The results of a two year study addressing the problems of Scottish court administration were discussed on June 2 at a seminar hosted by the Edinburgh-based UCL Universal Computers Ltd arm of UCL Group Plc and the Scottish District Courts Association. At the beginning of 1988 UCL introduced its Fine Administration System to the Scottish Courts Administration and was subsequently approached by the District Court Association to introduce it to members of that body. The latter not only required a system for administering fines, but a replacement system to handle day-to-day red tape and the extra work generated by the recently introduced fixed penalty procedures. In addition, the system would have to perform a range of functions matching statutory requirements for process and statistical output to the treasury. As a result, UCL is now piloting its National Courts Administration System at Strathkelvin District Court near Glasgow. UCL believes that the system conforms to the MacLean Report on Court Administration which suggests guidelines for the use of computers within courts – specifically citing flexibility, robustness, long term storage, power, availability and effectiveness for the future. The system currently runs under Pick and while there are no plans to offer the software under other operating systems, the general thrust of government and local authorities is towards Unix, and UCL is well placed to develop a Unix version. At present no final decisions have been made on the hardware configuration. The Strathkelvin pilot is using a Bull DPS 6-based Pick machine from Ultimate Corp, but the Pick-popper believes the system will eventually run on an Edgecore Inc super-68030-based machine, thus catering for Unix users. As regards cost, UCL has proposed the establishment of a data centre which will be the nerve core of a national network, and the courts will rent services as they require them. The company stresses that the National System is still largely conceptual and has to be accepted by the District Court Association, but Drew Wilson, Edinburgh branch manager, is bullishly optimistic, saying that he believes the system will be given the go-ahead by the Association later this month.
