finds that there are situations in which DiBa has resulted in manifest difficulties for the responsible judge in formulating the verdict decided by the court and, according to the Ombudsman, the system has not provided the judge with adequate conditions to fulfil their duties.

The review has shown that there have been particular challenges for district courts in major criminal cases, i.e. cases with many suspected offences and a longer hearing. The Parliamentary Ombudsman considers that an operational support system should allow for the fact that, inter alia, a judgment may have to be written under time pressure and that it is very unsatisfactory that the Swedish National Courts Administration launched a system with such major shortcomings for managing such criminal cases.

In the decision, the Parliamentary Ombudsman also makes statements on the readability and comprehensibility of DiBa judgments. She states that the wording of a judgment is essential in order for everyone to understand the what the court has ruled on and how it has come to its conclusions. It is a matter of legal certainty. Several courts expressed dissatisfaction with how DiBa judgments looked when the operational support system was launched. The Parliamentary Ombudsman understands that and considers that it is surprising that the Swedish National Courts Administration did not make better use of the plain language work that the courts have been doing for a long time.

A DiBa judgment takes the form, inter alia, of an XML file, which, according to the Swedish Courts Administration, constitutes the original of the judgment. This file initially contained information which the responsible judge was unaware of and which could be problematic in terms of confidentiality. The Parliamentary Ombudsman is highly critical of this.

In view of the issues covered by the Ombudsman’s initiative and the statements she made, the Parliamentary Ombudsman considers it appropriate to send a copy of the decision to the Government for information purposes.