Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China 9811923817, 9789811923814

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Jianfeng Xu Fuhui Sun Qiwei Chen

Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China

Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China

Jianfeng Xu · Fuhui Sun · Qiwei Chen

Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China

Jianfeng Xu Beijing, China

Fuhui Sun Beijing, China

Qiwei Chen Beijing, China

ISBN 978-981-19-2381-4 ISBN 978-981-19-2382-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1 Jointly published with People’s Court Press The print edition is not for sale in China (Mainland). Customers from China (Mainland) please order the print book from: People’s Court Press. © People’s Court Press 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publishers, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publishers nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

General Foreword

Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC, pointed out: “Looking at the history of world civilization, humanity has progressed along with agricultural, industrial, and information revolutions. Each of these industrial and technological revolutions has had great and profound impact on our way of production and life. Today, information technologies represented by the Internet are experiencing rapid changes with each passing day. They have brought about new ways of social production, created new space for people’s life, opened new horizons of state governance, and enhanced our ability to understand and shape the world.” The courts of China began to use computers in their work in the 1990s, and they made one of the earliest attempts to explore informatization in various sectors. In the twenty-first century, the Supreme People’s Court has further strengthened its overall leadership over the informatization construction of courts across the country. Courts nationwide have attached great importance to and taken the initiative to actively explore the construction and application of court informatization and have achieved many results, creating a good foundation for the comprehensive construction of smart courts. Since the Eighteenth National Congress of the CPC, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as its core has attached great importance to cybersecurity and informatization and has made a series of strategic plans to promote the construction of a strong network country, a digital China and a smart society, which has pointed out the way forward for the people’s courts to strengthen the construction of smart courts and provided a strong driving force. In March 2016, the Supreme People’s Court issued the Five-Year Development Plan for Informatization Construction of People’s Courts (2016–2020), formally proposing to the courts nationwide that “with the goal of promoting the modernization of the judicial system and capability, the People’s Court Informatization Version 3.0 should be built.” The goal of “Smart Courts” is to provide all-around intelligent services for judges, litigation participants, the public, and government departments. The Outline of the State Informatization Development Strategy issued the same year put forward the idea of “Constructing smart courts; improving the informatization level of case acceptance, trial, enforcement, and supervision; promoting the publicity of law enforcement v

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and judicial information; and upholding judicial fairness and justice”, which indicates that the construction of smart courts has become an important part of the state informatization strategy. On May 11, 2017, Zhou Qiang, President of the Supreme People’s Court, delivered an important speech at the Fourth National Court Informatization Conference, putting forward for the first time a clear definition of smart courts and explaining the significance, profound connotation, objectives, requirements, and construction priorities of smart courts. It provides basic guidelines for people’s courts at all levels nationwide to reach a common understanding, learn the direction and objectives, identify the focus, and speed up the construction of smart courts. Under the strong impetus of the Supreme People’s Court, people’s courts at all levels nationwide closely focus on the work objectives of “striving to enable the people to see that fairness and justice is served in every judicial case”; seize the opportunity of a new round of information technology revolution; adhere to the deep integration of judicial law, system reform, and scientific and technological innovation; and strive to achieve the goal. All courts will vigorously build information infrastructure and application systems, such as specific court networks, specific external networks, judicial publicity, online case handling, scientific and technological courtrooms, video conferencing, electronic litigation, intelligent assistance, personnel management, judicial supervision, and big data platforms, and scientifically use information system engineering methods to promote integrated innovation to improve the level of informatization construction and application. Smart courts with the main characteristics of “Online handling of all business, lawful disclosure of whole process, and all-around intelligent services” have been constructed, which, as a whole, are at the world’s advanced level and have strongly supported various works such as litigation services, adjudication and enforcement, and judicial management. It has promoted the modernization of the trial system and capacity, provided China’s plan, and contributed China’s wisdom to the world’s rule of law civilization in the information age. As the construction of a socialist modern country in an all-around way enters into a new journey and the whole country marches toward the second centenary goals, the construction of smart courts is facing rare opportunities for development. The Resolution on the Work Report of the Supreme People’s Court, adopted at the Fourth Session of the 13th National People’s Congress on March 11, 2021, calls for “speeding up the construction of smart courts”. In Chap. 16 of the Outline of the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 of the PRC, “Accelerating the Pace of Digital Society Construction”, special emphasis is placed on “strengthening the construction of smart courts”, which further reflects the important position and role of the construction of smart courts in the modernization process of the state governance system and capacity. It can be expected that deepening the construction of smart courts in an all-around way at a higher starting point in the new era will closely adhere to the theme of high-quality development; base itself on the new stage of development; implement new development concepts and build a new development pattern; pay more attention to the concept of system, the thinking of rule of law, and

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the orientation of strong foundation; give more prominence to the drive of scientific and technological innovation; and give more prominence to intelligence. Efforts should be made to build a world-leading Internet judicial model with Chinese characteristics, to promote a higher level of fairness and justice through digital justice, and to provide stronger scientific and technological support for justice for the people and impartial justice. Beijing, China April 2021

Authors of “China Smart Court Construction” Series

Foreword

The rapid development and wide application of information technology not only increasingly changes people’s production and lifestyle but also provides unprecedented tools and means for the construction of the rule of law. For example, Internet technology has greatly shortened the distance between people. Judicial activities that used to be conducted face to face, such as submitting pleadings, exchanging evidence, and holding court hearings, can now be conveniently completed by using the Internet, even though the judges and parties are far away from each other. Big data technology provides people with the ability to store, manage, and retrieve massive data. It takes many manpower and material resources to collect past cases in traditional case handling, but now it can be obtained instantaneously from the accumulated judicial big data resources. The application of artificial intelligence technology in the judicial field can provide automatic and efficient intelligent support for the prediction of litigation results, the generation of legal documents, and the unification of judgment criteria and can greatly improve the efficiency and quality of judicial activities. In view of this, Richard Susskind, a British scholar who has studied science & technology and law for more than 30 years, pointed out that the legal world has reached the edge of radical changes in his book The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. In response to the mighty wave of informatization, Chinese courts have taken the initiative to promote judicial reform and informatization, which function “as wheels on both sides of a vehicle, or as the two wings of a bird”, to promote court modernization, build smart courts in an all-around way, and build a world-leading court information system, thus, promoting fundamental changes in the way of adjudication and enforcement and effectively promoting the modernization of the trial system and trial capacity. The construction of China’s smart courts involves more than 3,000 courts, more than 10,000 dispatched tribunals, and more than 4,000 collaborative departments,

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including tens of thousands of information systems such as information infrastructure, application systems, data resources, network security, and operation and maintenance. The whole smart courts’ information system is undoubtedly a particularly complex giant system. Due to the influence of various internal and external uncertainties, the evolution of the dynamic behavior of the system may deviate from its original purpose or even show some instabilities. Meanwhile, in the process of construction and application of such a giant system, on the one hand, if its order is emphasized only and its vitality is neglected, a rigid system will inevitably result. On the other hand, if its vitality is emphasized and its order is neglected, a chaotic system will inevitably result. According to the viewpoint of cybernetics and systems theory, only by establishing the mechanism of dynamic balance can the desired regulatory objectives be achieved; only by achieving the organic unity of order and vitality at different levels can we ensure the functions of various systems. With the rapid development of network and information technology, the scale of information systems is becoming increasingly larger, and the structure is becoming increasingly complex, which means that people must consider the key issues of system engineering. It is necessary to rely on the innovation of scientific concepts to establish the cornerstone of new theories and knowledge as well as the innovation of engineering methods to enable people to continuously expand their cognitive and practical abilities and strive to solve complex system engineering problems. This book uses the method and perspective of system engineering to discuss the overall overview of the construction and application of smart courts; analyzes the relationship between the components, structures, environments, and functions of various systems; explains the basic methods of system design, standardization, integration, operation, and management; and predicts the development and evolution trend of smart court information systems. The three authors all work in the Information Center of the Supreme People’s Court; participate in and preside over the top-level design, key system development, and system integration promotion of China’s smart courts; and have rich knowledge and understanding of the theory and practice of smart courts system engineering. The key points introduced in the book, such as the overall design of the complex information system, the system integration based on the integrated collaborative architecture, the quality control and analysis service of judicial big data, the multiform judicial artificial intelligence, and the quality and efficiency operation and maintenance service of the large-scale information system, originate from the basic theoretical research of information science and the engineering practice of smart courts systems. It not only embodies the latest achievements of system engineering and architecture methods at home and abroad but also reveals many innovative system engineering methods and modes, which are not only suitable for designing and promoting the continuous deepening development of smart courts at a new and higher starting point but also serve as a good reference for informatization construction and complex information system engineering in other industries. The rapid development of information technology not only brings a series of challenging complex system problems but also provides unprecedented opportunities for

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us to better study and develop systems engineering science. Only by overcoming difficulties and taking initiatives can we strive to become stronger and more independent and have a promising future! Beijing, China April 2021

Lei Guo Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Researcher Academy of Mathematics and Systems Sciences Chinese Academy of Sciences

Preface

The rapid development of information technology has brought mankind into the information age, which is mainly reflected in the fact that an increasing number of information systems have become indispensable support tools for people’s production, life and work, greatly reshaping the economic and social structure and governance pattern. Increasingly complex information systems and the geometric growth of data resources generated by them, while continuously achieving the targeted goals, also bring about the problems of increasingly complex system structure, increased resource consumption, etc. On the other hand, the further combination and integration of many systems provide people with possible multiplier effects such as disclosure, integration, sharing, linkage and collaboration and emergence. The advantages and disadvantages of these two aspects need to be analyzed and implemented more efficiently to solve the problems caused by the accelerated development of information technology. With the in-depth implementation of the strategy of comprehensive law-based governance of the country and the strategy for building China into a cyberpower, Chinese courts regard informatization as a profound self-revolution and build smart courts in an all-around way. After more than 20 years of efforts, it has built a court information system with “the most complete network coverage, the most support, the largest data resources, the strongest transparency, the widest scope of collaboration and the latest intelligent services” in the world and has been widely used throughout the country. All kinds of application systems, which run through the whole country and extend to the desktops and hands of users, enable court staff to handle cases and other relevant matters without time and space constraints, thus, greatly improving the quality and efficiency of work. Meanwhile, through online applications such as electronic litigation, the travel costs of the parties or participants have been greatly reduced. Through online case handling, network enforcement investigation and control, remote video conferencing and other applications, the judicial manpower costs have also been reduced. Furthermore, through online judicial auction applications, the auction commissions of the parties have been completely saved. These three aspects have produced huge economic benefits. More importantly, the new judicial model of smart courts, which handles all business online, xiii

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makes the whole process open according to law and provides all-around intelligent services, supports the construction of an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient judicial mechanism, helps to solve the long-standing problems in the judicial field, promotes judicial fairness and justice, guarantees judicial credibility and promotes the modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity. Smart courts also reflect economic and social development and support government decision-making through judicial big data and promote China’s continuous rise in the world ranking in terms of the national business environment. Many of the models and processes of smart courts are entirely original in China, providing China’s plan and contributing China’s wisdom to the world’s rule of law civilization in the information age. The construction of smart courts across the country involves tens of thousands of information systems, facing major challenges such as complex business, multiple network systems, large scale, huge quantity and wide scope of coordination. Some specific challenges include the following: the number of systems, such as basic support, business application, data management, cybersecurity and operation and maintenance guarantee, which are operated simultaneously and are relatively independent by courts nationwide, has reached tens of thousands or even more than 100,000; the court information system covers all the dispatched tribunals in the country, many of which are located in underprivileged villages and towns and sparsely populated border areas; integrated applications should not only focus on the newly developed backbone business systems but also be compatible with many old systems that have been running online for several years or even more than ten years; the basic support, standard specifications, internal and external interfaces and humancomputer interfaces of many systems developed by different manufacturers entrusted by courts at different periods are quite different; various types of application systems designed to meet the specific business needs and independent operation needs of local courts and many systems of the same type nationwide may have different tasks and functions; the links between courts and other industry departments are becoming closer and closer, and the requirements for collaboration between heterogeneous information systems in different departments are increasing; and with the needs for a unified interface, information exchange, data sharing and work linkage, the national smart courts information system needs to achieve more common goals. All these results show that the construction of China’s smart courts is a system project that needs the overall coordination, compromise, balance and linkage of many information systems to achieve a more ideal overall capacity. Faced with this vast information system project, the builders of China’s smart courts have made great efforts and overcome many difficulties. They developed and completed dozens of key information systems, promoted and popularized nine types of integrated backbone business systems throughout the country, connected more than 3500 courts, more than 10000 dispatched tribunals and more than 3800 application systems and realized coordination with 4029 departments in 30 industries. Reviewing, summarizing and looking forward to the creation and application of many theories, methods and technological innovations relevant to complex information system engineering in the construction of smart courts and analyzing the working

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ideas and structural logic contained in them in detail will not only benefit the longterm development of smart courts at a new historical starting point but also provide a reference for the construction of information systems in other industries and fields nationwide and play a valuable role in verifying and innovating the development and enrichment of system engineering, especially the scientific theory of information system engineering, which is still in the stage of vigorous development in the world. This book reviews the development of people’s court informatization over the past 20 years, focuses on the construction practice during the 13th Five-Year Plan period and outlines the key points of the exploration of the smart courts system project. There are eleven chapters in the book. The first chapter gives an overview of smart courts. The second to tenth chapters analyze the focus of the smart courts system project in detail from ten aspects: construction demand, top-level design, application system, big data management and service, information infrastructure, network security, quality and efficiency operation and maintenance, policy and measure guarantee and application effect. Chapter 11 examines the development prospects of smart courts in combination with emerging technologies. This book can provide a direct reference for court colleagues, enterprise engineers and university scholars engaged in the research and development of smart courts information systems, as well as for technical and managerial personnel engaged in information construction in other industries, and can also provide some experience for researchers interested in the innovation of information systems engineering theory and methods. Due to the limitation of the author’s ability, there must be some mistakes in the book, which are expected to be understood by the readers, so that we can constantly acquire knowledge and promote the development of smart courts system to a new height. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the following colleagues of the Information Center of the Supreme People’s Court for providing reference materials for the book: Huang Guodong, Wang Xiaoyan and Zhang Xian for Chap. 3; Liu Haiyan, Tang Wenbo, Yu Jia, Liu Fang, Wang Pan and Lu Xuming for Chap. 4; Yu Chao, Chen Baogui and Li Xiaohui for Chap. 5; Fu Jianzhong and Xu Jian for Chap. 6; Hou Yifan and Lai Jiangliang for Chap. 7; Wang Yingfei, Shang Chenglin and Liu Yingjie for Chap. 8; and Huang Guodong, Wang Xiaoyan and Zhang Xian for Chap. 9. In particular, I would like to thank my colleague Zhang Xian, who not only completed the collation and revision of the charts in this book but also undertook the collection and collation of various reference materials in the writing process and managed manuscript versions at all stages. I would also like to thank the research and development teams of China Judicial Big Data Research Institute, Beijing Thunisoft Co. Ltd. and Nanjing Tongdahai Information Technology Co. Ltd. for providing reference materials for the writing of the book. Finally, I must thank the leaders of the Supreme People’s Court and colleagues of the tribunals, all colleagues of the Information Center, colleagues of information technology departments of courts nationwide and all technical and managerial personnel of R&D enterprises participating in the informatization construction of

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courts throughout the country. Only through their hard work and cooperation, initiative and dedication can advanced information technology support for the public and court staff be realized, and the grand cause of China’s smart courts be achieved. Beijing, China April 2021

Author

Contents

1

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Background of the Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Development History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 System Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Typical Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Remarkable Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Development Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2 10 16 23 40 46 60

2

Construction Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Business Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 System Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Support Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Guarantee Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67 68 77 87 93

3

Top-Level Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Development Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Overall Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Standards and Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Scientific Research Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Evaluation and Promotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

99 100 109 122 128 134

4

Application System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Intelligent Service System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Intelligent Trial System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Intelligent Enforcement System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Intelligent Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Judicial Open System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Other Application Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

149 150 173 187 201 214 226

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Contents

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Big Data Management and Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Real-Time Data Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Judicial Data Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Data Quality Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Judicial Big Data Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

233 234 245 254 264

6

Information Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Special Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Communication Network Facilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Cloud Computing Facilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Terminal Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

277 278 308 318 336

7

Network Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Security Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 System Boundary Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Network Equipment Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Application System Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 Data Resource Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6 Network Attack Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7 Security Operation and Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

343 344 351 356 362 367 373 378

8

High Quality and Efficiency Operation and Maintenance . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Operation and Maintenance of High-Quality and High-Efficiency Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Visual Management Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Report on Operation Quality and Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Emergency Response Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

385 386 392 399 405

Guarantee of Policies and Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 Promotion Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Construction Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Funds Guarantee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 Team Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

411 412 419 425 430

10 Application Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 Serving the People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Serving Trial Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Serving Judicial Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 Serving Honest Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5 Serving Social Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.6 Remarkable Economic Benefit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.7 Winning Worldwide Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

435 436 440 445 449 452 456 466

9

Contents

11 Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1 Deep Application of Artificial Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Collaboration Advancement by Comprehensive Integration . . . . . 11.3 5G Ubiquitous Services Acceleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.4 Blockchain Cross-Border Integration Promotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5 Great Improvement of User Experience with System Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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473 474 479 485 489 492

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499

Chapter 1

Overview

Informatization has brought rare opportunities for China. In the great journey of national rejuvenation, the people’s courts at all levels nationwide have closely focused on the goal of “striving to enable the People to see that fairness and justice is served in every judicial case”, seized the great historical opportunity of a new round of scientific and technological revolution, actively implemented the innovation-driven development strategy, the strategy for building China into a cyberpower, the big data strategy, the “Internet Plus” plan of action and the new generation of artificial intelligence development plan, regarded informatization as a profound self-revolution, and built smart courts in an all-around way. After more than 20 years of exploration and practice, court informatization has achieved great transformation. Information infrastructure covers all levels of people’s courts and dispatched tribunals. Network-based, transparent and intelligent applications have developed in an all-around way. Data resources have been gathered, and services have been upgraded. Network security, operation and maintenance capabilities have been steadily improved, and the court staff have greatly increased their awareness of informatization, which has promoted the fundamental reform of the way of trial and enforcement, effectively promoted the modernization of the trial system and trial capacity, and offered China’ wisdom and solutions to the world’s rule of law civilization in the information age. On the other hand, the smart courts system covers thousands of courts in all the provinces, cities and counties and tens of thousands of dispatched tribunals in remote towns, serves the court staff and the public, and features “all business processed online, whole-process open according to law, and all-around intelligent service.” Faced with the major challenges of complex business, many networks, large scale, huge quantity and wide scope of coordination, the smart courts system needs overall coordination, compromise, balance and linkage of many information systems. Reviewing, summarizing and looking forward to this vast system project and analyzing the working scheme and structural logic contained in it in detail are not

© People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1_1

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1 Overview

only of great significance for better planning the long-term development of smart courts but also benefit the construction of information systems in other industries nationwide. It will also play a valuable role in verifying and innovating the development and enrichment of the scientific theory of systems engineering, especially information systems engineering, which is still in the stage of vigorous development in the world.

1.1 Basic Concepts Smart courts are a mode of organization, construction, operation and management of people’s courts that relies on modern artificial intelligence, focuses on justice for the people and fair justice, adheres to the integration of judicial law, system reform and technological change, supports judicial trial, litigation service and judicial management in a highly informationized way, and realizes the online handling of all business, the openness of the whole process according to law and the all-round intelligent service. From Baidu Encyclopedia, one can obtain the aforementioned authoritative definition of smart courts, which is the basic concept of smart courts defined by the Supreme People’s Court in 2017 after careful study and revision. The aim of the definition is to unify understanding, guide R&D, and promote implementation. Like the process of people’s understanding of things, the concept of smart courts has gone through a process of continuous clarification. In 2015, people’s courts at all levels actively discussed and planned the development of informatization and put forward the vision and idea of building smart courts in response to the construction concepts and explorations of intelligent society and intelligent cities. In March 2016, the Supreme People’s Court issued the Five-Year Development Plan for the Informatization Construction of the People’s Courts (2016–2020), formally proposing to the courts nationwide that “with the goal of promoting the modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity, the People’s Court Informatization Version 3.0 should be built.” The goal of smart courts is to realize the objectives of all businesses processed online, the whole process of trial and enforcement open according to law, and all-around intelligent services for judges, litigation participants, the public and government departments. The basic characteristics of smart courts were also outlined in the plan. In November 2016, the Third World Internet Congress held the “Smart Court and Network Governance Forum”, in which representatives from the Supreme Courts of Russia, the United Kingdom, Singapore and other countries, as well as experts from the United Nations Development Programme, discussed the significance, main contents, implementation and initial results of the construction of smart courts. It provided the courts in different countries an opportunity to deepen their understanding of smart courts. On May 11, 2017, Zhou Qiang, President of the Supreme People’s Court, delivered an important speech at the Fourth National Court

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Informatization Work Conference and for the first time put forward a clear definition of the smart courts. As a result, the background, mission, principles, contents, characteristics and connotations of the smart courts have been elaborated, which undoubtedly has valuable guiding significance for the people’s courts at all levels to speed up the construction of smart courts. I.

Dirven by Science and Technology

Comprehensive law-based governance is an important part of the Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy and plays an extremely important role in the great cause of national rejuvenation. As the judicial organ, the people’s court guards the bottom line of fairness and justice. It is an inevitable requirement for the comprehensive lawbased governance to promote the modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity. “Finding facts and applying laws” is the basic attribute of the trial work of the people’s court, which matters most to the process of information collection, transmission, identification, search, comparison and full use of information to make correct decisions. Informatization plays an important role in the modernization of the judicial system and capacity. Since the 1990s, information technology, particularly the Internet, has profoundly influenced human society, and new technologies such as cloud computing, big data, IoT and mobile interconnection have emerged, which not only restructure modes of production and way of life but also promote the deepening of court informatization. It has become a worldwide consensus that information technology will transform traditional judicial practices. It is particularly noteworthy that artificial intelligence technologies such as neural networks and machine learning have made significant breakthroughs and achieved remarkable results in many fields, bringing broad prospects for judicial artificial intelligence. From a theoretical point of view, the use of advanced artificial intelligence technologies such as data mining, deep learning, natural language understanding and decision-making networks can almost replace all routine work of judges, free them from heavy work to focus on the judgment and decision-making of key l of egal issues to the greatest extent, and improve the quality and efficiency of trials, which can also be proven by the explorations and applications of judicial artificial intelligence in Chinese and foreign courts. Therefore, artificial intelligence can promote revolutionary changes in the judicial field. Meanwhile, its application in the judicial field will also promote the further development of artificial intelligence technology. In this regard, the world’s artificial intelligence technology leaders have insight and foresight and plans in advance. The American reports Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence and National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan and China’s New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan all give strong support to judicial artificial intelligence as an important development direction. The concept of smart courts emphasizes “relying on modern artificial intelligence” from the very beginning, which shows that the construction of smart courts has a distinct scientific and technological background, that advanced artificial intelligence technology plays a supporting and driving role in smart courts and that the main

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technical direction of promoting the construction of smart courts at present and in the future is judicial artificial intelligence. II.

Core Mission

Practicing justice for the people, promoting fair justice, and striving to enable people to see fairness and justice is served in every judicial case are the requirements of comprehensive law-based governance and the sacred duties of the people’s courts. “Focus on justice for the people and fair justice” emphasizes the people-centered philosophy of development to promote the construction of smart courts to fulfill the responsibilities and missions of the people’s courts and to highlight the core mission of smart courts. Justice for the people is the fundamental purpose of the people’s courts. With the rapid development of society and the popularity of the rule of law, people’s expectations for fairness, justice and social security are increasing, and the demand for diversified justice is growing. Adhering to the fundamental purpose of the people’s courts is to keep it in mind that justice for the people is the solid foundation, do everything possible to actively respond to social concerns and people’s demands, and strive to meet the judicial needs of the people. Under the favorable conditions that China’s Internet coverage and the number of Internet users rank first in the world, we must and can focus on the diversified judicial needs of the people and constantly enhance the people’s sense of gain, happiness and security through varied and convenient informatization of smart courts. Fair justice is the bottom line of defense to safeguard social fairness and justice. “One unjust trial has more negative consequences than ten crimes.” In judicial activities, people’s courts should adhere to the principle of taking facts as the basis and law as the criteria, perform their duties of settling disputes in the spirit of fairness, equality, legitimacy and justice, and ensure that the public can safeguard their legitimate rights and interests through judicial procedures to win the trust of the people and become an important guarantee for the comprehensive law-based governance of the country. Judicial justice includes procedural justice and substantive justice. In today’s information age, both procedural justice and substantive justice can utilize smart courts to provide strong operational or assistant support, standardize procedures, improve quality and efficiency, and provide a strong informatization guarantee for fair justice. At the same time, due to the strong technical attributes of smart courts, it is of underlying importance to highlight the core mission. In other words, we must always focus on the fundamental requirements of justice for the people and fair justice and avoid implementing technology only for the purpose of technology. To this end, the builders of smart courts should first strengthen the thinking of rule of law, take the comprehensive law-based governance strategy as a guide, deeply understand the guiding concept, overall requirements, work layout and key tasks of the people’s courts, and always plan the development of smart courts based on the overall situation. Second, we should strengthen demand orientation, take justice for the people and fair justice as our responsibility, actively study the growing diversified judicial needs of the people in the information age, strive to explore new means, new

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ways and new methods to continuously improve the quality and efficiency of court staff under the condition of informatization, and take the initiative to build smart courts urgently needed by the people and court staff. Third, we should strengthen the strict work style, specify the work requirements and crystallize every single detail of smart courts planning, R&D, deployment, operation & maintenance and application, adhere to the precision and meticulousness, and ensure that every project and every system can meet the practical needs of users. Fourth, we should use the sense of satisfaction and gain of the people and court staff as the criteria, take the evaluation of operation quality and efficiency as the routine task of informatization development, and constantly improve the ability and level of smart courts to support justice for the people and fair justice. III.

Basic Principles

“Adhering to the integration of judicial law, system reform and technological change” is the basic principle that must be obeyed in the construction of smart courts. Law-based governance means governing the country in accordance with the laws that reflect the will of the people and the law of social development, and respecting and following the law is the proper meaning of the topic. Judicial law is the basic rule that must be followed in the process of judicial proceedings. Smart courts, as an operational system directly serving the rule of law and judicial trials, must naturally adhere to judicial law. This means that although smart courts have distinct technical attributes and will carry increasingly rich technical concepts with the progress of science and technology, they should not and cannot violate or surpass the law of justice in any case. Some people may worry that with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, will there be a comprehensive replacement of judges by trial robots? According to the basic principle of smart courts, as long as the basic law of “let the judges judge and be responsible for their judgment” is fully followed, judicial artificial intelligence can only provide necessary assistance for judges but cannot replace the final decision of judges. Chinese courts have always regarded the reform of the judicial system and informatization development as inseparable means to promote the modernization of the work of the people’s courts. Many judicial reforms, such as judicial responsibility systems, registration systems, trial-centered criminal litigation systems, and diversified dispute resolution mechanisms, rely on the strong support of informatization. Meanwhile, informatization of the courts, in turn, can be promoted by its application in various scenarios. Therefore, relying on, guaranteeing and promoting judicial system reform is an important principle that needs to be further promoted in the construction of smart courts. Smart courts benefit from the rapid development of information technology. Considering that law and technology are in different fields, some people may think that the court should keep a considerable distance from the rapid development of technology. This is obviously against the principle of smart court development. Only by working with the goals of justice for the people and fair justice and always exploring scientific and technological solutions with innovative thinking can we continuously meet the urgent needs of the people and court staff.

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It can be seen that judicial law, system reform and technological change all play important roles in smart courts. To build smart courts, we should adhere to the integration of the abovementioned factors so that system reform and technological change can fully follow judicial law, judicial law and technological change can effectively promote system reform, and judicial law and system reform can benefit from technological change, thus jointly promoting the modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity. IV.

Content

“Supporting judicial trial, litigation service and judicial management in a highly informationized way” is the main content of smart court development. Informatization is a historical process of cultivating and developing new productive forces represented by intelligent tools based on computers that benefit society. With the vigorous development of information technology, such as microelectronics, computers, modern communication, networks, and databases, human society has entered the information age. Information has become an important resource and a new type of productive force to promote social progress, profoundly changed the mode of production and people’s lives, increasingly brought into full play the potential of human intelligence, social material and energy resources, and rationalized individual behavior, organizational decision-making and social operation. The informatization process and its effectiveness in all walks of life fully show that “without informatization, there would be no modernization”. In line with the trend of the times, people’s courts at all levels nationwide have actively built information infrastructure and application systems such as online case handling, intelligent assistance, personnel management, judicial supervision and big data platforms, and the level and effectiveness of informatization have been continuously improved. It has won the recognition of the people and the court staff. However, we must realize that informatization itself is an ever-evolving process. At present, there is still a large gap between court informatization and the demands of users. At the same time, new technologies and methods develop every day, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, which brings great space and potential for improving the quality and efficiency of informatization. Therefore, we must plan, promote and realize a higher level of informatization development and application to meet the requirements of justice for the people and fair justice in the new era. Judicial trials are the main work of the people’s courts, and the use of informatization technology to support judicial trials is also the main content of smart court development. Only through online handling, information sharing, intelligent assistance and other means to fully reduce the unnecessary workload of court staff, make them focus on key issues, and effectively improve the quality and efficiency of trial and enforcement can we truly improve the credibility of the judiciary and win the recognition of the public. Litigation service is direct contact with the people, and the use of informatization to support litigation services explicitly represents the people-centered philosophy of development. By means such as online publicity, online service, video-based trials, and real-time interaction, the cost and burden of people can be reduced. Judicial management is the necessary guarantee for the orderly and efficient operation of

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the people’s courts, and the use of informatization to support judicial management is an important way for smart courts to promote the modernization of court work. By giving full play to the outstanding advantages of informatization, such as standardized operation, traceable process, monitored zone and quantitative management, we can fully ensure that the judicial activities of people’s courts at all levels are coordinated, compliant with the law and transparent, and become strong support for fair justice. V.

Target Characteristics

“All business processed online, whole process open according to law, all-round intelligent service” is the main target characteristic of smart courts. “All business processed online” requires that all kinds of business be handled online, such as trial and enforcement, trial management, judicial administration, judicial transparency, litigation services and legal publicity. “Whole process open according to law” requires the court to file, hear, adjudicate and enforce cases in a transparent way within the scope permitted by law and to fully open to the public through the Internet. “All-round intelligent service” provides rich types of intelligent services for judges, litigation participants, the public and government departments by means of advanced information technology. The three objectives of the smart courts are mutually supportive, mutually reinforcing and organically integrated. Among them, online handling of cases emphasizes that all the work of the people’s courts can be informationized, can be operated online, and can provide the greatest operational convenience for users, which is the basic work of smart courts. “Whole process open and transparent according to law” highlights the determination of the people’s courts to promote fair justice and to accept public supervision and to continuously improve judicial credibility. All-around intelligent service highlights the confidence and determination of the people’s courts to use advanced judicial artificial intelligence, cope with the growing demand for trial and enforcement and litigation services, and assist in improving the quality and efficiency of work. The three objectives will be the basic criteria and basis for evaluating smart courts. These objectives and characteristics directly reflect the overall service and construction of smart courts, which include technical connotations as well as all aspects of the work of the people’s courts. VI.

General Concepts

Advanced technology represented by artificial intelligence is an important driving force for smart courts. However, some people may regard smart courts as a simple court information system and think that the construction of smart courts only needs the efforts of the technical and informatization management departments. The misunderstanding would negatively affect the all-around development of smart courts. In fact, informatization is a strategic, basic and overall work that must be highly valued by court leaders and actively participated in by all court staff. Therefore, smart courts are “the form of organization, construction, operation and management of the people’s courts”, which fully explains their concepts. On the one hand, smart courts rely on a scientific and reasonable organizational system. At present, courts all over the world have set up informatization management

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departments, and people’s courts at all levels in China have set up offices for network security and informatization. Informatization leads to organizational changes. On the other hand, the development and progress of smart courts has promoted the optimization of court organizations. Taking judicial statistics as an example, people’s courts at all levels used to have professionals engaged in this work. With the popularization of the case handling system and the real-time counting of judicial big data, Chinese courts no longer used manual statistics, and the staff in charge of statistics engaged in judicial data analysis and research instead. Smart courts have greatly changed the construction of people’s courts. Currently, scientific and technological courtrooms are equipped with display screens, video recordings, audio recordings, scanning equipment and even automatic voice recognition systems. There are video conference rooms and enforcement command centers in all courts nationwide. Guidance display screens, self-service terminals and integrated litigation service machines have become the standard equipment of court litigation service halls. Information management centers, litigation service guidance centers and digital adjudication committees are widely used in courts nationwide, and these informatization facilities link up all the courts in terms of information exchange, sharing and collaboration through the court network. Courtrooms and facilities of informatization have become an inevitable prerequisite for the construction or rebuilding of people’s courts at all levels. Smart courts are constantly reshaping the operation mode of people’s courts. The use of mobile Internet in court has enabled tens of thousands of litigants to complete court sessions through mobile terminals at home, thus reducing the burden of traveling. The synchronous generation and in-depth application of electronic case files can not only save a large number of paper files but also provide intelligent assistant support for case handlers. In the past, the enforcement judge had to conduct site investigation on the property of the person subject to enforcement, but now it has been completely replaced by enforcement investigation and control through informatization. In the past, a lawyer needed to go to court six times on average to deal with a lawsuit. Thanks to the electronic litigation service, he can even handle many litigation affairs while waiting at the airport, and the number of times he needs to go to court has been reduced by more than 80%. Smart courts provide a new means for judicial management. When the national case-filing registration system is implemented, the Chief Justice in the Supreme People’s Court could have real-time connection with the case-filing staff in courts nationwide and can fully learn the actual effect of judicial reform at the grassroots level. The trial supervision tribunals of people’s courts at all levels can easily use the intelligent inspection system to learn whether there are mistakes in court trials under their jurisdiction. Based on the national real-time case data gathered by the judicial big data management and service platform of the people’s court, trial supervisors can always learn the trial and enforcement in local courts, determine problems and put forward measures and suggestions. Online case handling, traceable processes and silent supervision better meet the requirements of judicial reform.

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It can be seen that through the construction of smart courts, informatization has become increasingly prominent as a force of technological innovation in the judicial field, profoundly affecting and changing the work mode of courts. Informatization is more than information technology, and information systems have become an operation tool for the organization, development and management of people’s courts. Therefore, smart courts are an advanced form of the people’s courts based on informatization. The construction of smart courts is not only the work of information technology departments but also the common task of all departments of the people’s courts. All departments, such as trial and enforcement, trial management, judicial reform, and comprehensive administration, should participate in the construction and governance of smart courts, put forward construction requirements and apply information systems. Information technology and informatization management departments need to strive to develop and provide information systems with user-friendliness and multiple functions to users. All departments must work together to promote the intelligent operation and healthy development of the people’s courts based on the smart courts system. VII.

Systems Engineering

With the progress of science and technology, especially the vigorous development and popularization of information technology, large-scale, complex, independent and interdependent systems have become an important support for the functioning of society. They are called “systems-of-systems” (hereafter referred to as “systems”) and are receiving increasing attention. A more specific and clear definition is that systems are a large-scale integration of multiple systems that are heterogeneous and operate independently but can work together to achieve a common goal. Systems exist in two ways, one in a temporary, relatively simple combination of systems and the other in a long-term, continuously evolving, more complex combination of systems. Compared with traditional systems, systems focus on the internal drive of systems to obtain better capabilities and performance. Systems engineering is a construction process that focuses on the development, integration, interaction, and optimization of systems to better meet long-term requirements. Classic systems engineering certainly provides a strong theoretical basis and practical guidance for systems engineering; however, the implementation of systems engineering needs more comprehensive and targeted theoretical support. Therefore, the theory of system engineering came into being at the beginning of the twentyfirst century, focusing on engineering issues such as system standards, construction, simulation, integration and management. The construction of national smart courts involves more than 3500 courts, more than 10,000 dispatched tribunals, more than 4000 collaborative departments and tens of thousands of information systems. It has the following characteristics. First, the number of systems is large, and tens of thousands or even more than 100,000 relatively independent basic support, case applications, data management, network security and operation & maintenance support systems run simultaneously in courts around the country. Second, the spatial distribution is distinctive, and the court information system covers all the dispatched tribunals in the country, many of which are in villages and towns with poor conditions and in sparsely populated border areas. Third, integrated applications should not only focus on the core business systems

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that are newly developed online but also be compatible with many old systems that have been running online for several years, or even more than ten years. Fourth, the technical systems of the local smart courts are heterogeneous and vary in their basic support, standards and criteria, internal and external interfaces and human–computer interfaces. They are developed in different periods and by different manufacturers. Fifth, their functions and tasks are different. The application systems developed by local courts around the country were originally designed to meet the needs of the local courts, thus having different tasks and functions. Sixth, the comprehensive law-based governance requires courts to be increasingly closely linked with other industry departments, and the collaborative requirements between different information systems of different departments are constantly increasing. Seventh, with the demands of the people, court staff for a unified interface, information exchange, data sharing and work linkage grow, and the national smart courts information system needs to achieve increasingly common goals. In summary, the construction of national smart courts is a vast systems project that must follow the objective law of systems engineering and develop scientifically, sustainably and healthily to effectively meet the requirements of the people and court staff.

1.2 Background of the Times Only in the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics and in the context of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation can we truly understand and appreciate the profound significance of constructing smart courts. Throughout the history of China, in the historical Spring and Autumn Period, Guan Zhong, a famous scholar, mentioned that “law is the formula of the world and the instrument of everything”. As an important tool for rulers to govern the country and adjust social relations, law has always been an important part of the superstructure of the country. Thousands of years of history have shown that the rise and fall of chaos has proven the basic law of “the rule of law makes the country prosperous, and the rule of law makes the country strong”. In modern times, the Chinese nation has suffered both internal and external troubles and has been in war for a long time. Naturally, it is difficult to implement consistent good laws and good governance. The people, economy and society could not obtain stable and effective legal protection and could only stagger forward in turmoil. The founding of the People’s Republic of China has brought the Chinese people truly freedom and independence. Forty years of reform and opening up have promoted rapid economic and social development and created an amazing Chinese miracle. One of the important experiences of such success is to advance law-based governance, making the rule of law an important guarantee for building a well-off society in an all-around way and accelerating socialist modernization. As socialism with Chinese characteristics enters into a new era and the Chinese nation strives for the goal of great rejuvenation, it is all the more necessary to adhere to comprehensive law-based governance and to build the system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics. Standing at a new starting point

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and facing new requirements, coinciding with the surge of a new round of scientific and technological revolution, new information technologies such as artificial intelligence have provided unprecedented strong support for human communication, data aggregation, information development, etc. All these are in line with the construction of the system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics and in line with the basic attributes of the people’s court to solve disputes by finding facts and applying laws. Smart courts are to give full play to the advantages of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, actively embrace advanced science and technology, develop and innovate the work mode of trial and enforcement, litigation service and judicial management, and make it explicit, standardized, procedural and systematic. The efficient implementation system, the strict supervision system and the powerful guarantee system of the law make the comprehensive law-based governance the “anchor” for the long-term stability of the country. I.

Comprehensive Law-based Governance

When the People’s Republic of China was founded, the socialist legal system was established, and the old legal system was abolished, which initially laid the foundation for the rule of law. Subsequently, the whole country paid a heavy price due to the weakening of the rule of law. In the new period of reform and opening up, law-based governance became the basic strategy for leading the people to govern the country, and law-based exercise of state power became the basic way of governing the country. Both positive and negative experiences and lessons have shown the decisive role of the rule of law for the country and the nation. Since the Eighteenth National Congress of the CPC, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as its core has incorporated the comprehensive lawbased governance into the Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy and has adhered to and expanded the path of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics. In October 2014, the Fourth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China adopted the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning the Comprehensively Advancing the Rule of Law, which made the top-level design of comprehensive lawbased governance, called for comprehensively advancing law-based governance, the construction ofthe system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics, and the construction of a socialist country under the ruled of law. The Decision also called for scientific legislation, strict law enforcement, fair justice, law-abiding by the people, and promotion of the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. This conference is a milestone in the history of socialist rule of law in China. As the judicial organs of the state, the people’s courts shoulder the task of defending the bottom line of fairness and justice in the comprehensive law-based governance. They have great responsibilities and lofty missions. They must ensure fair justice, improve judicial credibility, and striving to enable the people to see that fairness and justice is served in every judicial case. This not only puts forward higher requirements for the judicial work of the people’s courts in the new era but also points out the way forward for the modernization of the work of the people’s courts.

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Building smart courts, adhering to informatization and making use of the advantages of advanced information technology, such as program circulation, remote interaction, mobile interconnection and data support, to integrate the technology into the whole process and all areas of the people’s courts, will break through the constraints of many traditional means and provide strong scientific and technological support for promoting strict justice, guaranteeing people’s participation in judicial activities, strengthening judicial protection of human rights and strengthening supervision of judicial activities, and will surely accelerate the construction of an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient judicial mechanism, promote the modernization of judicial system and judicial capacity, and make great contributions to the comprehensive law-based governance and the maintenance of long-term stability of the country. II.

Reform of the Judicial System

Deepening the reform of the judicial system and building a fair, efficient and authoritative socialist judicial system is an important measure to promote the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. It is not only an important part of deepening the reform in an all-round way but also an inherent requirement of comprehensive law-based governance. It plays an important role in the Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy. China’s judicial system has been established and developed in the long-term practice of socialist construction, which is generally compatible with China’s specific realities and socialist system, but there are also many deep-seated problems affecting judicial justice and restricting judicial capacity, so we must solve the problems encountered in the process of progress with initiative spirit and methods to ensure that the socialist judicial system with Chinese characteristics always conforms to the trend of reform and opening up and develops healthily. The construction of smart courts and the reform of the judicial system promote each other and complement each other. The Opinions on Comprehensively Deepening the Reform of People’s Courts, also known as the Fourth Five-Year Reform Program for People’s Courts, clearly point out that we must rely on modern information technology to build an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient judicial mechanism to enhance public understanding, trust and supervision of justice. Of the 65 judicial reform initiatives in 7 aspects, 35 are directly dependent on informatization support, which shows the importance of the construction of smart courts in the reform of the judicial system. The Opinions on Deepening the Comprehensive and Supporting Reform of the Judicial System in the People’s Courts, which is also called the Fifth Five-Year Reform Program for People’s Courts, clearly pointed out that comprehensively promoting the construction of smart courts is an important goal of reform and proposed to establish a cross-sectoral big data case handling platform, to promote the use of voice recognition, remote video and intelligent assistance, to expand the coverage of electronic litigation in an orderly manner, to promote the deep integration of trial methods, litigation systems and Internet technology and to build a modern smart courts application system with Chinese characteristics. On the other hand, smart courts are the organization, construction, operation and management form of the people’s courts driven by advanced science and technology. The

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mode of litigation service, trial and enforcement, and judicial management supported by information systems has changed greatly from the traditional mode in terms of personnel arrangement, working rules and operation process. It is necessary to obtain institutionalized, substantive and systematic legal support and institutional guarantees through judicial reform to advance in accordance with the law. Therefore, the comprehensive deepening of the reform of the judicial system provides a very strong driving force and guarantee for the construction of smart courts. III.

Diversified Judicial Demands

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China noted that the main contradiction in our society has changed from “the contradiction between the people’s growing material and cultural demands and backward social production” to “the contradiction between the people’s growing need for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development”. For the people’s courts, people’s need for a better life is also reflected in the growing demand for justice. With the rapid development of society and the deepening of reform, especially the gradual deepening of the comprehensive law-based governance, people’s pursuit of fairness and justice and enthusiasm for knowing, participating, expressing and supervising judicial activities has been on the rise. The judicial demands of different groups, regions and fields are also diverse and individualized. Especially in the information age, with the continuous development of information technology and the increasing popularity of information products, people have put forward the requirements of keeping pace with the times for the convenience of litigation, the comprehensiveness of knowledge, the immediacy of interaction, and the effectiveness of supervision, which need to be achieved through the construction of smart courts. Confronted with the growing judicial needs of the people, the court staff also face the new situation in which the public’s demands are becoming increasingly diversified, the number of cases handled continues to grow, and the types of cases increase. It is increasingly necessary to optimize the case handling process, broaden the channels of interaction and improve the quality and efficiency of work through the deep integration of information technology and judicial activities. In addition, as an important part of social governance, the people’s courts also undertake the important mission of providing strong judicial services and guarantees for economic and social development and need to rely on smart courts to provide advanced technical means and ways to safeguard national sovereignty, maintain social stability, optimize the business environment, resolve contradictions and disputes, and combat crimes. It uses abundant judicial big data resources to reflect economic and social realities, assist in government decision-making, and play its due role in the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. IV.

Information Technology Revolution

The world has gone through the ages of agricultural civilization, industrial civilization and information civilization, each of which has flourished since the industrial revolution and has brought tremendous and far-reaching impacts on human society.

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In today’s information age, with the rapid development of information technology represented by microelectronics, computers and communications, the ability of information collection, transmission, storage, processing and application has been accelerated, and the value of information has been greatly utilized, which has led to revolutionary changes in people’s production and lifestyle. With the rise of new information technologies such as the Internet, mobile communication, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain, the integration of information technology into economic, political, cultural and social fields is more obvious, and information and knowledge are being applied in a systematic way to transform material and energy resources. It is expected to replace many traditional types of labor and become the source of added value of work, promote economic and social transformation, support sustainable development and enhance the country’s comprehensive competitiveness. Because of the distinct informatization characteristics of court work, the information technology revolution naturally provides strong support for justice for the people and fair justice. Comprehensive coverage of the specific court network and case handling information system provides a powerful tool for court staff. The Internet, which extends to millions of households and desktops, provides a smooth channel for people’s courts at all levels to communicate more directly with the public. The interconnected government informatization system provides a new way for all sectors of society to work together to improve the quality and efficiency of judicial work, and the judicial public platform makes justice fully tangible. While information technology has brought rare opportunities for the modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity, the Chinese Party and government have vigorously promoted the construction of a strong network country, a digital China and an intelligent society, and the national “Internet Plus” action plan, the big data development strategy and the new generation of artificial intelligence development plan have been introduced one after another. Artificial intelligence technology and judicial work have accelerated their integration, providing unprecedented strategic guidance, policy support, technical support and a supporting environment for the people’s courts to seize the historical opportunities of the new round of scientific and technological revolution, and will inevitably promote the construction of smart courts for better development. V.

Development of Countries Around the World

With the rapid development of information technology, it has become a worldwide consensus that the courts all over the world in the information age promote the integration of application systems and data sharing and further encourage case-handling process reform to reduce costs and improve efficiency. The United States, Austria, Australia, Finland, the United Kingdom and other countries have formulated longterm plans for information-based virtual courts. From a worldwide perspective, even if there is no plan for fully digital proceedings, many countries have applied modern technology with information technology as the core in court proceedings to varying extents. Like the application of science and technology in other fields, American courts also have the earliest examples of the application of information technology. In 1974, the U.S. Department of Justice completed the development of the JURIS (Juristic

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Retrieval and Inquiry System), which includes databases such as federal statutes, Supreme Court precedents and internal documents of the Department of Justice. The PACER system developed and applied by the United States Federal Court is under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice and is operated and managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Federal Court. It allows the public to obtain case information from the Federal Appeals Court, District Court and Bankruptcy Court through the Internet, making it a world-renowned case information query system. In the twenty-first century, Korean courts began to promote the application of information technology from all aspects of electronic litigation. In 2006, Korea promulgated the “Regulations on the Use of Electronic Documents in Urging Procedures”. In 2009, the electronic management system of litigation documents was launched, which realized the electronic submission and reception of litigation materials. The “Regulations on the Use of Electronic Documents in Civil Litigation” promulgated in 2010 provides a legal basis for electronic litigation. In the same year, the Supreme Court promulgated the “Provisions on the Implementation Time of Relevant Regulations on the Use of Electronic Documents in Civil Litigation” and formulated the order and implementation plan of electronic case files, namely, from patent cases to some civil cases, then to all civil cases, and finally to enforcement cases and nonlitigation cases. Electronic litigation has gone beyond the simple storage of materials, from the submission and service of pleadings to the exchange of various pretrial preparation materials, the submission and decision of evidence, and the writing and appeal of judgments to the storage of records after appeal. The whole process does not need to print a piece of paper, all in electronic form. In terms of facilitating litigation or ensuring justice, electronic litigation has made great progress compared with traditional means. At the turn of the century, Britain began to carry out a comprehensive judicial reform, and many reform measures involved the application of informatization technology in the judicial field. In 2013, the British government announced an investment of 160 million pounds to build a “digital court” and update the information system of the judicial administration. In 2016, the President of France pushed for the promulgation of a new law, the Digital Republic Act, which requires French courts to inform and make public the judicial data they hold or produce. In 2017, the two largest appeal courts in France, the Douai Appeal Court and Rennes Appeal Court, began to try Prédictive software to help adjudicate cases. Prédictive software can assist judges in finding all the judgments of French courts involving the same kind of cases in recent years and in calculating the amount of compensation in infringement disputes based on relevant information. Russian courts regard video technology as an important part of informatization applications and have built a remote video system connecting more than 2000 courts across the country. Courts in Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Thailand, Qatar, India, Brazil, Peru, Rwanda and South Africa have actively promoted the application of information technology in facilitating litigation services, improving the case-handling process, promoting judicial transparency and exploring intelligent assistance.

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1 Overview

1.3 Development History Trial and enforcement are the main tasks of the people’s court. “Taking facts as the basis and law as the criterion” is the basic principle that must be observed. “Taking facts as the basis” means analyzing and judging the statement stated by the parties and the evidence materials submitted, and using them as the basis for the judgment “Taking law as the criterion” means finding the corresponding legal provisions according to the confirmed facts and the claims of the parties and making decisions or taking actions in strict accordance with law. In this process, oral statements, written materials, pictures, videos or legal provisions are all information, and the ruling or judgment also exists in the form of document information. With the informatization of the property disposal process, the enforcement action is also related to the information. It can be seen that most of the court work begins, proceeds and completes in the form of information, and informatization plays a significant role in improving the quality and efficiency of court work. China’s courts began to apply computer-aided work in the 1990s, and they are one of the earliest departments to explore informatization in all walks of life. To study and analyze the development process, we can focus on different perspectives. First, from the regional level, it has extended from the higher and intermediate people’s courts in more developed areas to the relatively remote grassroots people’s courts and dispatched tribunals. Second, from the perspective of content, it has developed from operating terminals, network facilities, application systems to data resources, network security and operation and maintenance support. Third, from the perspective of application, it has developed from document input, storage, printing and other routine work to process management, file management, law popularization, judicial transparency, litigation services, intelligent assistance and other aspects. Fourth, from the perspective of application places, it has developed from science and technology-enhanced courtrooms, video interview rooms and video conference rooms to litigation service centers, enforcement command centers, information management centers and digital adjudication committees. Fifth, from the perspective of technical system, it has developed from stand-alone PC to LAN, Wan to cloud computing and cloud network integration. For smart court system projects, we need to pay more attention to the evolution of the system form and its construction focus. It can be divided into several progressive stages, such as computer-centered, network-centered, data-centered and knowledge-centered stages, and each has its own characteristics and overlaps with each other, similar to other advanced information system projects. Figure 1.1 shows the development process of court informatization. I.

Computer Centralization

Computer centralization means that in the information system, one or a small number of computers are in the central position, connected with a great deal of terminal equipment for information collection and component control. The structure, function and application of this kind of system are usually simple, and its capability mainly depends on the computing and storage performance of the computers. Therefore, the developers and users of information systems mainly focus on the selection

1.3 Development History

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Fig. 1.1 Main development stages of smart courts

and development of computers, which is the main form of information systems from the 1940s to the 1990s. Figure 1.2 shows a computer-centered information system structure. From the mid-1980s to the beginning of the twenty-first century, the court information system in China mainly showed the characteristics of computer centralization.

Fig. 1.2 Structure of computer-centered information system

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1 Overview

In the mid- and late 1980s, with the development of microcomputers, some courts in China began to use computers. Due to the high price, low popularity and inconvenience of computers at that time, computers were mainly used for text input, which was used by typists to replace judges’ handwritten documents. At the end of the 1980s, some courts began to input the information on the archive catalog into computers for convenient retrieval and tried to use BASIC to program small statistical programs to support judicial statistics, which is the start of court informatization. Since 1996, China has established the leading role of informatization in national economic and social development. With the popularization of informatization in all walks of life, the informatization process of people’s courts at all levels nationwide has started, and computers and application software have begun to be popularized in courts. In the late 1990s, the Supreme People’s Court and courts in economically developed areas were equipped with computers. In 2003, courts nationwide basically realized the computerization of judicial information and personnel information management. In 2005, almost all court staff across China had a computer each, and they used computers to input text, store documents and print output. Although LAN has been applied during this period, due to the limited number of connected nodes and coverage, most of them were only used to solve the problems of peripheral sharing and a small amount of information exchange, and online network application software had not yet been developed. Users mainly had little support from their desktop computers and were far from benefiting from large-scale network information systems. II.

Network Centralization

Network-centered information systems, in which a large number of computers or terminal devices are interconnected through large-scale and wide-area distributed communication networks, take the form of communication networks in the middle and computers and terminal devices on the outside. Compared with computercentered systems, the structure, function and application of this kind of system are much more complex. Its ability depends not only on the various computers connected to it but also on the transmission mode, bandwidth and protocol of the whole communication network, as well as on the networked application software. This is the product of the rapid development and wide application of Internet technology after the 1990s, and it is the main form of information system at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Figure 1.3 shows the structure of a network-centered information system. From the beginning of the twenty-first century to the mid-2010s, the court information system in China mainly presents the characteristics of network centralization. In 1994, the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court of Jiangsu Province tried to build a computer network, which was the first local court to develop a court network. Based on the pilot project of Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court, in 1996, the Supreme People’s Court convened the National Court Communication and Computer Project Conference, arranged the computer network development of the courts nationwide, and formulated and issued the National Court Computer Information Network System Construction Plan, which laid the foundation for the construction of the national court network information system.

1.3 Development History

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Fig. 1.3 Structure of network-centered information system

In 2002, the national informatization leading group put forward the strategic concept of “realizing e-government first, and then driving the informatization of the whole society”, which set off a climax of network information infrastructure and e-government construction throughout the country. The Supreme People’s Court has further strengthened its overall leadership over the court informatization throughout the country. In May of the same year, the LAN of the Supreme People’s Court was completed and put into use. In October of the same year, the National Conference on the Construction of Court Informatization was held to further deploy court informatization focusing on networked information infrastructure. Subsequently, the Supreme People’s Court revised and issued nearly 20 related technical and management documents, such as the People’s Court Computer Information Network System Construction Plan, People’s Court Information Network System Construction Technical Specification, Technical Plan for Court Private Network Construction, and launched the construction of the court private network covering the whole country in accordance with the three-level private network structure. At the end of 2003, the first level private network from the Supreme People’s Court to the higher people’s courts and the intermediate people’s courts in certain cities was completed. By the end of 2009, the secondary private network from the higher people’s courts of 22 provinces (including municipalities directly under the governance of the Central Government and autonomous regions) to the intermediate people’s courts under their jurisdiction had been basically constructed, and the construction of the tertiary private network had been basically completed in 8 provinces (municipalities), including Beijing, and some had extended the network and application to the local people’s courts. With the development and application of private network databases, code machines and other

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1 Overview

security products, network equipment, video equipment and various network application software projects, the court private network is widely used in exclusive communication, case handling, video conferencing, remote interrogation, remote interviews and other matters, which provides strong support for improving the quality and efficiency of trials and enforcement. On November 24, 2016, with the access of the People’s Court of Chawalong Township, Nyingchi City, Tibet Autonomous Region, to the specific court network, more than 3500 courts and more than 10,000 dispatched tribunals across the country were all connected to the court private network. “One network” for court staff throughout the country to work, handle cases, study and exchange information came into reality, which fully reflected the great advantages of the network-centered information system. III.

Data Centralization

A data-centered information system, with superlarge capacity data clusters and various computers or terminal devices connected through communication networks, forms the basic form of this system, which shows data clusters as the center, communication networks as the link, and computers and terminal devices as external equipment. This is the result of the rapid development of big data, cloud computing and mobile Internet technology, which gather and integrate the hyperscale data and drive network applications. Figure 1.4 shows the structure of a data-centered information system. Since the mid-2010s, China’s court information system has mainly shown the characteristics of data centralization. In 2012, the Beijing Court built an “information ball” to achieve real-time monitoring of the case process, automatic contrast of trial data, dynamic evaluation of

Fig. 1.4 Structure of data—centered information system

1.3 Development History

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judicial statistics, information sharing and exchange, and accurate quantification of judicial management, which provided an experience demonstration for the construction of a data-centered court information system. In 2013, the Supreme People’s Court established the people’s court data centralized management platform and upgraded it to the people’s court big data management and service platform in 2014, which gathers real-time data on nationwide court cases and automatically updates it every five minutes. In 2015, the Supreme People’s Court proposed promoting the transformation and upgrading of informatization and building a data-centered informatization system, which marked that the court information system has entered the data centralization stage in an all-round way. By the end of 2016, the big data management and service platform of the people’s courts had gone through the stages of nationwide courts coverage, case information coverage, data coverage and judicial statistics coverage, which promoted Chinese courts to completely bid farewell to manual statistics and supported the analysis of trial situation and evaluation of judicial performance of people’s courts at all levels throughout the country. The big data platform also fully connects with various business application systems and becomes the central hub of information exchange. In addition to case data, it also gathers data related to judicial personnel, judicial administration, judicial research, informatization and external data. Each figure can be traced to specific data items and case details and can support various types of big data analysis. It has become very useful to reflect the enforcement and trials and the operation of the economy and society. In July 2016, the Supreme People’s Court issued the Guidelines on Comprehensively Promoting the Simultaneous Generation and In-depth Application of Electronic Case Files by People’s Courts, which further focused on the aggregation, circulation and application of electronic case files that can reflect the overall situation of cases to make data centralization more comprehensive, and it has made clear the objective of serving the court staff and the people. IV.

Knowledge Centralization

The knowledge-centered information system is based on the interconnection of core knowledge engines, large data clusters and various intelligent terminal devices through a ubiquitous network based on mobile communication, forming a comprehensive knowledge engine that integrates knowledge learning, generation, evolution, storage, management and service. This is the vigorous development of artificial intelligence technology represented by machine learning, knowledge mapping and decision networks, which explores the development trend of simulating the human thinking process and intelligent behavior through in-depth mining and learning of large data resources. Although huge data resources can better reflect and describe the world, reflecting and describing the world is not the fundamental purpose of the human development of information systems. The fundamental value of an information system is to support users in obtaining accurate information, making correct decisions and taking optimal actions. The “accurate information” here, we call it knowledge, and it is the most needed knowledge for particular users to handle specific situations at a certain time and place, which can replace many tedious work of human beings to achieve the goal of improving the quality and efficiency of work. Such

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1 Overview

Fig. 1.5 Structure of knowledge-centered information system

knowledge acquisition depends on in-depth learning of massive data, fine construction of broad-spectrum knowledge, and precise adaptation of scenario requirements to form optimized and efficient intelligent support. Therefore, advanced intelligent knowledge engines have naturally become the focus of information system engineering with artificial intelligence as its focus. Figure 1.5 shows the structure of a knowledge-centered information system. Since 2016, China’s courts have actively used intelligent technologies such as character recognition, voice recognition, image recognition and semantic analysis to assist judges in reducing workload, improving work efficiency and trial quality. Some intelligent applications have become essential tools for judges in their daily work. The Ministry of Science and Technology has arranged more than ten key research and development plans, focusing on the intelligent technology of court hearing, trial, enforcement, litigation and management, and organized industries, universities and research institutes nationwide to work together and tackle key problems, which has made many important breakthroughs in the judicial artificial intelligence field, especially the formation of the basic framework of the comprehensive judicial intelligent knowledge engine. It provides a key technical basis for the nationwide systematic and large-scale construction of a knowledge-centered smart courts information system for the 2020s.

1.4 System Architecture

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1.4 System Architecture According to the plan, the information system of the smart courts is similar to an evergreen tree (as shown in Fig. 1.6), in which the network facilities are similar to the branches running through the whole stem. Various kinds of applications are similar to dense green leaves aiming to handle different tasks, and the data resources are similar

Fig. 1.6 The evergreen tree of smart courts

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1 Overview

to nourishing supplies with a complete range of types. The big data management and service platform is similar to the stem. Moreover, the Law Eye platform is at the top for monitoring. Information security, operation and maintenance, and crew teams are responsible gardeners who protect the evergreen tree all the time to thrive and flourish. The description of the structure of the smart courts information system as an evergreen tree is not only due to the similar shape of the two but also due to the absorption and integration of the growth ecology of the evergreen tree, such as the work mode of the information system. For a long time, people often treat information systems according to the concept of mechanical equipment or building facilities, which can be abandoned after a long time of use and can be replaced with new systems to achieve transformation and upgrading. In fact, this is true for relatively independent and simple systems, but it is totally different for complex information systems with considerable scale and continuous operation, such as smart courts. Because the whole system contains many information systems that operate independently to achieve their own goals and need to share and link to achieve many common goals, each unit upgrading and improvement must always take into account its impact on the overall situation. The stable operation of the whole system, the continuous realization of overall metabolism and the improvement of quality and efficiency are similar to the growth of a tree. Therefore, all planning, development, integration, operation and maintenance, application and improvement of smart courts must always keep in mind and follow such an ecological mode; that is, improving a unit system must ensure that the old and new systems are fully compatible, developing a new unit system must ensure its integration with the existing one, and abolishing a unit system must ensure that the existing data resources are not easily lost. To replace a system, it is necessary to fully inherit the original system interface and data resources. To achieve these principles, it is necessary to always maintain the system interface and information relationship configuration at the general system level to ensure that the whole system is not affected locally and develops continuously and healthily. I.

Basic Composition of the System

The smart courts information system mainly includes the information infrastructure with “five networks and three clouds” as the main body, the business application system with 28 types of applications, the big data management and service platform with judicial information resources as the core, the network security system distributed in all key links and the visual quality and efficiency operation and maintenance management platform connecting various systems (as shown in Fig. 1.7). Information infrastructure is the basic platform to support the computing, storage, communication, display and operation control of various information systems. According to the business characteristics, the five network systems that are isolated from each other are the main components of the information infrastructure of the smart court, among which the court private network connects the important places of the courts and the court staff’s work terminals, is designed exclusively for the internal work, and is the main basic environment to support the smart courts. The Internet is

1.4 System Architecture

Fig. 1.7 Composition structure of the information system of smart courts

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1 Overview

the main channel to connect with the public, carrying litigation services and judicial open business. It is another important basic support for smart courts. The private mobile network is the security extension of the court private network to the mobile terminal, which supports the mobile office of the court staff. It should be noted that because the mobile Internet is essentially an integral part of the Internet, the court business supported by the two is exactly the same, so it is not included in the scope of the private mobile network. The private external network is a channel to connect other collaboration departments and support cross-departmental information sharing and collaboration. The confidential Intranet carries the business involving state secrets within the court. It is an inevitable trend for the development of information technology to use cloud computing to solve the dynamic allocation and optimal sharing of basic resources of large-scale information systems. Because the court private network, private mobile network and private external network have relatively consistent business attributes and security requirements, it is a reasonable choice to improve the efficiency of cloud resources by supporting the three private network services through the private cloud. Supporting Internet business through open clouds is an important way to intensively support transparent justice. Currently, cloud computing technology needs to be improved to meet the requirements of security and confidentiality. With the increasing demand for information technology in people’s courts involving state secrets, smart courts need to improve the basic support capability of the court’s confidential information system through the work of confidential clouds. The application system is a direct means for smart courts to serve the people, trial and enforcement, judicial management and honest justice. From different perspectives, smart courts application systems can be divided into internal business and external business, confidential business and nonconfidential business, desktop business and mobile business, data business and video business. The application systems represented by trial and enforcement cover the main part of applications of smart courts. In the data-centered smart courts information system, the big data management and service platform is an important hub for vertical and horizontal integration, and its core is the national judicial trial information resource database, which includes six categories of data resources, namely, trial and enforcement, judicial personnel, judicial administration, judicial research, information management and external data. The integration of cases, personnel, property and external data can be realized through various data associations covering four levels of courts in the country; data sharing and exchange between courts can be realized through the sharing and exchange system, and business collaboration between people’s courts and external application systems can also be supported by the sharing and exchange system. According to the requirements of network security, the five major networks of smart courts must be physically or securely isolated from each other, and the corresponding security protection means must be adopted among various partitions, applications and users. Therefore, all kinds of information security equipment and software are widely distributed in smart court information systems to meet different security requirements.

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To realize quality-efficiency operation and maintenance support, it is necessary to build a visual quality-efficiency operation and maintenance management platform to collect real-time operation status parameters of various information infrastructure, application systems, data resources and network security systems to summarize statistics and visually display the operation quality and efficiency of the system, fully support the operation and maintenance personnel to carry out normalized monitoring and regular analysis, and support the continuous optimization of the information system of the smart courts. II.

Business Application System

The smart courts business application system mainly includes a series of application systems for litigation services, trial and enforcement, judicial management, judicial transparency and other business areas. Each business needs the support of one or more systems, and each system can also support the operation of one or more businesses (as shown in Fig. 1.8). An intelligent service system is a court business application system that directly serves the people and takes the Internet as the main platform. The litigation service hall, litigation service network and litigation service hotline constitute a “trinity” litigation service center, which provides legal consultation, litigation guidance, filing, payment, communication with judges and other information services for the people through site investigation or online means. More advanced electronic litigation platforms, online mediation platforms and Mobile WeCourts can provide services such as online filing, online payment, online evidence exchange, online trial, online mediation and cross-jurisdiction filing to reduce the cost of people’s travel. An Internet court takes advantage of the fact that all activities related to Internet disputes are in cyberspace, so all trial and enforcement activities can be completed online. Being more than a litigation service, in fact, it forms a new mode of trial and enforcement. An intelligent trial system is a business application system that serves the court staff, takes the court private network as the main platform and supports the trial of cases. The trial and case handling system is the main line of the intelligent trial system, which fully supports the case filing, allocation, hearing, trial, collegial discussion, adjudication committee, adjudication, closing and archiving of all kinds of cases. Access to application systems such as synchronous generation of electronic case files, automatic cataloging of electronic case files, intelligent retrieval of legal provisions, intelligent push of similar cases, assisted generation of legal documents and intelligent error correction of judgment documents can provide convenient operation and intelligent assistance for case-handling judges and help trial judges focus on key legal issues. An intelligent enforcement system is a business application system that serves court staff, which takes the court private network and private external network as the main platforms and supports the enforcement of effective judgments. The enforcement command system is the backbone of the intelligent enforcement system, which supports the supervision and coordination of enforcement cases. The enforcement process management system supports the enforcement staff in handling enforcement cases according to the standard procedure period and coordinates with external

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Fig. 1.8 Business application system

1 Overview

1.4 System Architecture

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units through the enforcement of investigation and control, punishment for credit default and judicial auction, which greatly improves the quality and efficiency of enforcement work. The individual enforcement soldier system provides comprehensive support to staff who carry out site investigation, which is an important guarantee for enforcement according to law and regulations and for the protection of the rights and interests of the parties. An intelligent management system is a business application system that serves management crew at all levels, which takes the court private network as the main platform and supports the internal administrative operation and affairs management of the court. The online office platform is the main line of the intelligent management system, which provides document drafting, circulation, approval and filing services for all court staff; Personnel management, trial supervision, file management and other systems can support the special affairs management of professional departments; The working platform of people’s courts aimed at supporting the dispatched tribunals, which is an effective means to support grass-roots management; Mobile office case handling platform is an effective extension of intelligent management to the mobile end and a necessary means to improve the efficiency of court management. The judicial publicity system is a business application system that serves the public, which takes the Internet as the main platform and supports the whole process of publicity according to law. The four open platforms of trial process, live broadcast of trial, judgment documents and enforcement information are the main means to show judicial transparency. The platforms enable all kinds of trial and enforcement elements to be fully, timely and vividly open to the public through the Internet, which are the concrete embodiment of the transparent judicial working mechanism. The open platform of commutation, parole and bankruptcy reorganization is a further supplement to the judicial transparency of the people’s court. In addition to the above business applications, smart courts also have an information system for judicial publicity, learning, and training, which has become important support for the modernization of people’s courts. III.

Data Resource System

A smart court data resource system is a valuable asset generated, accumulated and growing with the online services of various business applications. The system can be divided into six components: trial and enforcement, judicial personnel, judicial administration, judicial research, external data and information management data, each of which originates from a number of application systems. Meanwhile, its feedback supports the same or different parts of the application system (as shown in Fig. 1.9). Trial and enforcement data are the main body of data resources of smart courts, such as the cause of various litigation cases, parties, courts of appeal, undertaking judges, accepting and concluding time, detailed information of judgment documents, file materials, and court video, which is sufficient to reflect all civil and commercial, criminal and administrative litigation of people’s courts at all levels throughout the country. Trial and enforcement data come from various case handling systems

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1 Overview

Fig. 1.9 Data resource system

and litigation service systems and feed back to support case handling and litigation service systems, as well as provide important services for judicial management and transparency of justice. Judicial personnel data include the organizational system of the courts, the personnel file of court staff and personal work information. It is an important basis for studying, analyzing and evaluating the operation of judicial systems at all levels.

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Personnel data come from the court personnel information system and are an important data resource to support various trial and enforcement, litigation services and judicial management systems. The data of judicial administrative affairs include the information of documents and approval procedures related to administrative activities such as laws and regulations, internal management, logistical equipment and education and training, which represents the administrative operation of people’s courts at all levels and can reflect the development and performance of the courts more comprehensively and profoundly when combined with the data of trial and enforcement and judicial personnel. Judicial administrative data come from various judicial management systems and can also provide important support for trial and enforcement and litigation service systems. Judicial research data are the result of judicial big data mining and utilization, including judicial statistical reports, trial and enforcement situations, special case reports, judicial status reports, judicial knowledge bases and economic and social development analysis reports based on judicial big data, which are automatically generated by information systems and analyzed by researchers. It can provide deep data services or preliminary intelligent services for trial and enforcement and judicial management systems. External data are auxiliary information closely related to trial and enforcement from external cooperation units of the court, including people’s identity, relevant information on defaulters and information related to the case, which is an important data resource to support the trial and enforcement system. Informatization management data include configuration files such as smart courts information system structure, installation and deployment, interface relationship, as well as dynamic information such as operations of various systems, resource load, user distribution, operation experience, operation quality and efficiency, which is the main basis for reflecting the construction and operation status of the whole information system. The use of informatization management data can quantitatively, thoroughly and comprehensively support the popularization, application and improvement of litigation services, trial and enforcement and judicial management systems. The above six categories of data resources are not only relatively independent but also have very rich connections. It is an important task for the construction of data resources of smart courts to deeply analyze and construct the logical relationship between them in terms of software implementation. IV.

Infrastructure System

Private clouds, open clouds and confidential clouds constitute the basic architecture of the information infrastructure of smart courts. The data sharing and exchange system between the court private network, the private mobile network, the private external network, the Internet and the confidential Intranet links the five networks into one and becomes the security partition between the three clouds (as shown in Fig. 1.10).

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1 Overview

Fig. 1.10 Infrastructure structure

A private cloud is the main content of the information infrastructure of smart courts. The court private network connects the internal computer rooms, computing equipment, storage equipment, network management equipment, information acquisition equipment, display control equipment and court staff’s terminal equipment of all courts and dispatched tribunals in the country through data and video links. Special places and systems such as scientific and technological courtrooms, information management centers, enforcement command centers, digital conference systems, video conference systems, video security systems, remote complaint acceptance systems and remote interrogation systems all use the court private network as the

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main operating environment to support the internal business of the court. The litigation service hall for the public also has many businesses running on the court private network. The data backup center is mainly oriented to all kinds of data resources gathered by the court and naturally needs to run on the court private network. A private mobile network supports case handling online and meets staff’s needs to access the network anytime and anywhere. The private mobile network is configured with a small number of computing and storage devices, connected with the court private network by using one-way FGAP that meets the requirements of physical isolation, and connected to mobile terminals such as office, case handling, circuit trial vehicles, and individual enforcement systems through VPDN exclusive lines to support the remote mobile services of court staff. The private external network is also equipped with a small number of computing and storage devices, which are connected to the court private network by using the isolation and exchange mechanism that meets the network security requirements of both parties and realizes data exchange with dozens of external cooperative departments through headquarters-to-headquarters connection or terminal access, supporting cross-departmental information submission and sharing and business collaboration. Based on the construction of a court private network, private mobile network and private external network, the private cloud has a unified cloud management platform and computer room and uses virtualization technology to realize flexible expansion and dynamic allocation of computing and storage to improve the utilization of various basic resources. On the private cloud, computing, storage and communication facilities are partly dependent on the existing resources within the court. With time, it has become increasingly more practical to rent social resources that can ensure the information security of the court and to fully reduce the burden of its construction and operation and maintenance through social outsourcing services. Through the Internet, open cloud provides the public with litigation services such as judicial publicity, litigation service halls, litigation service networks, 12,368 litigation service hotlines, electronic litigation platforms, Internet courts and mobile WeCourt, as well as judicial publicity services such as government websites. Similarly, the purchase of social cloud services should be adopted as well. The Internet covers all office areas and connects with the court private network through physical isolation, enabling the court staff to obtain access. The secret-related network is connected to the specific court network through security isolation exchange equipment that meets the requirements of national secrecy, and the use of cloud computing to support secret-related business is the future development for the court’s secret-related information system construction. V.

Network Security System

The network security system and network structure have a fully corresponding relationship. The network security system of the smart courts also complies with the layout of the “five networks and three clouds” network structure and embeds corresponding safeguards for application systems, data resources and information sites according to the security protection requirements (Fig. 1.11).

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1 Overview

Fig. 1.11 Network security system

The court private network is the main object of protection by the smart courts network security system. The security system includes the security infrastructure that supports secret key management and electronic authentication, the comprehensive security supervision facilities that support security services, network management and security management, and the trust service facilities. All these constitute the

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basic support of private network security. Systems and facilities such as unified identity authentication integration platforms, terminal security protection platforms, application security protection, virtual desktops, proxy applications and security video surveillance support the safe operation of various application systems in many ways. Widely distributed firewalls support the safe swapping between all levels and partitions of the private network. The isolation switching system composed of process import/export, application acceptance/push, security control plug-in, authorization plug-in, security plug-in, isolation switching service, data restoration and single light guide module supports safe swapping between nonclassified networks. The more enhanced isolation switching system supports bidirectional safe swapping with classified networks. In view of the fact that the security requirements of judicial big data, such as comprehensiveness, integrity, non-tampering and nonrepudiation, play a vital role in maintaining judicial credibility, it is an important part of specific court network security protection to protect data security through security measures such as unified authentication, access control, data protection and data recovery. The mobile security service, which is composed of a mobile security monitoring center, access gateway, identity authentication gateway, security policy distribution, patch repair distribution and anti-virus module, forms the security protection system of a private mobile network. Based on identity authentication and access gateways, the security protection of private external networks can be realized. For a wider range of court private clouds, it is also necessary to ensure network security under cloud computing conditions through secure cloud infrastructure such as data isolation, virtual machine mirror image protection, virtual machine network access behavior control, etc. In the court open cloud, it is necessary to support the safe swapping of Internet access through the access gateway and identity authentication gateway to protect the application system and data resources on the cloud from external attacks through security monitoring, alarm and defense services. Moreover, it is necessary to ensure the security of cloud computing and cloud storage through cloud security measures such as data isolation, virtual machine mirror image protection, and virtual machine network access behavior control. The confidential Intranet is the key point of the network security system of smart courts, and it is necessary to adopt prevention and control measures to meet the requirements of hierarchical protection to ensure the security of state secrets and corresponding information systems. Security operation and maintenance is the routine task to ensure the network security of smart courts, which requires not only the support of security operation and maintenance tools and equipment but also the cooperation of professional security operation and maintenance teams. VI.

Operation and Maintenance Guarantee System

Operation and maintenance support is a necessary means to ensure the smooth and stable operation of the information system. In addition, the smart courts operation and maintenance guarantee system also undertakes the collection, monitoring, analysis and evaluation of the operation quality and efficiency of the whole information system and supports the continuous improvement of various information systems.

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1 Overview

Figure 1.12 reflects the basic structure of the operation and maintenance guarantee system of the smart courts. As seen from the figure, the main objects of operation and maintenance guarantee are various information infrastructure, application systems, data resources and network security facilities of the smart courts. For the information infrastructure with “five networks and three clouds” as the core, it is necessary to provide professional operation and maintenance support for all kinds of computer rooms, power supply equipment, environmental control equipment, communication networks, switches, servers, storage, display screens, terminal equipment, basic software and special informatization sites. To serve the court staff and the people, it is necessary to provide installation and deployment, parameter configuration, fault maintenance and user consultation. For the increasing judicial data resources, it is necessary to carry out tasks such as storage space allocation, access rights setting, regular backup, etc. For widely distributed network security facilities, it is necessary to carry out daily operation and maintenance guarantees such as system inspection, equipment adjustment, access control, permission setting and security auditing. The above operation and maintenance focus on the integrity and smooth operation of the system, which is its routine task. To meet the new requirements of smart courts to focus on the application effectiveness of information systems, the visual quality and efficiency operation and maintenance management platform, also known as the “law eye platform”, has become an important support for the quality and efficiency operation and maintenance guarantee system of smart courts. Different from the traditional ITSM operation and maintenance tools, the Law eye platform is a three-dimensional, interactive, large-scale visual operation and maintenance platform, multidomain management, large screen display and stand-alone service desk combination, which implements comprehensive, accurate and timely data access to the operation quality and efficiency indicators of the five types of objects, namely, infrastructure, application system, data resources, information security and operation and maintenance guarantee. Through a five-level view, it can monitor the overall quality and efficiency of the informatization in the top-down approach and layers division perspective. The emergency response platform is another information system in the smart courts operation and maintenance guarantee system, which supports the emergency takeover and temporary replacement of some key information systems in case of failure and strives to ensure the continuous development of key business of people’s courts at all levels. Smart courts rely on the integrated operation and maintenance guarantee system, namely, visual operation and maintenance platform, quality and efficiency analysis report, quality and efficiency operation and maintenance service, take the working mechanism of operation and maintenance, the effectiveness of informatization application and the satisfaction of users into a guarantee system for management and evaluation. In this way, smart courts can integrate the presentation, evaluation and promotion of quality and efficiency and support the continuous improvement of smart courts’ information systems.

1.4 System Architecture

Fig. 1.12 Structure of smart courts operation and maintenance guarantee system

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VII.

1 Overview

Technical Standard System

The technical standard system is an important part of the smart courts system, which provides technical guidelines and compliance for the construction of various information systems. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the technical standard system of smart courts was initially formed and continuously improved, the scope of application was expanded, and the effectiveness, advancement and applicability of standards were significantly enhanced, forming a framework as shown in Fig. 1.13. The technical standard system of smart courts consists of three categories: basic standards, technical standards and management standards. Among them, the basic standards mainly cover the standards that play a general supporting role in the technical standardization of smart courts, including terminology, topic words, standardization work guidelines and other standards. Technical standards are the main content, providing basic and binding provisions for the universal and repetitive technical problems in the implementation and expansion of the smart courts system project, mainly including technical standards for data, application system development, information security and infrastructure. The management standards are effective supplements to the technical standards, which mainly form guidelines and regulations for the management process closely related to technical factors in the implementation of the smart courts system project, including quality-efficiency operation and maintenance management, informatization project management, security management, informatization development effectiveness standards, etc. Data technology standards are the core of the technical standard system, including information classification and code, business entity relationship, information resource exchange and data governance technical requirements, covering all kinds of data such as court trial and enforcement, judicial personnel, judicial administrative affairs, and making detailed provisions on data content, data format and data quality. It supports data sharing and exchange of various information systems and provides technical support for the construction of the national judicial information resource database and the research and development of application systems of people’s courts at all levels. The application technology standard is the fastest growing category of the technical standard system, which mainly includes general technical requirements, application standards for serving the people, application standards for serving the trial and enforcement and application standards for serving judicial management. It provides technical guidance and constraints for people’s courts at all levels and R&D manufacturers for the functions, performance, operation interface and deployment methods of various application systems. Security technical standards are the implementation of national secret requirements in the smart courts system project, including nonclassified network technical standards and classified network technical standards, which provide specific guidelines and constraints for the security protection of infrastructure, application systems and data resources in two different systems. Infrastructure technical standards are also the main categories of the whole standard system, including site construction, network, equipment, system software and

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Fig. 1.13 Technical standard system

cloud computing construction standards. It provides guidance for the construction of key information sites such as scientific and technological courtrooms, litigation service centers, enforcement command centers and informatization management centers, the selection of network equipment, terminal equipment and basic software, and the construction and operation of private clouds and open clouds.

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1 Overview

1.5 Typical Applications Smart courts information systems can provide a variety of application services for the vast number of users inside and outside the court, among which many typical applications are particularly important. First, typical applications carry the main business of people’s courts at all levels in serving the people, trial and enforcement and judicial management. They are the main channels for smart courts to support justice for the people and fair justice. Focusing on building high-quality and efficient typical application systems is the first choice to better serve users. Second, typical applications more clearly reflect the basic characteristics of a court than general applications. The two kinds of applications have closer information interactions and collaborative linkages with each other. The system composition, function performance, interaction relationship and operation requirements of typical applications constitute the main part of the construction of smart courts application systems. Third, the typical applications should have an advanced business application mode, excellent user operation experience, a unified login interface and a convenient cross-link channel as much as possible, which fully reflects the deep integration of modern information technology with judicial work. In this sense, taking advantage of information technology achievements to develop advanced typical business application systems is an important way to promote the comprehensive development of smart courts application systems. Fourth, the typical applications can best reflect the operation quality and efficiency of the smart courts. Considering that any failure or interruption of its operation will lead to serious consequences, typical applications are the key guarantee of information system operation. To strengthen the quality and efficiency of operation and maintenance guarantees and improve the effectiveness of smart courts, we provide more infrastructure resources for typical applications, implement normalized, multichannel and high-density operation status monitoring to adapt to possible dynamic load changes, redundant backup and emergency response requirements, control the operation quality and efficiency of various systems and make timely improvements. Fifth, due to the importance of services, the scarcity of data resources and the high attention from the public, typical applications are often more likely to become the target of data theft and information attacks. It is necessary to take combined network security measures such as authority control, boundary protection, virus killing, security auditing, and attack detection. to promote the overall improvement of the network security level of smart courts. I.

Intelligent Service

The intelligent service system aims to promote the construction of a one-stop diversified dispute resolution and litigation service system in the courts nationwide, with a nonlitigation dispute resolution mechanism as the first available choice, and connects all kinds of professional dispute resolution channels in the whole society through the

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mediation platform. It realizes the full sharing of mediation resources and mediation information. Among them, the “online data integration platform for road traffic accident disputes” connects with traffic police, medical appraisal, insurance claims, people’s mediation and other related links, which realizes mediation as the first step, unification of damage compensation standards, and online handling of road traffic accidents, forming a “one-stop” new mode of resolving road traffic accident disputes. The financial dispute resolution platform connects with financial management departments, financial enterprises, trade associations and mediation organizations, supports mediation of lending and insurance disputes and diversified resolution for securities and futures disputes, and provides multichannel, multilevel and multitype financial dispute resolution channels for the people. The grassroots conflict and dispute resolution platform connects with grassroots organizations such as community neighborhood committees, grassroots trade unions and social security grids, supports the timely resolution of common disputes such as marriage and family, property management and labor disputes, and promotes the formation of harmonious communities and nonligation villages. The intelligent service system will continue to open up channels for dispute resolution with all sectors of society and efficiently link up with the court’s internal work module to construct a new diversified dispute resolution model with Chinese characteristics. The intelligent service system also provides one-stop, one-network and one-time litigation services for the people. When parties to litigation come to the litigation service hall, they can conveniently use various advanced litigation service equipment to obtain litigation guidance, consultation and reception, court navigation and other litigation guidance services. By using the functions of litigation risk assessment, intelligent question and answer, and online browsing, the parties can obtain more authoritative legal advisory services, such as risk assessment, comparison of different dispute resolution methods, similar cases and recommendation of legal provisions, and guide the people to conduct rational litigation. Through China Mobile WeCourt or the litigation service network of people’s courts at all levels, litigation participants can easily realize remote online filing of cases and trace the process of case handling. With the assistance of court staff, parties can also handle the filing application of cases and the uploading of litigation materials to any jurisdiction court in the country through the cross-jurisdiction filing service of China Mobile WeCourt to minimize the burden of litigation. By dialing the national 12,368 litigation service hotline, legal participants can communicate with the court staff and consult legal issues. By integrating the transmission resources of the three major telecom operators and China Post, a unified service system for courts across the country has been established, which can accurately locate the addressee, accurately serve legal documents, improve the efficiency of court service, and provide more efficient service for litigants. The information platform of the litigation service guidance center is the aggregation hub of the business application data of the intelligent service system. The aggregation and management of large data of litigation services can show the effectiveness of one-stop diversified dispute resolution and litigation services in panoramic displays, manage the whole process and guide the litigation services of people’s

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1 Overview

courts at all levels in real time, quantitatively evaluate the overall quality and efficiency of litigation services of people’s courts at all levels, and automatically generate a report on the quality and efficiency of litigation services in local courts. It also realizes the online evaluation and regular supervision of the application of court intelligent services and provides important support for promoting the construction of a one-stop diversified dispute resolution mechanism and litigation service system. II.

Intelligent Trial

An intelligent trial system is an application system to help court staff better determine facts, choose accurate legal provisions and support the solution of basic problems in the trial work of the people’s court. With an online case handling system, every case in the courts goes through filing, circulation, trial, collegial discussion, decision making and the generation of judgment documents online. The case handling system will automatically remind the judges about case deadline, help judges and trial managers to know the procedures due date, and record the information of these procedures in digital form to support trial management and supervision. On this basis, courts around the country vigorously promote the synchronous generation and in-depth application of electronic case files and use the legal information platform, intelligent push of similar cases and other systems to assist judges in efficiently analyzing the case and determining the facts. The synchronous electronic case file generation system enables court staff to scan and produce electronic case files in the process of filing and trial and facilitates judges’ browsing and review with automatic cataloging of file materials. The case-handling judge can use the functions of case browsing to review the case clearly. The introduction of block chain tamperproof technology can make the electronic file of the case “standardized in format and available at any time”, and the electronic file can be generated directly after the case is handled. To avoid the inconsistency of judgment criteria, the legal information platform and the case intelligent push system can directly push relevant laws and regulations and judicial interpretations for judges and enable judges to query similar cases and authoritative precedent cases with a single click. Intelligent application also extends to the trial stage. Relying on modern technology, the trial courtroom uses a display screen and an audio and video acquisition system to synchronously record the trial. The speech recognition system can distinguish and recognize the voice information of different participants in the process of a court trial and immediately convert it into a court record, which greatly reduces clerk workload and improves the quality and effectiveness of the trial. Thanks to the electronic evidence system, the evidence materials can be obtained by voice control, and the relevant file materials, laws and regulations can be automatically captured, marked online and displayed, which greatly facilitates the judge’s comparison and verification in the courtroom and investigation of facts. The system also creates favorable conditions for the participants to sign electronically on the trial transcript quickly after the trial. The automatic inspection system of court trials is used to conduct automatic inspection of court trial scheduling and court trial behavior, which simplifies traditional manual inspection into automatic and batch comprehensive inspection and greatly improves the efficiency, scope and accuracy of inspection.

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The digital adjudication committee system can support a variety of business scenario requirements, such as conference material sharing, laws and regulations query, remote video conferencing, judicial big data retrieval, text and voice input. Judgment documents are the final product of the trial work of the people’s court. They carry all the information of the litigation activities, display the settlement of disputes and reflect the quality of justice. Using the intelligent document generation system, the fact of the judgment document can be automatically generated according to the case, and the judge only needs to carefully compile the reasoning part of the judgment after careful examination. The risk alarm system for different judgments in the same kind of cases can automatically analyze the indictment and court records, extract the case plot information, and intelligently assist in predicting the sentencing results. After the judge uploads the judgment, the system can facilitate estimating the deviation degree of the judgment and promote the unification of the judgment criteria on the precondition of fully guaranteeing the judge’s independent handling of cases according to law. The error correction system of judgment documents can assist in finding text errors, support judges to improve the quality of documents, and safeguard the judicial authority of the people’s court. III.

Intelligent Enforcement

An intelligent enforcement system is a decisive weapon to support the solution of “difficulty in enforcement”. The comprehensive management platform of the enforcement command center can comprehensively monitor the enforcement work of the courts all over the country in real time, connect the enforcement command centers of the people’s courts at all levels and the enforcement staff who go out to enforce, command, coordinate, supervise key enforcement cases, and support the construction of an integrated enforcement command management mechanism for the courts throughout the country. An enforcement case processing management system provides a unified case handling platform. It stipulates 8 types of enforcement cases with 37 key nodes, and the court staff must handle the case in an orderly manner according to the procedures. After the case was accepted, court staff first contacted the national network investigation and control platform for investigation and control and then carried out seizure and seal-up measures. Each step must be strictly in accordance with the law and regulations. The network investigation and control system connects nearly 4000 institutions across the country, and enforcement staff can quickly inquire about the property information of the person subject to enforcement nationwide without actually traveling there. After applying for inquiry, the system automatically inquires and feeds back the information. If measures such as freezing or seizure are required according to law, the property of the person subject to enforcement will be disposed of accordingly after the application for control is made. The punishment system for defaulters connects with civil aviation, railways and other departments. The enforcement staff can carry out joint punishment for the defaulters after examination and approval through the functions of “listing in the list of defaulters” and “restricting extravagant spending”. Based on the five auction platforms, such as the China judicial auction network, all auction activities, such as announcement, deposit payment,

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1 Overview

bidding and confirmation of transactions, can be carried out on the Internet auction platform without the participation of enforcement staff to ensure that the auction is carried out with transparency, fairness and zero commission. This not only benefits the protection of the parties but also greatly enhances the credibility of justice. The intelligent enforcement system also supports the ourt staff in establishing online communication channels with the parties through the platforms of enforcement information disclosure, litigation service system and Mobile WeCourt, timely feedback on the progress of the case and learning the opinions of the parties, thus gaining the understanding of the people for the enforcement work. IV.

Intelligent Management

It is an inevitable trend for the development of information technology to use abundant big data resources to serve judicial management, transparent justice and national governance. The big data management and service platform of the people’s court always shows the number of newly accepted and already concluded cases of the people’s courts at all levels throughout the country, which helps the leaders of the people’s courts at all levels understand the overall operation immediately. It can show the trend of cases accepted by courts all over the country and inform court leaders about changes in the number of cases and the progress of the cases. It can display the curve charts comparing different cases, regions and levels and help managers to comprehensively and quantitatively analyze the overall situation and change trend of the objects of concern. It can automatically generate 5.7 million judicial statistical reports, each of which can correspond to specific case lists and details, to ensure the authenticity and traceability of various statistics. It enables judges and managers to conduct specific and detailed judicial research and analysis. It can also integrate the collected personnel data and case data and provide personnel performance evaluation for courts, judges and other relevant entities. The people’s court judicial blockchain platform, which connects internal and external networks, supports the verification of core judicial information elements and serves judicial supervision and management. It can automatically generate the situation analysis report of the trial and enforcement of the people’s courts at all levels. Thus, leaders at all levels can study the work regularly and improve decision-making. In view of the trend of economic and social development, an in-depth study of the information contained in judicial big data can provide an important reference for national and regional governance. The classified thematic study of civil and commercial cases can reflect the economic development and changes and deepseated contradictions in various regions. The classified thematic study of criminal cases can reflect the overall situation and existing problems of social security in various places. The classified thematic study of administrative cases can reflect the development and changes of social governance and contradictions in various regions. The comprehensive indicator study of judicial cases in various places can comprehensively and quantitatively show the current situation and trend of local judicial development. Various thematic studies and analyses carried out in combination with issues of social concern can reflect major legislative and judicial policy measures and

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their implementation, which are highly concerned by the people and of vital interest. The studies can also analyze and provide support for the alarm of social problems, optimization of services, and provide important reference for people to consciously respect and abide by the law and better safeguard their rights and interests. Informatization construction and data application are the main bases to reflect the effectiveness of smart court development. The Law eye platform can comprehensively monitor the infrastructure, business applications, data resources and information security of the private court network, private mobile network, private external network, Internet and confidential Intranet of people’s courts at all levels nationwide. It is an important mode to support the closed-loop management and continuous improvement of informatization. Smart courts use network business application systems such as online offices, personnel management, trial supervision, file management and grassroots management to support online case handling processes, rapid flows of information, ondemand sharing and traceable processes. This can not only greatly improve work efficiency and reduce labor costs but also provide a strong guarantee for improving work transparency, reducing rule-breaking operations, facilitating management supervision and implementing intelligent assistance. V.

Judicial Publicity

It is an important way to build an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient judicial mechanism by taking advantage of the instant transmission of Internet information, wide coverage of terminals, diverse forms of media and convenient and flexible interaction to realize the publicity of the elements of trial and enforcement in the whole process according to law. The Supreme People’s Court has two official websites in Chinese and English languages, which publish authoritative information such as court news and information, laws and regulations, judicial interpretations, judicial documents, judicial statistics, foreign bulletins, guiding cases and big data reports to the whole world. It advocates the interaction between the public and judges, regarded as the general portal of Chinese transparent justice. From the websites, we can directly link judicial publicity platforms such as China Judicial Process Information Online, China Court Trial Online, China Judgment Online and China Enforcement Information Online. China Judicial Process Information Online enables judges of people’s courts at all levels to publicize the trial process information of criminal, civil, administrative and state compensation cases of people’s courts to the parties involved in litigation and their legal representatives, litigation agents and defenders through the unified platform. In addition, it helps the people involved in litigation to interact with judges through the Internet. Information on the trial process of cases with significant social influence can also be made public through the Internet. China Court Trial Online supports people’s courts at all levels to broadcast live audio and video of criminal, civil and administrative cases to the public through a unified Internet platform and supports the public in obtaining court trial notices, video reviews, and live trials of major cases. It provides a direct channel for the people’s courts to accept supervision from the public and provides an important

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1 Overview

window through which the general public can understand the trial of various cases and the details concerning fair justice. China Judgment Online supports the case-handling judges of people’s courts at all levels to disclose to the public the effective judicial documents of criminal, civil, administrative, state compensation, enforcement and judicial assistance cases except those involving state secrets, juvenile delinquency, marriage and family through the online platform. It enables users to obtain the full text of the judgment documents they need through retrieval, inquiry and download and supports the publication of some judgment documents in Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Korean and Kazakh languages. It is the main channel for Chinese courts to fully disclose the results of judicial decisions and accept supervision from the people. It has also become an important window for the public and the world’s legal circles to better understand and study China’s judicial civilization. China Enforcement Information Online enables people’s courts at all levels to disclose to the public the information of the person subject to enforcement, the defaulter, the person subject to restriction of extravagant spending, the enforcement of legal documents, the disposal of property and the judicial auction of the cases enforced by the people’s courts, except for the information prohibited by laws such as state secrets and business secrets through the unified Internet platform. The website enables the people involved to inquire about the progress of the enforcement case and provides the courts with an important interactive channel to accept social supervision, to solve the difficult problems of enforcement and to gain the understanding of the parties. In addition, Judicial Case Academy of the Supreme People’s Court, National Enterprise Bankruptcy Information Disclosure Platform, the Publicity of commutation, parole and temporary execution of sentence outside prison, litigation service network of people’s courts at all levels and 12,368 litigation service hotline are all judicial open channels for the public, which have become an important supplement to the publicity of the trial and enforcement process in accordance with the law.

1.6 Remarkable Results After more than 20 years of efforts, China has built smart courts with complete network coverage, the largest data stock, the widest scope of collaboration and the latest intelligent services in the world, which have been widely used throughout the country. It provides all-around support for serving the people, trial and enforcement, judicial management, transparent justice and national governance. Smart courts have achieved remarkable effects because they provide efficient and convenient technical guarantees for justice for the people and fair justice, and various application systems that run through the whole country and extend to the desktops of users enable court staff to work without time and space constraints. Work quality and efficiency have been greatly improved through online, remote, mobile, shared, visual, intelligent and other convenient means. At the same time,

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smart courts have also greatly reduced the travel costs of the people, greatly reduced the workload of the court staff and completely saved the auction commissions of the parties through online judicial auction applications. These three aspects alone have produced huge economic benefits. More importantly, the new judicial mode of smart courts, which handles all business online, opens the whole process according to law and provides all-round intelligent services, supports the construction of an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient transparent judicial mechanism, helps to solve the long-standing problems in the judicial field, promotes judicial fairness and justice, and guarantees judicial credibility. It has promoted the modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity. Smart courts also reflect economic and social development, support government decision-making through judicial big data, and enhance the ability to enforce contracts by improving judicial efficiency, reducing judicial costs and optimizing judicial procedures. It thus continuously elevates the business environment competitiveness of the country. Many modes and processes of smart courts are completely original in China, which fully benefits from the strengths of the socialist judicial system with Chinese characteristics. While winning the recognition of many world counterparts, smart courts also provide China’s plan and contribute China’s wisdom to the world’s rule of law civilization in the information age. Finally, smart courts are also a typical large system project with a series of engineering and technical challenges. Through the collaboration of industry, education and research, the planning, integration, deployment and optimization expansion of complex information systems have been realized, which have also contributed valuable theoretical, methodological and practical references to burgeoning systems engineering science. I.

Reducing the Burden of People’s Litigation

Litigation has always been a time-consuming and laborious matter for people. The national smart court information system provides litigants with convenient and accessible litigation services through the information litigation service hall, litigation service network, 12,368 litigation service hotline, electronic litigation and mobile electronic litigation platform and supports the whole process of online filing, payment, evidence exchange, trial, service and enforcement. For parties who are not familiar with the online operation, it also provides cross-jurisdiction filing services throughout the courts nationwide and strives to facilitate the people with convenient services. First, the litigation service hall supports a one-stop litigation service. Ninety-eight percent of the courts in China have built highly informationized litigation service halls, many of which are equipped with intelligent litigation robots, ITC litigation self-service terminals and other equipment to provide more convenient litigation services for the parties. Some courts have extended self-service litigation service terminals to township judicial offices and communities to facilitate the parties in handling litigation business nearby. Second, the electronic litigation platform provides the whole process of online services. Ninety-eight percent of the courts in China have built litigation service networks and electronic court systems to support electronic litigation, and many court

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1 Overview

litigation service networks integrate lawyer services, complaint and petition acceptance, online mediation, people’s jury management and other functions, providing one-stop service for the people. Ninety-five percent of the courts in China have opened 12,368 litigation service hotlines. China Mobile WeCourt works with WeChat to build a convenient, inclusive and efficient mobile electronic litigation platform, and courts across the country have launched and applied Mobile WeCourts to support nationwide cross-jurisdiction filing. By the end of 2020, China Mobile’s WeCourts had applied multiparty video more than 29,000 times, held more than 53,000 hearings, served documents for more than 2.29 million cases, served more than 11.52 million documents, signed more than 225,000 mediation agreements online, adjudicated more than 4.78 million cases, and enforced more than 1.04 million cases. More than 81,000 cases were filed across regions. Third, the people’s court mediation platform takes the alternative dispute resolution mechanism as the first choice. The people’s court mediation platform includes both the court’s trial mediation resource and social dispute resolution resource and provides convenient, timely and authoritative online dispute mediation for all dispute parties. It enables people to make mediation agreements and judicial confirmations online. For cases that fail to be mediated, they can be filed online as soon as possible. By the end of 2020, more than 3500 courts connected with the mediation platform, and the application rate of the mediation platform by courts reached 100%. More than 32,900 mediation organizations and 165,300 mediators were stationed on the platform, and more than 13.6 million mediation cases were accumulated, with an average mediation time of 23 days. Fourth, the online petition system serves the public. The online complaint and petition platform, remote video interview system and petition information management system covering four levels of courts in China support tackling the problem of complaints and petitions through letters and visits by the public. The online complaint and petition platform has received 10,300 online complaints and petitions through letters and visits from the parties, and the remote video interview system has realized multiparty communication between the Supreme People’s Court, the court of first instance and the petitioners. After the remote video interview system and the online petition system were put into use, the number of visits for petitions to Beijing decreased by approximately 30% year on year. Fifth, the Internet court initiated the whole process of the online litigation mode. Internet courts actively explore new modes of Internet trials. In 2020, the Hangzhou Internet Court accepted 11,189 cases involving the Internet, and among them, 100% of those cases that had parties contacted and accessed online were heard online. The average time of the trial session was 21 min, and the average trial period was only 47 days. The trial results were highly accepted, and the rate of judgment acceptance in the first-instance trial reached 95.21%. II.

Greatly Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Trials

In response to the demands of the people, courts across the country have implemented the reform of the registration system for case filing systems, and the number of cases accepted has soared from less than 10 million in 2010 to more than 30 million in 2020.

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On the other hand, with the reform of the post system to ensure the quality of judges, the number of judges in China has dropped to approximately one-third of the original number, which has led to an increase of nearly 10 times in the average number of cases handled by judges each year. Despite this, the quality and efficiency of handling cases, such as the rate of case conclusion and the rate of accepting judgment, have been significantly improved, which is closely related to the unremitting efforts of the vast number of court staff and benefits from the national smart courts information system to promote online operations to reduce unnecessary procedures, support file sharing, and intelligently assist in handling cases to reduce routine workload. First, online case handling based on electronic case files has promoted the reform of trial methods. By the end of 2020, 93% of the courts in China had built an electronic case file synchronous generation system, which technically realized functions such as compiling electronic file contents, online browsing, assisted generation of legal documents and cataloging electronic files. Synchronous scanning and generation of electronic case files is the basis of all in-depth applications. The average coverage rate of electronic case files in courts nationwide has exceeded 70%. Some regional courts have paid close attention to the supervision of electronic case files and set up supervision items for electronic case files in the case handling system (the electronic materials that must be or should be available at the relevant procedures for supervision). It not only guarantees the integrity and reliability of electronic case files in each procedure but also effectively realizes the generation of electronic case files, laying a solid foundation for judges and clerks to use electronic files in a timely manner. Based on electronic case files, courts nationwide have extensively carried out their intelligent applications. According to the nationwide survey, the application of intelligent cataloging and generation of procedural documents are more effective. The intelligent cataloging function usually has an accuracy rate of more than 80%, so it is easier to collate and adjust manually. Most of the procedural documents are equipped with appropriate templates, and the materials generated within the court, the examination and approval form for filing cases, and the announcement of court sessions can be made conveniently only by automatically adding the corresponding information of documents. Second, smart courts help develop cross-sectoral collaboration in an innovative way. Courts in Shanghai and other places creatively use big data and artificial intelligence to analyze evidence, clarify the basic evidence standards and guidelines at different stages of litigation, and build a cross-sectoral big data case handling platform to help judicial personnel collect and examine evidence in accordance with the law. By the end of 2020, nearly 24.39 million pages of evidence had been entered, and evidence guidance had been used more than 540,000 times. The Supreme People’s Court has promoted nationwide courts to develop commutation and parole platforms to improve time-consuming and laborious travel by judicial, procuratorial and prison personnel. They used to carry a large number of files when handling commutation and parole cases. Except for the courts in Tibet, Xinjiang and the corps, the people’s courts, procuratorial organs and prisons have shared case information and handled cases collaboratively online. This not only greatly improves the efficiency of case handling but also makes the whole process traceable and transparent. In view of the

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increasing number of road traffic disputes, the Supreme People’s Court, together with the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Justice and China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, jointly carried out pilot projects in 32 provinces, including Beijing, Hebei and Jilin, on the basis of the previous pilot projects in Yuhang District Court of Hangzhou City. The project puts mediation by the insurance industry as the first step, unifies damage compensation standards, realizes handling of the whole process, and simplifies documents to realize the online handling of the whole process of traffic accident disputes. By the end of 2020, more than 570,000 cases had been applied for mediation, more than 480,000 cases had been mediated, the success rate of mediation was 77.04%, and the damage and compensation amount concerned reached more than 14.4 billion yuan. Third, the routine work of judges has been greatly reduced. Courts in Hebei and other places have developed and applied intelligent trial systems to assist judges in generating various standard documents and intelligently help judges quickly edit judgment documents. By the end of 2020, the intelligent trial system was widely used in courts in Hebei, Jilin, Guangdong, Zhejiang and other places and generated nearly 34 million documents in courts from Hebei Province, including more than 2.5 million adjudicative documents. The experience of courts in Hebei Province shows that it can reduce the routine work of judges by more than 30%. To deal with the defective judgment documents that affect judicial credibility, the Supreme People’s Court has developed a big data intelligent analysis and error correction system for judgment documents, which realizes the intelligent analysis of 61 elements in judgment documents, determines the logical errors, omissions of litigation requests and errors in quoting legal provisions that are not easy to find by manual evaluation, and promotes the intelligent error correction of documents to enhance judicial credibility. The system has been applied in Shanghai and other regions. By the end of 2020, courts in Shanghai had analyzed more than 640,000 judgment documents, with a 29.44% defect rate. The proportion of defects in 2020 was 12.65%, which was lower than that in 2019. Fourth, people’s courts at all levels actively upgrade and transform scientific and technological courtrooms and constantly improve their informatization. By the end of 2020, more than 44,000 scientific and technological courtrooms had been built nationwide, accounting for more than 90% of the total number of courtrooms. The visual operation and maintenance management platform of the Supreme People’s Court (Law Eye Platform) has connected with more than 42,000 video signals of scientific and technological courtrooms and supported the remote inspection of the trial process. Due to high pressure and transcript recording time, clerk and the progress of the trial may be affected. Thus, the Supreme People’s Court has organized the development of a speech recognition system for the trial, which automatically distinguishes the parties and content of the trial speech and automatically converts the speech into text. Due to artificial intelligence assistance, the clerk only needs to make little revision of the transcript, effectively improving the efficiency of the trial. The court trial speech recognition system has been widely used in courts in Zhejiang, Anhui, Beijing and other places. The correct rate of speech recognition in most court trial applications has reached more than 93%, and the court trial time has

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been shortened by 20–30% on average; moreover, the integrity of court transcripts has reached 100%, which greatly reduces the work pressure of clerks. III.

Help to Solve the Problem of “Difficulties in Enforcement”

Enforcement is the last link in fulfilling legal obligations. For various reasons, judicial decisions cannot be effectively implemented, and judicial documents become “legal IOUs”, which seriously affect judicial authority. The fourth plenary session of the eighteenth central committee of the Communist Party of China promotes the comprehensive law-based governance and calls for “effectively solving the difficulties in enforcement”. In March 2016, Zhou Qiang, President of the Supreme People’s Court, solemnly promised to the National People’s Congress that “the difficulty of enforcement will be basically solved in two to three years”. After three years of hard work, through authoritative evaluation, the enforcement rate of cases with property available for enforcement reached 94.54%, the enforcement conclusion pass rate of cases without property available for enforcement reached 99.78%, the enforcement rate for cases involving complaints and petitions through letters and visits reached 99.14%, and the enforcement rate of enforcement cases reached 87.96%, which fully achieved the expected goal. The national smart courts information system provides a complete set of information-based command coordination, standardized enforcement, searching for people and things, and punishment for defaulters, which plays a vital role and provides a new solution to “the enforcement difficulty”. First, it makes a major change in the modes of enforcement and management. There are many enforcement procedures, with considerable discretion space. It is easy to delay and difficult to supervise. The number of enforcement cases has increased year by year, approaching 8 million in 2018. In this case, the traditional management mode has been unable to meet the practical needs of enforcement work. With the help of modern information technology, we develop two major systems, namely, enforcement command management platforms and unified case handling platforms, to effectively solve the difficulties in enforcement management. The enforcement command management platform is the basic “management platform”, which is responsible for gathering the data of various enforcement systems, integrating case management, enforcement command, supervision and assessment, decision analysis and case handling services, with nearly 20 specific management functions. The unified case handling platform is the “production platform” of the basic case handling data. The courts at the four levels of the country handle the enforcement cases in this system, and all the key due dates can be monitored by the network from the enforcement filing to the conclusion of the case. Second, it promotes profound changes in the mode of property enforcement. For the enforcement of civil cases, the enforcement of the property of the person subject to enforcement is the most important. Property enforcement includes inquiry, control, liquidation, case payment and other links. To inquire about the deposits, vehicles and other property of the person subject to enforcement, the enforcement staff need to go to various banks, vehicle management offices and other institutions, which take up many judicial resources. On December 24, 2014, the Supreme People’s Court officially launched the network enforcement investigation and control system to

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search for the property of the person subject to enforcement by means of information technology. In 2017, more than 3000 courts nationwide universally and regularly used the system. As of November 2018, the courts nationwide have provided inquiry and freezing services for 59.6 million cases through the network investigation and control system, with a total of 395 billion yuan of frozen funds. This set of data is growing rapidly every day. The network enforcement investigation and control system has greatly improved the efficiency of enforcement. To be transparent, in the process of property liquidation, the Supreme People’s Court established the priority principle of online judicial auction in 2016 and promoted the online judicial auction system nationwide from January 1, 2017. In 2018, more than 3500 courts across the country realized online judicial auctions, and except for a few provinces, the judicial auction rate reached 100%. In other words, all judicial auction cases are handled online. The transparency of judicial auction has been significantly improved, and it helps to form an open, fair, just and honest law enforcement environment. Third, the punishment system for credit default becomes increasingly effective. In 2013, the Supreme People’s Court resolutely introduced the “list of defaulters” system, which identifies those who have the ability to perform their duties as stipulated in the judgment yet refuse to do so, and then lists them in the social-credit punishment list. In addition, the Supreme People’s Court works with more sectors to punish the defaulters. The measures include restrictions on air and high-speed rail transport, acting as legal representatives and executives of enterprises, and extravagant spending. Altogether, there are restrictions of 11 categories, 37 major items and 150 joint disciplinary measures. In terms of specific operation, the Supreme People’s Court presents the list of defaulters to the relevant units through the network, and then each unit involves the list information in its office system to automatically compare, implement and punish the defaulters. As of November 30, 2018, more than 3 million defaulters have fulfilled their obligations under the pressure of credit default punishment. As the joint credit default punishment mechanism grows more influential, more people subject to enforcement are willing to fulfill their duties, and the total number of people on the list is declining. The rule of law index innovation project team of the Law Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has carried out a third-party evaluation of the “intelligent enforcement” of the courts. The project objectively measures and evaluates the role and effectiveness of informatization in helping the courts “basically solve the enforcement”. The evaluation results show that the courts nationwide generally incorporate enforcement cases into the case handling system. The property network investigation and control system has been continuously improved and optimized. The joint disciplinary mechanism continued to exert its strength, effectively deterring the defaulters. The new media on the Internet magnifies the effect of publicity. Mobile terminal application development has provided convenient work services for enforcement. In March 2019, at the second session of the 13th National People’s Congress, the Supreme People’s Court announced that in the past three years, the people’s court had made every effort to tackle the problem, accepting 20.435 million cases of enforcement, enforcing 19.361 million cases, and the amount enforced reached 4.4 trillion yuan, an increase of 98.5%, 105.1% and 71.2%, respectively, compared

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with those of the previous three years. It has solved a number of chronic problems, basically formed the enforcement system, mechanism and mode with Chinese characteristics, promoted the rule of law and social integrity, and achieved the phased goal of “basically solving the difficulties in enforcement”. IV.

Supporting the Reform of the Judicial System

Promoting the construction of smart courts is not only one of the basic contents of deepening the judicial reform of the people’s courts but also an important engine and powerful driving force for deepening judicial reform in an all-round way. First, it supports the construction of an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient judicial mechanism. We will build and apply a series of judicial open platforms, which are mainly based on the four open platforms of China Judicial Process Information Online, China Court Trial Online, China Judgment Online, and China Enforcement Information Online, and extended by new open platforms to effectively satisfy the people’s right to know, to participate in, to express and supervise the judiciary work so that the people can feel fairness and justice in a tangible way. More than 95.0% of the courts nationwide have opened government affairs websites, and increasing trial information has been made public on the Internet. Anyone who logs on to the website can have a comprehensive understanding of the courts, including their composition, functions, judicial staff information, budget and final accounts information, and how to litigate in the courts. On June 28, 2013, the Supreme People’s Court officially launched the China Judgment Online, which enables judicial documents to be served to the parties and shared with the public. At present, the China Judgment Online covers more than 200 countries and regions and has become the largest judicial documents network in the world. At 18:00 on August 30, 2020, the total number of documents on China Judgment Online exceeded 100 million, with a total of 48 billion visits, which shows the judicial confidence of Chinese courts and judges. On November 13, 2014, China Judicial Process Information Online was officially launched. In September 2018, China Judicial Process Information Online was upgraded. Since the case is accepted, the parties and their litigation agents can log in at any time to inquire and download the progress with valid certificate numbers and know the details at various stages, such as filing, hearing, extension of trial period and appeal. In September 2016, the Supreme People’s Court launched the China Court Trial Online. It covers four levels of courts in an all-around way, presenting a large number of live court trials in a comprehensive and in-depth way on the new media platform so that the public can quickly and conveniently know the whole trial process. By the end of 2020, more than 11.04 million court trials had been broadcast live on the China Court Trial Online, with more than 31.9 billion visits. The Supreme People’s Court has opened a platform for the publication and inquiry of the Defaulter Blacklist, has set up a platform for exposing defaulters with the help of microblog and WeChat platforms, and has jointly launched the Blacklist with the People’s Network. By the end of 2020, China Enforcement Information Online had published more than 9.68 million pieces of information on enforcement cases, more than 6.33 million defaulters were being disclosed, 246 million web visits were made, and more than 20.62 million enforcement case conclusions were released.

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Second, it promotes the reform of the criminal procedure system. Promoting the reform of the litigation system with a focus on trial is a major reform plan made by the Fourth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The people’s courts have used the new generation of information technology, such as the Internet, big data and cloud computing, to reduce disputes over the criteria of evidence in investigation, prosecution and trial. It also promotes the reform of the criminal procedure system with a focus on trials. The Shanghai Higher People’s Court has studied and formulated the Shanghai intelligent assistant case handling system for criminal cases, which has achieved phased results. On May 3, 2017, the Shanghai intelligent assistant criminal case handling system was put into trial operation in 25 pilot units and achieved initial results. For example, the software system connects with the public security, procuratorate and court, forming a new case handling process, initially realizing the online operation, interconnection and information sharing of criminal cases. It formulates evidence criteria, rules and guidelines and initially solves the problems of inconsistent application of evidence criteria in criminal cases and irregular handling of cases. The functions of evidence verification, examination and judgment of the system can discover and judge the defects in evidence and the contradictions between evidence in time and prevent further mistakes. The system provides integrated and efficient intelligent assistance for case handlers and promotes the improvement of case handling quality and efficiency. At present, the experience and practice of Shanghai’s intelligent assistant case handling system for criminal cases has been piloted in other provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly governed by the Central Government, and evidence criteria guidance would be formulated with the public security, procuratorate and other departments, focusing on solving evidence criteria guidelines at all stages of criminal proceedings with the help of big data to standardize investigation, prosecution and trial and to prevent the occurrence of unjust, false and wrong cases handling. Third, it establishes a working mechanism to prevent interference in judicial activities. More than 3,500 courts and more than 10,000 tribunals tribunals nationwide have all used online case handling, with all procedures traceable online. The case information involved is registered into the system comprehensively, truly and accurately for future case reference and discipline inspection and supervision. A special database is set for those who might have the intention to intervene in the case handling process to deter those concerned and further fight judicial corruption. Fourth, it promotes the reform of the property management system of the people’s courts. To strengthen the management of funds involved in cases, the higher people’s courts in Shandong, Zhejiang, Beijing and Guangxi have innovatively developed a management system. This is a business and financial integration system with funds as the main object, which is applicable to all funds involved in the case, including enforcement funds, litigation mediation funds, deposits, etc. It covers multiple functions, such as fund claims, payment application approval, overdue approval and alarm, data analysis and statistics, and achieves the whole process coverage of fund management and business processing. Taking Shandong Provincial Higher People’s Court as an example, after the system was put in use in 176 courts in Shandong

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Province, more than 300,000 payments were paid per year, the total amount reached more than 50 billion yuan, the workload was reduced by more than 90%, and the average payment time was less than 20 days, which effectively realized the management of “one case, one account”. It greatly improves the satisfaction of the parties and the quality and efficiency of the court’s work. Fifth, to support the scientific decision-making of team management and reform, the Supreme People’s Court has developed a national court personnel information management system. The system shows the network transmission and real-time update of personnel information of nationwide courts and supports the classified and stratified management of judges, judicial staff and people’s jurors. At present, a central database has been formed. The personnel information is shared with the big data management and service platform and the trial business system to provide basic personnel information services and realize personnel performance evaluation. V.

Serving Economic and Social Governance

The construction and application of smart courts not only promotes the modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity but also strongly supports the continuous improvement of the national business environment. On October 24, 2019, the World Bank released the 2020 Business Environment Report. After rising 32 places in 2019, China’s global business convenience ranking rose 15 spots in 2020, as the 31st among 190 economies in the world, and the “judicial process quality index” with court informatization as the main indicator ranked in the first group in 2017 and 2018 and ranked first in the world in 2019. It has made China one of the top ten economies in the world with the greatest improvement in the business environment. The various cases handled by the people’s courts are indicators of the country’s economic development and social production and life. Based on the case information and judgment documents gathered by the people’s courts, more than 860 analysis reports have been completed by the end of 2020, focusing on serving the people, serving social governance and serving legislation. It also aimed to support the central government’s decision-making, to serve the modern management of courts and to enhance the people’s awareness of the rule of law. As of June 30, 2017, the Supreme People’s Court has issued 123 judicial reform documents alone or in conjunction with other relevant central departments. The special research team has studied and formed the Data Report on the Effectiveness of Judicial Reform of the People’s Courts on the basis of collecting and judging various data and combining them with the outcomes of court reform to comprehensively, accurately and objectively present the progress and effectiveness of the judicial system reform of the people’s courts and to respond to the widespread concerns of the people and all sectors of society. The report shows that after the reform of the registration system, the total number of cases accepted by courts across the country has increased rapidly, and courts around the country have widely used information technology to significantly improve the efficiency and convenience of filing cases. The establishment of intellectual property courts and the increasing number of cases received show that the state has strengthened the judicial protection of intellectual property rights. In 2016, the number of cases concluded by courts nationwide by

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applying special procedures was 7.05 times that of 2015, demonstrating the effectiveness of the mechanism of allocating cases according to their complexity and promoting the unity of judicial justice and efficiency. For example, in view of credit card fraud cases, the special research team conducted case data analysis and formed the report on credit card fraud. The report shows that the number of credit card fraud cases in China is slowly rising, mostly on the southeast coast and northeast region. More than half of the defendants are unemployed, more than 80% of the cases are fraudulent means of malicious overdraft, and the amount involved is normally more than 10,000 yuan and less than 50,000 yuan, suggesting that financial institutions should strengthen the supervision of card issuance audits and credit amount management processes. For example, on October 28, 2018, the bus crash in Wanzhou, Chongqing, caused by the conflict between drivers and passengers shocked all sectors of society. The special research team responded quickly and released the analysis report on criminal cases caused by the conflict between drivers and passengers to the public 21 days after the incident. The relevant analysis and research results played a role in the scientific formulation and timely promulgation of the Guiding Opinions on Punishing Illegal and Criminal Acts of Endangering Safe Driving of Public Transport Vehicles in January 2019, which made it clear that seven situations, such as armed attacks on drivers, could not be applied to probation. The act of seizing the steering wheel should be determined as the crime of endangering public safety by dangerous means. For example, in June 2019, there were a number of injuries caused by falling objects, and how to protect the safety of people in this case has aroused widespread concern in society. The special research team paid close attention to it and took it as a starting point to complete the analysis of cases of falling objects injuring people. After the research results were submitted, the Party Central Committee attached great importance to them, which effectively promoted the formulation and improvement of relevant laws on injuries caused by falling objects. The special research team also analyzed divorce cases and formed a report on divorce disputes. The analysis shows that 73.4% of divorce disputes in China are filed by women, which shows that women’s awareness of marriage freedom and independence has been further strengthened; 2 ~ 3 years after marriage is the high incidence period of marital breakdown, which is quite different from what people had assumed. In less than 10% of cases, both husbands and wives want to divorce; 14.86% of divorce cases are due to domestic violence, which shows that the protection of women’s rights and interests in the family still has a long way to go. VI.

Contribution of China’s Judicial Wisdom

The remarkable achievements made in the construction of China’s smart courts have also won unanimous praise from foreign counterparts, provided China’s plan for the world’s rule of law civilization in the information age and contributed China’s wisdom. First, all countries in the world attach great importance to online litigation reform. Chinese courts serve the people extensively through various ways and channels, such as litigation service networks, electronic litigation platforms, Internet courts

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and mobile WeCourts, which provide great convenience for the people involved in litigation and have won high praise from international counterparts and the press. Especially in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Chinese courts ensured that judicial activities such as filing, evidence exchange, trial and service would not stop or close through online litigation services, which has been widely reported by many foreign media. Agence France-Presse, one of the world’s four major news agencies, reported that China has achieved judicial functions through social software and pointed out that China has become a world’s top innovator in online litigation. Second, all countries in the world pay attention to promoting fair justice through judicial transparency. Chinese courts have established unified national platforms for the disclosure of trial procedures, live court hearings, judgment documents and enforcement information and have built the world’s largest database of judgment documents. The achievements have been widely praised by the world’s counterparts in that they promote social fairness and justice and enhance judicial credibility to the greatest extent. In March 2020, the Harvard Law Review published an article regarding promoting information disclosure in Chinese courts with suggestions from the American perspective. The commentary highly affirms the judicial transparency reform of Chinese courts in recent years, which is represented by the openness of trial processes, judgment documents and enforcement information, and puts forward reform suggestions for American justice from the perspective of jurisprudence and the successful practice of judicial transparency in China. Third, all countries in the world are actively using information technology to improve trial efficiency. Through information systems such as online trials and intelligent assistance, Chinese courts have changed the traditional mode of case trials, vigorously promoting the application of case analysis, court voice recognition, the assisted generation of judgment documents, the intelligent push of laws and similar cases, and other judicial big data and artificial intelligence means to assist judges in handling cases and improve trial efficiency. The achievements have left a deep impression on their counterparts around the world. Many visiting judges from all over the world believe that “Internet + Justice” is one of the greatest achievements made by Chinese courts. The informatization development and application of Chinese courts have reached the world’s leading level, providing a reference and replicable model for courts in other countries. The chief justices of many countries have put forward the urgent need to transplant and replicate the smart courts trial and case handling system. Fourth, many countries strive to solve enforcement problems by means of information technology. Chinese courts use a unified enforcement process information management system to standardize enforcement activities, use the enforcement investigation and control system to facilitate the investigation and control of the property to be enforced, use the punishment system to restrict the extravagant spending of defaulters, use the enforcement command system to supervise and coordinate the enforcement work of people’s courts at all levels, and use the enforcement information disclosure system to promote transparent enforcement. These comprehensive innovative measures have won high recognition from world counterparts. At the

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World Enforcement Conference held in Shanghai in January 2019, delegates from many countries said that the conference had shocked and inspired them to learn about the unprecedented enforcement methods, believing that few other countries could combine informatization and enforcement so perfectly. VII.

Important Practice of System Engineering

The national smart courts system project has overcome the key problems of system coordination, accurate data convergence, comprehensive intelligent service and system integration and linkage, developed and completed dozens of key information systems, popularized nine types of integrated backbone business systems throughout the country, and connected more than 3500 courts, more than 10,000 dispatched tribunals and more than 3800 application systems. It has achieved collaboration with 4029 departments in 30 industries, and many of the achievements created and applied are the theory, method and technological innovation of complex information system engineering. First, the courts have proposed and applied the top-level design and quality improvement method of smart courts complex information systems based on information relationships and information measurements. The courts have put forward a set of theories and methods supporting the planning, design, evaluation and application of complex information systems to solve the difficulties in the overall coordination, iterative upgrading, comprehensive evaluation and continuous improvement of complex information system construction. The theories and methods effectively support the iterative improvement of system capability. The first design and method is to create a six-tuple model of information and a nine-category measurement system. Based on set theory and other basic mathematical theories, the world’s first sixtuple information model reveals the basic nature of information. The construction of nine types of information measurement systems solves the basic theoretical problems of lack of model, less measurement and difficult calculation in the construction of complex information systems. The second one is to propose a system planning method based on information measurement. According to the information model and measurement theory, the evergreen ecological development model of smart courts information systems is proposed, and the basic structure, evolution form, construction task and development route of national smart courts information infrastructure, business application, data resources, information security and operation and maintenance system are scientifically planned, which effectively solves the problem of overall coordination of national smart courts information systems. The third is to innovate the overall design method based on information relationships. It innovatively proposes 9 categories and 30 subcategories of information relationships among all information system elements, designs and forms a system element relationship matrix supporting arbitrary expansion, supports the analysis of any combination of various system elements such as infrastructure, application, data, security, operation and maintenance, and their work business, and provides effective support for solving the problem of iterative upgrading of the national smart courts information system. The fourth one is to create a “trinity” quality and efficiency operation and maintenance system. Based on information measurement, a quality and efficiency

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evaluation index system covering 783 indicators has been established, and a visual quality and efficiency operation and maintenance management platform has been developed, which can monitor more than 27,100 views in real time. The operation and maintenance of complex information systems have been effectively upgraded. Second, the courts have proposed a method of real-time aggregation and management of massive, diverse and heterogeneous judicial data. The courts have created a data quality control method covering the whole process of production, aggregation and application, built the world’s largest high-confidence judicial trial information database and formed a wealth of judicial big data research and application results to solve the problem of real-time aggregation and quality verification of business data of more than 3500 courts and thousands of application systems. On the one hand, a unified data space model and automatic real-time data aggregation technology are created. Based on this, a unified data space model has been established that integrates basic information of cases, parties, judges, trial organizations, judgment content, case procedures and others to realize the automatic real-time aggregation of 70,000 to 80,000 case information per day and uploaded every 5 min in more than 3500 courts nationwide, with a cumulative number of cases exceeding 218 million. It has become the largest judicial information resource bank in the world. On the other hand, we create a real-time verification technology for all elements of massive judicial data. Based on the information model and measurement, the courts have established the evaluation indicator model and 237 quality inspection indicator systems and developed automatic data verification technology tools to realize the automatic verification of the full amount of judicial data resources of 6 categories and 62 subcategories in nationwide courts every day. Next, we build a whole process control method of data quality, in which a supervised data aggregation mechanism is used to solve the quality problem of the data set, and a data verification algorithm is used to solve the quality problem of the data item. The method supports the automatic generation of data quality reports, and the confidence level of total data quality can be stabilized at 99% for a long time. Finally, we create a new mode of all-around judicial big data service. It is a comprehensive judicial big data application model for the people, trial and enforcement, judicial management and national governance, and it can automatically generate 7.75 million judicial statistical reports involving 2.09 billion information items every year so that Chinese courts no longer use manual statistics. More than 860 special reports have been formed to provide important support for the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. Third, we apply the multiformat judicial artificial intelligence technology driven by the comprehensive judicial knowledge engine. The courts have created a comprehensive judicial knowledge engine to build a multiformat judicial artificial intelligence system to satisfy the urgent need for the deep integration of judicial work and artificial intelligence and the phenomenon of low-level duplication of construction in nationwide courts. The engine extensively supports nationwide judges in handling cases, supports the analysis of social governance and assists in decision-making. A comprehensive judicial knowledge engine based on case data and supported by personnel, government affairs and economic and social data has been created. An

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automatic knowledge extraction and comprehensive application mechanism has also been established to form a knowledge engine with a total of more than 600 million items and a capacity of 17 TB, which supports the integrated application of artificial intelligence technologies such as voice, image, video and text in the judicial field. Moreover, a mapping model between judicial big data and national governance capacity is created to better serve economic and social governance. Finally, we innovate and build a multiformat judicial artificial intelligence system. Based on the comprehensive judicial knowledge engine, it supports the automatic classification of electronic files with an accuracy of not less than 90%. With voice cloud construction technology, it supports the sharing of case models and voiceprint models, realizing the automatic recognition of court voice with an accuracy of not less than 90% and improving the efficiency of court trial by 20%-30%. We realize the automatic identification of court violations with integrated video information multiframe time sequence technology. Due to the long text generation technology, we realize the automatic generation of judicial documents with an accuracy rate of not less than 90% and reduce the routine workload of judges by more than 30%. Fourth, a smart courts information system integration and coordination framework has been established. A number of backbone business systems have been developed and promoted to connect with many other application systems of courts throughout the country and to achieve coordination with multiple departments. We have developed and promoted 27 backbone application systems covering the main business of the courts in 9 categories, including the online case handling system based on electronic case files, the enforcement information system with internal and external coordination, the litigation service system and the unified judicial open platform. All these lay a solid foundation for the systems to be expanded and extended to courts nationwide. Furthermore, the courts have formulated a cross-business, crossnetwork, cross-level, cross-departmental linkage mechanism. It takes the big data platform as the center to realize the sharing and exchange of all kinds of crossbusiness applications. It uses isolation and switching technology to support crossnetwork security interactions. Based on the dynamic generation technology of data services, it supports the sharing of cross-departmental information inside and outside the court on demand. Another measure is to innovate and realize the integration of smart courts information systems. It connects more than 3800 application systems of courts nationwide, realizes coordination with 4029 departments of 30 industries, and comprehensively realizes the integrated application of online case handling, enforcement, litigation services and judicial transparency.

1.7 Development Direction Promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity is a powerful guarantee for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and a major task for building a strong socialist modernized country. As an important part of the national governance system and governance capacity, the significance of the

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modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity is self-evident. Building smart courts in an all-around way is an important measure and the only way to promote the modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity by means of modern information technology such as artificial intelligence, the Internet and big data, which has broad prospects for development. At the same time, modernization is not only the grand goal we strive to pursue but also the development stage of continuous dynamic optimization. No matter what stage and level the smart courts develop to, we should always follow the comprehensive law-based governance, work for the justice of the people and fair justice, actively embrace the achievements of advanced information technology, promote the integration of judicial law, system reform and technological change, and constantly meet the growing needs of the people, court staff and society. I.

Intelligence Trend

With the development and application of a number of judicial artificial intelligence products, such as litigation service guidance, file automatic cataloging, document assistant generation, court speech recognition, similar case reference and court intelligent inspection, Chinese courts have taken a solid and gratifying step in the application of all-around intelligent services. However, at present, compared with the needs of the people and court staff, there is still much room for improvement, for which the rising artificial intelligence technology provides a strong driving force. Chinese character recognition, speech recognition and visual recognition are important parts of the rapidly developing artificial intelligence, and a variety of intelligent products currently widely used in Chinese courts benefit from the innovative achievements of these technologies. With the rapid development of general recognition technology and its further integration with specific application scenarios such as courts, the text, language and image recognition capabilities will be greatly improved, providing more accurate intelligent support for relevant judicial activities. Language processing is a key technology for computer-aided understanding of human languages, and it is also a branch of artificial intelligence. As far as judicial artificial intelligence is concerned, the key lies in the accuracy, comprehensiveness and logicality of the information system in understanding the facts of the case, the focus of controversy, the application of law and the wording of judgment. Therefore, with the help of the development of language processing technology, it is a key way to fundamentally improve the intelligent assistant ability for case hearing, collegial hearing, and other litigation services by breaking through the recognition technology for legal language processing. An expert system is an information system that simulates human experts to solve problems, and it is also the most important and active development direction in the field of artificial intelligence. Various kinds of knowledge representation and reasoning mechanisms are integrated and developed into a comprehensive knowledge database and service engine for trial and execution based on the characteristics of various cases, the judicial knowledge base for criminal, civil, administrative and enforcement cases, and the self-organization reasoning mechanism of judgment. By linking it with information systems such as litigation service, trial and enforcement,

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trial supervision and judicial management, we can mobilize all aspects of intelligent service capabilities intensively and efficiently. II.

Incorporation Trend

A number of backbone information systems throughout the country, such as the specific court network, the four major judicial open platforms, the enforcement information system, the people’s court mediation platform, China Mobile’s WeCourt and the people’s court’s big data management and service platform, have promoted the level of integration of smart courts information systems and brought great convenience to the people and court staff. However, the court business is all-inclusive, and the service objects are widely distributed. Only by further supporting the unification, interconnection, information sharing and coordination of various business application systems can the advantages of informatization be better brought into play. The vigorous development of information systems engineering technology has brought important opportunities for the integration of information systems of smart courts. As long as comprehensive measures are taken for key links, smart courts will be able to achieve a higher level of integration. Structure design is the key technology to strengthen the integration of information systems from the source, including the research, analysis and description of complex information systems from multiple perspectives. After 20 years of exploration, a set of methods, tools and views in this area have been formed. The urgent task is to be concise and practical. The overall design method based on information relationships, which is formed in the construction of national smart courts, can fully integrate and display the business, system and data elements in the system design. When it is combined with the constantly expanding and improving technical standard system, it will fundamentally optimize and improve the system blueprint of smart courts. Data are the lifeline of information systems. With the rapid development of judicial artificial intelligence, judicial knowledge based on judicial big data learning will surely become an important source of intelligent operation of smart courts. Therefore, to a large extent, the integration of data and knowledge will also become an important measure to promote the integrated development of smart courts information systems. It is of great significance to improve the big data management and service platform of the people’s courts, to build the data centers of the higher people’s courts and some intermediate people’s courts, to build a comprehensive trial and enforcement knowledge base and knowledge service engine from a high starting point and to form an integrated and distributed big data management and knowledge service platform for the people’s courts to promote the integration of smart courts information systems. The value of an information system is to meet the various information needs of users. These information needs can be quantified and evaluated by specific information measurement. Comprehensive analysis of various quantitative indicators and the balance between them is the main basis for improving the overall value of the system and promoting integration. Therefore, the national higher people’s courts and some qualified intermediate people’s courts should popularize quality-efficiency operation and maintenance systems, achieve quantitative and closed-cycle control in the design, construction and application, and actively explore the integration of new technologies and achievements through the smart courts laboratory. This will inevitably create new prospects for the integrated development of smart courts.

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III.

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Ubiquitous Trend

A number of online litigation service systems, such as litigation service networks, 12,368 litigation service hotlines, Internet courts and China Mobile WeCourt, have provided people with accessible online and remote litigation services, and many mobile office case handling systems built by courts have also widely supported the work of court staff outside the court. However, some of the applications are affected by environmental conditions, and it is difficult to provide users with high-quality ideal services. The 5G mobile communication infrastructure and related application industries being vigorously constructed throughout the country have brought broad prospects for the development of smart courts to achieve high-quality ubiquitous information services and will reduce the burden of people’s litigation and reduce the workload of court staff. Compared with 4G, 5G mobile communication bandwidth has increased by more than 100 times, and many business applications, which cannot be extended from fixed terminals to mobile terminals due to the transmission capacity limit, can now break through constraints and extend to various types of mobile terminals, such as large-capacity file transmission and video download. Services such as large-scale case retrieval and intelligent reference will not be limited by bandwidth, which will undoubtedly enable all services of smart courts to be equipped with mobile support capabilities. As 5G spectrum resources are being used more efficiently, the ability and level of network management can be further improved, and the quality of network communication can be more guaranteed. Smart courts online trial, online mediation, online video interaction and other services that are vulnerable to bandwidth limits will be able to maintain stable and high-quality performance, which will inevitably better meet the requirements of stability, standardization and high reliability of judicial services. In addition to supporting business data communication, 5G’s expanded communication capacity can be used for complete channel encryption processing to facilitate the expansion of internal sensitive data and business to mobile terminals and to better support the Intranet of mobile terminals. It will certainly promote the ubiquitous application of the internal business of smart courts. On the basis of 5G’s enhanced communication capacity, many existing businesses and services can be intelligently optimized without bandwidth constraints to better meet the different needs of specific users for various applications. Litigation service platforms such as China Mobile WeCourt and electronic courts can also be greatly enhanced by broadening intelligent service functions. Powerful mobile communication technology can efficiently manage heterogeneous mobile networks and become the hub of integrating a variety of fixed and mobile network resources. As a result, the focus of the integration of smart courts will shift from PC to mobile terminals, providing users with more abundant, more innovative and more convenient use of judicial services. IV.

Integration Trend

The commutation and parole information processing system and criminal case evidence chain guidance system have promoted information circulation and sharing

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among law enforcement and legal departments. Information systems such as road traffic dispute integration processing platforms, online evidence preservation, enforcement investigation and control, joint punishment for credit default and judicial auction have also promoted the coordination between trial and enforcement and society. However, these cross-sectoral integration mechanisms and channels are still limited to a single business or local scope, far from achieving a wide range of integration and sharing. One of the main reasons is that a cross-sectoral mutual trust mechanism and credible base platform have not yet been built. The rapid development of blockchain technology has brought a solution to this problem, propelled the court’s trial and enforcement to better integrate into economic and social operations, and more efficiently safeguarded social fairness and justice. As a distributed shared database, blockchain technically supports the on-demand sharing of data resources in all industries, from which people’s courts can not only obtain what they need to better find facts and laws but also provide necessary legal services and guarantees for all sectors of society in a more targeted manner. As the guardian of social fairness and justice, the people’s court has very strict requirements on the objectivity, authority and nontampering of data. It is an inevitable requirement for fair justice to introduce the most advanced data storage methods and alliances by using blockchain to ensure the authenticity of the whole cycle of judicial big data, which is also the main reason why the court system became the earliest government department to apply blockchain. The more diversified and changeable social production and economic activities are, the more likely contradictions and disputes will arise and eventually enter the court. Smart courts advocate, join and jointly maintain the blockchain alliance with economic departments and social organizations, which can help keep the whole process of important activities at a lower cost and ensure that all kinds of activities are carried out in accordance with the law and abide by legal constraints in all links and can be traced. It can also guarantee the voluntary performance of legal obligations under the conditions agreed upon by the parties, thus minimizing judicial costs and improving the efficiency of the overall operation of society. Cross-border integration based on blockchain can technically support fully open and unforgeable operation processes and entity data and build a new smart court information system on this basis, which can not only provide an efficient and convenient trial and enforcement platform for court staff but also provide a better supervisor to ensure honest justice. It is also more conducive to the supervision of people and all sectors of society at any time to improve the credibility of the judiciary. V.

Convenience Trend

With the comprehensive and in-depth integration of smart courts and various business of courts, the daily work of the majority of court staff has become increasingly inseparable from the information system, and many litigants and lawyers have also enjoyed great convenience from the court information system, which reflects the great role and significance of the construction and application of smart courts. However, many court information systems still have some unsatisfactory problems; for example, the operation is not simple enough, the function is not complete, and the performance

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is not stable enough, which often causes difficulties for users. In fact, some people and court staff may not be familiar with and will not apply some court information systems that could have brought them great convenience. The reasons vary: there are technical factors such as insufficient infrastructure support capacity as well as problems such as inadequate promotion and operation training. The smart courts information system will become more convenient and offer users high-quality and efficient information services through a series of scientific methods of optimization and upgrading of information systems engineering. Through the integration of the smart courts information system and the simplification of the user’s interface, different users can avoid complicated and confused window displays and directly and accurately click to the desired functions quickly and easily, which realizes one-stop and one-network operations. Through detailed and scientific overall design, we can break through the functional barriers and data barriers between networks and business, support efficient and concise business processes, and facilitate all kinds of users to get what they want and need. We use strict and standardized test and evaluation procedures to establish a test environment and a set of test samples that meet the requirements of the construction of smart courts, thus ensuring that the research and development links of various systems, such as infrastructure, business applications, data resources and security, meet the quality requirements. We ensure that applications pass the test and evaluation and are able to withstand routine applications and reasonable and extreme conditions, which greatly improves the stability and reliability of the information system. We always regard information security and privacy protection as the necessary prerequisite for the operation and service of the smart courts information system, adopt advanced network security technology dynamically and timely to support the protection of secret, sensitive information and personal information and ensure that the interests of the state and users are not infringed upon, which helps enhance the sense of security for the smart court users. We strengthen publicity and promotion so that the people and court staff can timely understand and learn the latest progress of the smart courts, especially the system application methods closely related to user needs. Through advanced online scenario training and navigation assistance, smart courts enable users to familiarize themselves with the system quickly and jointly promote the sustainable and healthy development of smart courts.

Chapter 2

Construction Needs

To build smart courts, demand analysis should be taken as a prerequisite for all work. A large number of engineering practices have proven that the more comprehensive, specific and thorough the demand analysis, the more targeted and effective the system planning, design, development and construction will be. If the demand analysis is not sufficient and clear, the research and development will be prone to confusion or even failure halfway. Therefore, careful and sufficient need analysis is of great significance to the construction of the whole system or the development of many important systems. Generally, business needs are the origin and starting point of the whole construction. On the other hand, people tend to ignore other important needs, such as application systems, basic support, and comprehensive support, which will inevitably lead to incomplete or even different needs analysis, which is the key issue that must be given more attention. System needs are the implementation corresponding to specific business requirements. In fact, as for many business needs in litigation services, trial and enforcement, judicial management and other aspects, many existing systems can meet the needs in the early stage of smart courts construction or can meet the needs through the integration of existing systems. Additionally, there might be difficulties in meeting some needs at the current level of technology. These different situations and their complex combinations will affect the implementation requirements of specific application systems. Detailed issues in this regard should be clarified as far as possible in the needs analysis stage and should not be delayed to the design and implementation stage; otherwise, it will inevitably lead to waste of resources or failure to achieve the construction objectives. Support needs include the function and performance needs of computing services, data storage, communication transmission, display control, etc. Generally, they are not directly related to business needs but are crucial to the realization of application systems. Support needs are specific for network security, operation and maintenance and human resources support in the process of information system development, integration, deployment and application, which are related to the construction and © People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1_2

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application effectiveness of the whole cycle of the smart courts information system and are closely related to business, system and support needs. Support demands need to be developed together with the consideration of all relevant factors.

2.1 Business Needs The business demands of smart courts include the types, modes, processes and all other relevant demands of various applications and services provided to the people, court staff and other users. Business demand analysis first needs to distinguish specific service objects. Litigants, lawyers and the general public will have completely different application needs. Trial judges, enforcement staff and judicial administrators also have different needs. Meanwhile, the same user may have different business needs at different times or scenarios, so comprehensive and accurate user analysis with a detailed and specific perspective is inevitable. The main part of business demand analysis is to sort out and describe business activities, operation processes and information interaction comprehensively, thoroughly and concretely. Business activities are the specific decomposition of an overall work content. Each business activity is operated and implemented by a specific user. As many of the same activities may have different customary names and different activities may be confused by some users, it is very important to strictly and accurately identify and define different business activities. The operation process is an operation procedure formed by a series of business activities in series or in parallel. It is a general method to clarify the operation process by graphically representing the sequence and driving mechanism of all activities and should be fully used in practice. Information interaction reflects the internal operation logic of the business organization system and plays an important role in sorting out, clarifying and verifying the accuracy, rationality and feasibility of business needs. However, it may be neglected or omitted in business needs analysis. Carelessness should be avoided by managers in this regard. Figure 2.1 is a typical business activity flow chart, which reflects the working mechanism among users, business activities, operation processes and information interactions. System development failures occur due to poor user experience. Therefore, business needs analysis should also pay special attention to user experience needs in terms of application occasions, operation interface, time response, usage habits, etc., and form clear and strict indicators as far as possible. Its quality not only affects the subsequent design and development process but also determines whether it can be realized technically. In theory, whether there is an information system or not or whether there is a need to develop an information system, business needs always exist, so there is no strict correspondence between business demands and system structure and technical implementation content. As a result, R&D personnel may regard business demand analysis as the unilateral responsibility of business departments, which is actually

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Fig. 2.1 Business Demands

one-sided and unreasonable. If not combined with specific technology, without the ability of technology implementation, and without the use of standardized technical methods, it would be difficult to guide the follow-up work. Therefore, the technology R&D department should shoulder an important responsibility in business demand

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analysis and take the main responsibility to organize, inspire and guide the business department to finish high-quality business demand analysis. I.

Demand for Convenient Services

Litigation service is the main business of the people’s court for the public, especially the people involved in legal and litigation consultation, prelitigation mediation, filing, prelitigation preservation and appraisal, case handling process and case inquiry, complaints and petitions through letters and visits, etc. As the general public in litigation for the first time often knows little about the work of the court, it is the basic requirement of litigation service to provide as convenient, fast and efficient judicial service as possible for the people. Legal and litigation consultation is the most desirable judicial service when people encounter very difficult disputes in their daily life. In addition to seeking support from legal service institutions, people who want to solve problems through litigation will contact the court directly to learn the specific provisions of relevant laws on specific disputes, the court’s judgments in similar cases in the past, the general procedures for filing cases, and the time period for trial. There are also many people who want to know more about the locations, office hours, organizational structure and service windows of the court. These are the specific information for people’s courts at all levels to provide to reduce unnecessary time consumption and travel of the people. Prelitigation mediation is an important work for the people’s court. In response to various disputes, trade unions, women’s federations, transportation, medical and other departments, as well as lawyers and scholars, mediators, arbitrators, and notaries, should be introduced to participate in mediation and adopt various ways to solve disputes through means such as mediation and reconciliation, arbitration, administrative reconsideration, administrative adjudication, judicial confirmation and so on. Efforts should be made to resolve various social disputes before they go through litigation procedures. Filing cases is the first step for courts at all levels to formally accept cases and enter into substantive judicial procedures and is the key node of litigation services. According to the requirements of the reform of the registration system for filing cases, for all cases that meet the requirements of filing cases, the parties and litigation agents should be able to complete the procedures of filing cases and paying litigation fees as conveniently and quickly as possible. According to the cases’ specific conditions, they should be channeled to different tribunals for further handling to create a good foundation for the follow-up process as soon as possible. Prelitigation preservation and appraisal is a process in which relevant insurance institutions are introduced to provide property guarantees or the parties involved in some cases, and the relevant property involved in litigation is protected or frozen based on the guarantee certificate. If necessary, the court should also introduce institutions with specific qualifications to help identify the status and value of the property involved in the lawsuit to facilitate property preservation. In the process of handling cases, the parties or litigation agents always need to communicate with the case handling department, and many parties hope to be able to keep abreast of the case handling process in a timely manner. Therefore, the case

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handling process and case inquiry are the key work of the people’s courts to provide services for the people involved in litigation. It is necessary to inform the parties or litigation agents all the matters they should know in the shortest time, and by communicating with them, judges can understand the specific needs of the people involved in litigation and respond to them as soon as possible in accordance with the law. It is also necessary to provide file access and evidence exchange services for all parties involved to facilitate the efficient handling of cases. Complaints and petitions through letters and visits are judicial services provided to some people who have different opinions about the final judgment or about the court work, and in this kind of case, court staff are required to be rational and calm to collect, properly manage, distribute and report complaint materials. It is necessary to fully coordinate and share petition materials and information between superiors and subordinates and relevant courts to avoid any inconsistencies in handling them. The users of convenience service are from all walks of life, and the users’ proficiency and information application skills vary greatly, so a concise operation interface and timely response service functions should be provided as far as possible to effectively improve the users’ satisfaction. II.

Needs for Trial Support

In fact, the whole trial process starts from the filing of a case and goes through several nodes, such as case circulation, collection and analysis of litigation materials, trial, collegial discussion, judgment, issuance of documents, service and archiving. For major or special cases, it is also necessary to submit them to the adjudication committee for special study. To assist the trial, information needs to fully support online processing, to support tracing of the whole process and to monitor the whole process in real time. Through case reference and other ways, information technology should assist judges in improving the reasoning level of judgment documents and meeting the needs of judges to go out handling cases. In the process of filing a case, the judges need to verify the identity of the parties, input the information of the parties and the case, judge whether there are repeated and false lawsuits, upload the filing materials, achieve the synchronous generation of electronic case files, produce the corresponding legal documents and send them to the parties. As the number of cases increases greatly, it is particularly necessary to assist the judges concerned to minimize the simple and repetitive work and handle the filing matters quickly and efficiently. After a case is filed and accepted, it is necessary to allocate the case to the court’s specific tribunal according to the cause of the case. At the same time, in accordance with the requirements of judicial reform, the complexity of the cases should be distinguished according to the circumstances of the case; simple cases are sent to go through the fast trial channel, and complex cases go through the fine trial channel. Finally, cases should be assigned to specific judges in accordance with the relevant provisions. The collection and analysis of litigation materials is important in the trial process. The judges need to fully interact with the parties and litigation agents, collect and properly manage all kinds of litigation materials, and analyze and judge the integrity,

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authenticity, legitimacy and relevance of the materials. Because many people may be involved in litigation and many cases may be tried by the judge at the same time, the use of information technology to exchange, circulate and manage litigation materials and the realization of automatic cataloging and online circulation of electronic case files have become important requirements for trial assistance. Trial is the key part of the process. According to the requirements of judicial reform to promote substantive trial, it is necessary to provide good auxiliary support to help the participants present evidence and express their opinions in court and to help the judges determine facts and form the judgment results in court. According to the requirements of judicial transparency, it is also necessary to have means to support the live broadcast of court trials. The collegial discussion is an effective guarantee for fair adjudication. It is necessary to provide judges with access to litigation materials, legal provisions and similar cases, as well as guarantee conditions for expressing their opinions. The adjudication committee is a more authoritative and formal form of deliberation of the cases with a larger panel, so it also needs similar and sound information technology support. Judging according to law is the most important part of the trial process. Judges need to make final decisions based on case materials, relevant laws and similar cases, collegial discussion and adjudication committee discussion. With a large number of laws and regulations and precedent cases and the case information contained in the electronic case files, it is important to intelligently recommend the relevant legal provisions and the judgment results of similar cases to judges to ensure the legal judgment and unify the judgment criteria. Making and issuing documents is a necessary part to reflect the results of the judgment. It is necessary to make it convenient for judges to effectively use case materials and other documents for reference to prepare judgment documents, and at the same time, it is also necessary to provide auxiliary support such as document error correction and online publicity to improve the quality and effectiveness of trial work as much as possible. Document delivery service is a repetitive work throughout the trial and even the whole judicial activities, which requires the timely delivery of various legal documents to the addressee. Due to the different roles and positions of different addressees in litigation activities, their attitudes toward court documents are quite different, which often makes service a difficult job in the trial of cases. Therefore, it is necessary to make judges free from the trouble of “difficult service” through various ways so that they can concentrate on the trial and judgment of cases. In the archiving process, the court staff must check the integrity and compliance of all litigation materials and submit them for archiving according to relevant regulations. Archives departments need to inspect and confirm the archived materials and carry out long-term, standardized and unified management. With the increase in the number of cases, the acceleration of the pace of work and the frequency of outgoing exchanges, it is necessary to provide trial support such as remote document review, remote collegial discussion and approval for judges on business trips.

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Trial assistance directly serves the judges, assistant judges and clerks who undertake heavy trial tasks and is the main tool in their daily work, so it must have the ability of rapid response and precise service, and at the same time, it should do everything possible to avoid the visual fatigue caused by continuous work. III.

Needs for Assistant Enforcement

Enforcement is the act that the people’s court forces the enforce to fulfill the obligations stipulated in the legal documents according to the enforcement basis and the legal enforcement procedure. To achieve the goal of effectively tackling the difficulties in enforcement, the Supreme People’s Court actively promotes the standardized handling of enforcement cases, the four-level linkage of enforcement command, and the real-time disclosure of enforcement information to enhance the ability and role of enforcement in safeguarding the rights and interests of the enforcement applicant, safeguarding judicial authority, optimizing the business environment and promoting the construction of the social credit system. Enforcement cases need to go through the main process nodes, including filing, notification, property investigation and control, property disposal, case fund management, compulsory measures, punishment, enforcement case conclusion interview and case conclusion, and the enforcement staff should work in accordance with the 37 steps and time limits of the unified procedures. In the process of filing a case, the case-filing judge needs to verify the identity of the parties, examine the application materials submitted by the parties, examine whether the judgment of the enforcement basis is effective and whether there are repetitive enforcement cases, and make corresponding legal documents and serve them to the parties. After the court accepts the enforcement case, it needs to serve the enforcement notice, property report order, payment notice and other legal documents to the parties based on the law. In handling cases, court enforcement judges should first contact banks, public security, the Industry and Commerce Administration, the Taxation Administration, the Securities Regulatory Commission and other co-enforcement units to inquire, freeze and allocate all kinds of property such as bank deposits, financial management, Internet finance, movable and immovable property of the person subject to enforcement, making sure that the investigation and control measures are as comprehensive and accurate as possible. Property disposal is a measure taken by the people’s court to entrust a third-party organization to evaluate, auction and sell the seized property of the person subject to enforcement during the enforcement. It is necessary to determine the starting price of the auction of the property by means of legal inquiry and to auction or sell it in a legal auction agency registered at the Supreme People’s Court, and the process and results need to be made public in real time. The management of case funds is the management of the people’s court on the distribution of case funds in enforcement cases. It is necessary to cooperate with banks to open special accounts for each enforcement case to realize the management of “one case, one account”. Enforcement judges need to file an application for the issuance of

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case funds, which shall be transmitted to the corresponding bank after examination and approval according to the regulations and confirmation by the financial personnel, and the bank shall transfer the case funds to the parties and return the receipt to the court. In the process of enforcement, compulsory measures should be taken by the people’s court according to law against the person subject to enforcement or others who refuse to perform the obligations as stipulated in the effective legal documents or obstruct the enforcement, and compulsory measures such as compulsory summons, fines, detention, restriction of exit and other compulsory measures prescribed by law according to the seriousness of the circumstances should also be taken. If the person subject to enforcement fails to fulfill the payment obligations specified in the effective legal documents within the period specified in the notice of enforcement, the people’s court needs to take disciplinary measures for credit default, such as including him in the list of defaulters and restricting his extravagant spending, and jointly punish the defaulters in conjunction with other social departments to force the defaulters to automatically fulfill the obligations stipulated in the effective legal documents. Before the enforcement case is concluded through the procedure of terminating the enforcement case, the people’s court needs to conduct a final interview to inform the applicant of the enforcement case about the property investigation, the property situation of the person subject to enforcement, the basis for ending the enforcement procedure and the legal consequences, and listen to his opinions on ending the enforcement procedure. The interview report should be confirmed with the signatures of both the enforcement judge and the applicant of the enforcement case. The enforcement judge shall, within the legal time limit, enforce the cases that meet the conditions for enforcing the case, and upon the completion of enforcement, go through the procedures for concluding the case. The enforcement judge shall register the relevant information of the case, such as the subject matter amount of the case, the already enforced amount, the date of case conclusion and the method of conclusion, and serve the corresponding conclusion documents on the parties. The enforcement work has a strong procedural, normative and synergistic nature. It is necessary to build a unified command to realize the unified management, command and dispatch of the enforcement work of the four-level courts and gradually form a new pattern of enforcement command and dispatch work covering the whole country, integrating the upper and lower levels and internal and external linkages to ensure a timely response and strong guarantee. To serve the parties and effectively safeguard the interests of the parties, the people’s courts need to strengthen the supervision of the enforcement work with all sectors of society, promote the fairness of enforcement, and enhance the satisfaction of the parties. Due to the wide range of enforcement business collaboration and the high sensitivity of information involved, the use of various information measures to assist enforcement work requires strong concurrent processing capabilities and strict information security control and audit measures.

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IV.

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Needs for Service Management

Judicial management is the work carried out by the people’s court around the main business of trial and enforcement, including administrative management, trial management, personnel management, financial management, equipment management, logistics management and file management, and is the necessary condition to serve and guarantee the normal operation of the court. The administration maintains the daily operation of the organization. It is the basic requirement to improve the quality and effectiveness of court work to promote the implementation of management matters such as rules and regulations, decisionmaking deployment, conference discussion, document notification, report approval, difficult coordination, supervision and inspection by means of information technology and through online office. It is necessary to form a networked, procedural and platform-based administrative management model based on the internal organization, personnel roles, work authority and approval process of the court. Trial management is a unique management system and mechanism of the court that needs to use information technology to support the formulation of work rules, determine the responsibilities of departments, standardize the work procedures, trace the process of trial and enforcement, supervise judicial activities, and continuously modify procedures according to the characteristics of trial and enforcement. It provides an operational platform and data support for trial management and supervision staff to fully learn the overall situation of trial and enforcement and the progress of key cases. Personnel management provides organizational guarantees for the work of the court. Based on the organization of the court or department under its jurisdiction, it is necessary to use information technology to input, save, access and update the basic information of court staff resumes in a timely manner to support daily attendance, performance evaluation, selection and evaluation, recognition and reward, education and training and to support the information management of specific personnel groups such as judicial experts, judicial police and jurors. Financial management, equipment management and logistics management are the daily management that all sectors of society need to carry out. The advantages of the construction of smart courts and the use of information technology should be given full play to make these management activities share information and business linkages with the administrative management, trial management and personnel management mentioned above as much as possible to improve the quality and effectiveness of the comprehensive management of courts. Archive management is also an important work category that all sectors of society need to carry out. The management of court archives focuses on many judicial case files. Under the condition that the number of cases is increasing day by day and the storage space for archives is becoming a problem with time, it is necessary to focus on promoting the mode of electronic archives as the main part, paper archives as the supplement, and archives shared by four levels of courts. The new mode should facilitate and support filing, preservation, access, utilization, updating and backup

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of archives. Meanwhile, the related indexing of case archives and other business archives, such as office documents, should be actively promoted. Judicial management includes many aspects, and the information application is relatively complex, so we should provide a unified entrance interface as much as possible so that all kinds of users can easily enter into the corresponding application and reduce the inconvenience caused by repeated queries and logins. V.

Needs for judicial transparency

Judicial transparency is an inevitable requirement for adhering to the people-centered development concept, guaranteeing the people’s right to know, participate, express and supervise the work of the courts, standardizing judicial acts and enhancing judicial credibility. In accordance with the requirements of a series of documents issued by the Supreme People’s Court on promoting judicial transparency, courts at all levels need to actively promote the information disclosure of trial processes, live trials, judgment documents and enforcement and strive to build an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient judicial mechanism. In the process of a trial, it is necessary to publicize the information of the trial process and timely disclose the information of the procedure on due time and litigation documents of criminal, civil, administrative and state compensation cases to the parties involved. The process information includes the information of case acceptance, case trial, time limit for trial and enforcement and so on. The information of litigation documents includes the documents and transcripts submitted by both parties during the trial of the case so that the participants in the proceedings can keep abreast of the progress of the case and safeguard their rights and interests in accordance with the law. Except for the trial activities that are not suitable for publicity according to law, courts at all levels need to actively record and broadcast the audio and video of the trial to the public so that people who are not in the court can watch the whole trial process so that fair justice can be achieved in a visible way. At the same time, appropriate measures should be taken to shield and protect the privacy and sensitive information of the parties. Except for the judgment documents that cannot be made public according to law, courts at all levels need to make public judgments, rulings, decisions, mediation documents, notices and other legal documents of criminal, civil, administrative, enforcement, compensation and other cases within seven working days from the date of their entry into force to meet the needs of the people for retrieval and access. The parts of the judgment documents that are not suitable for direct disclosure, such as the sensitive information of the parties, need to be shielded for privacy. At the same time, to ensure the accuracy of the content of the judgment document, it is necessary to correct and verify the format standardization, information integrity, logical consistency and the accuracy of the applicable law of the judgment document before it is made public. To help the parties keep abreast of the progress of the enforcement of the case, the people’s courts need to record the information of the case and the process, such as the adoption of enforcement measures, the adoption of compulsory measures, the

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disposal of enforcement property, price evaluation, judicial auction and so on, and make all the relevant information public through a unified national platform to realize the full openness of the enforcement case and to provide diversified and real-time enforcement public services for the parties. The judicial transparency business is open to the public, and many users may be the first to contact the smart court information system. A concise operation interface, application navigation and timely response service functions should be provided as far as possible, and users should be assisted to quickly familiarize themselves with the platform application quickly. VI.

Other Business Needs

In addition to the main business, smart courts also need to meet the information needs of almost all other areas of court business, including news publicity, education and training, transparent government construction and communication. Media integration is the development direction of news publicity. It is necessary to collect and display the work style of the courts through various information channels and windows on the Internet and the specific court network in a timely manner, which not only supports the units and departments to upload news conveniently but also supports the professional publicizing organizations to cover news events directly and strives to build an all-media integrated publicity of the people’s courts. Information technology is needed by education and training work to produce, collect, store and manage training materials, enrich the style of teaching materials, expand training channels, and extend classroom teaching to the desktops of court staff. Meanwhile, it is also necessary to support training institutions to examine the results of learning and training, review and confirm all kinds of teaching materials uploaded by courts at all levels, carry out relevant statistics of training and learning, and generate learning records and certificates. These business requirements are closely related to the development and promotion of smart courts and need to be widely connected with the relevant information systems of the courts. The operation and use of these systems should be as simple and easy to learn as possible so that users can quickly and skillfully master the application.

2.2 System Needs The system needs analysis is the process by which the technical research and development department fully understands the business needs, combines the current situation of smart courts construction and the existing technical capabilities, and forms the system construction needs in terms of function, performance and structure. System needs are the main basis for evaluating the necessity, feasibility, construction cycle and funding of project implementation. Clarifying the current situation is the first step of the system needs analysis. The construction of smart courts has gone through a long time and has accumulated relatively rich resources in all aspects, and various business needs may be supported

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in the existing systems. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify which business needs can be supported by the existing system, which business needs must be met by upgrading the functions or performance of the new system, and which existing systems need to be connected with the new system. Defining the system function is an important part of the system needs analysis. Most system functions need to reflect specification constraints through performance indicators, so the main performance analysis of each function is also a necessary part of system needs analysis, which is directly related to the cost and success of system implementation. On this basis, the preliminary determination of the interaction between various functions and the description of the system structure are the necessary steps to improve the system requirements and are important ways to analyze, demonstrate and test the system. Determining the external of a new system, especially the interface relationship with the existing system, is a key link that is often neglected in the system needs analysis. In fact, the emphasis on the interface relationship with the existing system requires the coordination and mobilization of many technical resources of the existing system, which may mean that the needs of the new system will overlap with the capabilities of the existing system or that the development of a new system needs to adapt to many complex interfaces of the existing system and bring incalculable technical difficulties. Technology R&D departments often prefer that those work be carried out in the later stage of R&D or even delayed to the deployment stage, which will bring great uncertainty to the whole construction. The system needs analysis involves the comprehensive coordination and balance between users and developers, business and technology, and various systems. As it is determined by many factors, it is not enough to evaluate the feasibility, construction cycle and funding of the project only through text, tables, graphics and other documents. Therefore, many complex information system needs analysis often need to be verified and confirmed comprehensively, accurately and effectively through prototype system development, so prototype development should be included in the necessary process of complex information system engineering needs analysis. I.

Needs of Intelligent Service System

At the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan, courts all over the country basically built a three-in-one litigation service center consisting of a litigation service hall, litigation service network and 12,368 litigation service hotline, which has the main functions of court announcement, litigation guidance, legal consultation, auxiliary filing, collection and transfer of litigation materials, inquiry of case handling progress, contact with judges and reception of complaint and petition. It can provide online and offline litigation services for the public and the people involved in litigation. Some regions have explored the construction of an electronic litigation platform that integrates the functions of online filing, payment, evidence exchange, court session and service, thus forming a more standard online litigation service mode. According to the requirements of the smart courts, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, on the basis of strengthening network construction, enhancing intelligent service capability is the main demand for the construction of the intelligent service system.

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The litigation service hall needs to combine the actual conditions of the court, focus on the standardization of service functions, and provide litigation guidance, window service, self-service litigation, litigation mediation and petition reception services as well as intelligent litigation service equipment to serve the people who come to court in person. Meanwhile, we will promote locating some assistance and routine work tasks, such as scanning, service, preservation and appraisal, into the litigation service hall to form an intensive service model. The litigation service network should be standardized, upgraded and improved on the requirements of electronic litigation, such as filing, payment, evidence exchange, hearing and service online. Functions of online mediation, browsing files and so on should also be provided and seamlessly connected with various offline litigation service systems and functions so that litigation activities can be linked both online and offline. For the 12,368 litigation service hotline, standardization and integration in the process of popularization in courts all over the country need to be strengthened, and hotline information sharing among operators in the same province needs to be promoted. The function of short message service needs to be expanded nationwide, and the full-time intelligent question and answer function needs to be enhanced. Every effort should be made to promote the popularization and application of electronic litigation platforms in courts throughout the country, integrate the litigation service networks of courts around the country as soon as possible, incorporate online mediation, preservation, browsing and other relevant processes into the standard function set, connect various case handling systems with data resources of specific court networks if needed, and actively promote the use of mobile WeCourt. It is necessary to speed up the construction of a unified online mediation platform for courts throughout the country, provide standardized functional support such as application for mediation, case assignment, online mediation, mediation agreement management and so on, fully connect with various mediation resources such as those in the fields of marriage and family, road traffic, labor disputes, medical accidents, property disputes, financial insurance, and provide a high credibility platform for diversified dispute resolution. It is necessary to actively adapt to the trend of vigorous development of Internet applications and build Internet courts. In view of the growing disputes in this field, an online Internet judicial model from mediation to filing, trial, and enforcement should be provided to contribute to the world’s rule of law civilization in the information age. It is necessary to make use of the advantage of the rapid development of mobile Internet in China and speed up the construction of a unified national mobile WeCourt electronic litigation platform. It will interface and integrate with all kinds of case handling systems of courts throughout the country, providing comprehensive, ubiquitous, efficient and high-quality litigation services for the public. It is necessary to strengthen the construction of a unified national information system for complaints and petitions through letters and visits, facilitate the public to express their concerns through the main functions of input management, letter processing, video interviews and complaint processing, strengthen the sharing and

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linkage of petition work among the four levels of courts, and facilitate the joint resolution of complaints and petitions through letters and visits. Meanwhile, the comprehensive collection and efficient management of complaint and petition data should be achieved, and big data should be used to provide a reference for Party committees and government decision-making. It is necessary to build a unified national electronic service platform to fully utilize the advantages of communication, instant interaction platforms and e-mail to provide rapid service for the people involved in litigation and precise support for case handlers to solve the difficulties of service. It is necessary to build and popularize the information platform of the litigation service guidance center, collect litigation service data in an all-around way, and connect all kinds of litigation service information systems to realize the integration of large data and the management of large platforms for litigation services. Meanwhile, we should connect with mediation, arbitration, notarization and other mediation platforms to achieve all-around interconnection and full-process interaction of diversified dispute resolution forces. II.

Needs of Intelligent Trial System

At the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the courts throughout the country built and applied the information management system of the trial process to support judges, assistant judges and clerks to handle cases through the functions of filing cases, making judicial documents, scheduling court sessions, etc. The basic information of the case can be automatically input into the national court judicial big data management and service platform. Courts nationwide have built a large number of scientific and technological courtrooms to support various trial activities. The remote interrogation system covers courts and prisons throughout the country and reduces unnecessary escort trips through remote interrogation and trial functions. Some courts have also built digital adjudication committees to provide necessary support for participants to discuss cases through voice recording, voting records, access to litigation materials, legal provisions and similar cases. In accordance with the requirements of the goal of the smart courts, the main demand for the construction of the smart trial system is to comprehensively promote the transformation and upgrading of the existing case handling system during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, to support the synchronous generation and circulation of electronic case files and to provide intelligent auxiliary services for the case handling personnel. The trial case handling system should be rapidly upgraded from the original mode of examination and approval based on the circulation of case character information to the intelligent assistant support mode based on the circulation of electronic case files. It provides an important basis for various intelligent auxiliary applications through the functions of electronic file generation, uploading, storage, management, access, sharing, updating, archiving, etc., and fully connects with electronic signatures, security identification, archive systems and big data management and service platforms. It is necessary to build an electronic file synchronous generation system and create preconditions for the application of electronic case file circulation through the functions of file collection, file scanning and uploading, file catalog compilation, etc.

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It is necessary to build an automatic cataloging system for electronic case files, use OCR and machine learning technology to document, structure and digitize electronic files, and arrange all files in an orderly manner according to the cataloging requirements of electronic files as designated by the Supreme People’s Court and the supplementary provisions of the local court to facilitate the case staff to access, label, reuse and edit electronic case files according to the standard norms and usage habits, as well as support the activities of hearing, collegial discussion and trial. Due to the complexity of various litigation materials, it is difficult for some files to be cataloged automatically and accurately, so a small number of files may still need to be cataloged manually. It is necessary to build a legal and case query and retrieval system that interacts with the case handling system to support judges in selecting keywords, key phrases, and case fragments at any time when they access electronic case files and study and analyze the case through massive legal and regulatory resources and judgment document resources to provide a sufficient basis for fair adjudication. It is necessary to build an intelligent push system of laws and cases that interact with the case handling system with the help of machine learning and assistant decision-making technology to actively push relevant laws and similar cases to judges based on case information to save time. It is necessary to build an auxiliary generation system for legal documents. According to the templates of various legal documents, electronic file data and intelligent matching algorithms can be used to support the automatic generation of standard documents and parts of judgment documents that contain the facts of the case and to support the rapid generation of judgment documents for simple cases, such as road traffic accident disputes, property management and larceny cases, to reduce the repetitive work as much as possible. To build an intelligent error correction system for adjudicative documents, according to the requirements of the editing of adjudicative documents, through the functions of self-defined phrases, self-defined wrong words, automatic typesetting, phonetic proofreading and natural language understanding, the spelling grammar, law citation, content integrity and context logic of adjudicative documents are automatically checked and marked. The system reminds judges to pay attention to and review those errors and provides strong support to improve the quality of judgment documents. III.

Needs of Intelligent Enforcement System

At the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the courts nationwide have established a unified system of general enforcement investigation, control, punishment for defaulters and information disclosure for enforcement cases, and some regional courts have established an information system for enforcement of case handling and a point-to-point enforcement investigation and control system, which has fundamentally changed the way that enforcement judges used to go out and go to the counter to search for the property of the person subject to enforcement. At the same time, it has effectively mobilized social forces to jointly punish defaulters and explored a new way to solve the problem of enforcement. In accordance with the solemn

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commitment of the Supreme People’s Court to “basically solving the difficulties in enforcement in two to three years” and the goal of the smart courts, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the construction of a unified national enforcement command system and an enforcement process management system was promoted, and the scope of coordination between the enforcement investigation and control system and the punishment system for defaulters was further expanded. It is the main demand of the construction of the intelligent enforcement system to build a unified judicial auction system and an individual enforcement system for the courts nationwide and to provide a decisive weapon for basically solving the difficulties in enforcement. It is necessary to build an enforcement command system that links up the courts at different levels, with visual information centralized control as the starting point, enforcement supervision, enforcement cooperation, enforcement case conclusion management, enforcement complaint and petition, and double investigation of one case as the main line, supervision and management functions such as core indicators statistics, enforcement quality and efficiency analysis, specific case analysis, special analysis and “one case, one account” management as the guarantee, comprehensive service functions of court leader’s channel, reporting and issuing, team management, matter request and on-duty patrol inspection as the support, to provide the necessary functional support for remote command, video conference, case coordination, enforcement hearing as well as joint enforcement, entrusted enforcement and cross-enforcement between courts at all levels. It is necessary to build and popularize a unified national enforcement process management system, aiming at 37 process nodes covering the whole enforcement process. Through the system functions of enforcement filing, enforcement, network investigation and control, traditional investigation and control, property control, automatic disposal of property, case management, restriction on extravagant spending, document service, enforcement case conclusion management, archiving of cases, in-depth application of electronic case files and intelligent assistant enforcement, the court case handling process is unified, and various enforcement information systems are linked to standardize the enforcement behavior of court staff and improve the quality and efficiency of enforcement. It is necessary to further expand the connection with all small and medium-sized commercial banks in the country, accelerate the expansion of the connection with online financial payment systems, securities, population, market supervision, ecological resources and real estate management departments, and enhance the point-topoint investigation and control capabilities of local courts. Meanwhile, it is also necessary to strengthen the security verification and audit functions, strictly prevent all violations of investigation and control, and ensure the security of important sensitive information and personal privacy information. On the basis of the original punishment system for defaulters, which mainly focuses on restrictions on travel-related extravagant spending, the punishment system should be extended to entering and leaving the border, business administration, organization and personnel management to further restrict defaulters to running business enterprises, serving as representatives to the People’s Congress or members of the CPPCC, or entering and leaving the border. The social credit information system

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should be connected to serve as an important force to mobilize the whole society to punish credit default. On the other hand, the functions of revocation and cancellation of defaulters from the list, feedback information management of credit default punishment and statistical analysis of credit default punishment information should be promoted to ensure that those who fulfill their legal obligations can immediately restore their due rights and the efficient and good operation of the punishment mechanism of defaulters from an overall perspective. It is necessary to introduce the unified online judicial auction management system. The auction system connects with the enforcement command and enforcement process management system on the one hand and connects with the auction website with a large number of domestic users on the other hand to support the judges in facilitating the completion of the enforcement of assets through the functions of bidder management, announcement management, subject matter management, auction supervision and auction coordination. The principle of fairness and justice is embodied in the last link of the enforcement process. It is necessary to build an enforcement individual soldier system based on mobile interconnection technology. It connects with the enforcement command and enforcement process management system on the one hand and connects with an external GIS visual actual combat management system and enforcement information disclosure system on the other hand, which provides very convenient mobile and visual support for the enforcement staff who perform their duties outside through the functions of mobile case handling, command and dispatch, enforcement assistance, instant messaging and common tools. Through case progress, enforcement interaction, document generation and suggestions, it provides a display window for the parties to understand the front-line work of enforcement and enhance the transparency of enforcement. IV.

Needs of Intelligent Management System

At the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan, many courts across the country have built office automation systems to support the online handling of administrative affairs, and many courts have built personnel and file management information systems, which have injected new impetus into improving the quality and efficiency of management. According to the goal of smart courts, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, courts around the country will popularize the application of office automation systems in an all-round way, establish corresponding information systems or functional modules for various management affairs, and support the online processing of all management business. Office automation is an information system with document circulation and approval as the main line. Its technical scheme and basic structure are not strictly coupled with the work of the court. Many regular office systems can meet the needs of the court with little modification. However, some court office systems have been used for many years, and the underlying technology and basic platform are incompatible with many new and popular support software, which negatively impacts users’ experience. In the process of transformation and upgrading, smooth transition and full data migration between the old and new systems must be achieved, and at the same

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time, the applications of personnel management systems, case handling systems and judicial big data platforms need to be fully connected to expand the scope of use and build a backbone platform to form an intelligent management system. The personnel management system integrates the relevant data of court personnel and trial business and coordinates the cadre and personnel management business of four-level courts. There is relevant software to have functions such as appointment and removal of court staff, attendance registration, people’s jurors, pension, recognition and reward, education and training, selection of judicial experts, etc. On this basis, intelligent applications such as real-time summary and query analysis of judicial reform data, intelligent calculation of work performance, team data analysis, intelligent documents and intelligent alarm should be strengthened to comprehensively improve the scientific and refined level of team management. An intelligent trial supervision system should be built to connect with the audio and video management platforms of all scientific and technological courtrooms, the judgment documents open systems and various case handling systems through intelligent supervision, problem feedback and statistical analysis. to support the supervision departments of courts nationwide to carry out trial supervision efficiently and provide strong support for honest justice. It is necessary to build a unified electronic archives management system to link with the office, trial and enforcement information systems and the judicial big data management and service platform and to support the collection, management and utilization of electronic archives. It is necessary to build a unified information platform for the grass-root dispatched tribunals throughout the country and to provide the functions of information filling, work dynamics, case performance and statistical analysis for the dispatched tribunals, which is also connected to the judicial big data management and service platform on the specific court network. It is necessary to build a mobile office case handling system and extend the court’s internal office and case handling system to mobile terminals through a secure isolation and switching platform on the precondition of ensuring information security. It will have functions such as document access, message reminder and instant messaging, support most court staff to handle their work when they go out, and further improve the quality and efficiency of their work. V.

Needs of the Judicial Open System

At the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the unified China Judgment Online and China Enforcement Information Online have been established, which disclose the effective judicial documents, the information of the person subject to enforcement and the information of the defaulters to the public through the Internet, and China Trial Process Information Online has also disclosed the progress of court cases to the people involved in litigation. It marks the full opening of the judicial process in Chinese courts. In accordance with the goal of smart courts, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, a unified national open platform for the trial process and live broadcasting of court hearings was built, and the open platform for judgment documents and enforcement information was upgraded and improved to enhance

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people’s understanding, trust and supervision of justice and better promote the rule of law. It is the main need for the construction of the judicial open system. It is necessary to strengthen the construction of China’s Judicial Process Information Online, link up the trial and case handling systems of courts all over the country and the judicial big data management and service platform, and disclose the trial process information and public information related to trial affairs. This network also provides a one-stop window service for the parties and litigation agents to inquire about the progress of cases and contact judges. It is necessary to build China Court Trial Online and make it connect with the scientific and technological courtroom system, trial and case handling system and judicial big data platform, which can support real-time live broadcasting of court trials, disclose audio and video information that can be made public according to law, and show the judicial image of Chinese courts to society vividly. It is necessary to upgrade and optimize the Chinese Judgment Online, publicize the effective judicial documents of local courts and enhance the protection function of state secrets and personal privacy information. To effectively cope with the rapid increase in the number of judicial documents, especially the problems caused by the website’s high global attention, wide distribution of users, some users picking up batches of documents, and the sudden increase in the instantaneous clickthrough rate, it is necessary to take timely measures to keep pace with the times, adopt the registration access mechanism at the proper time, and provide high-quality access services for the vast number of users while continuing to adhere to judicial transparency. To upgrade and improve China’s enforcement information disclosure network, on the basis of previous public information, the information of six types of cases and 24 process nodes involved in enforcement, such as property investigation and control, compulsory measures, property disposal, money and property distribution and case closure management, should be fully disclosed to the parties to better strengthen the transparency of enforcement cases and constantly enhance the credibility of the court. It is necessary to build a national information network for enterprise bankruptcy reorganization cases, which can be connected with the working platform of bankruptcy case judges on the specific court network and the working platform of bankruptcy case administrators on the Internet, and then use the Internet to disclose information on various bankruptcy cases to the whole society through the functions of information disclosure, laws and regulations, typical cases and online services to mobilize social forces to support enterprise bankruptcy reorganization and promote the healthy development of the economy. VI.

Needs of Other Application Systems

At the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan, in addition to the application of litigation, case handling, office and news websites, there are still many business areas in which special information systems have not yet been built to provide services. According to the goals of smart courts, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, it is necessary to take office automation system as the main platform, and on this basis, to develop or access

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corresponding information systems or functional modules, further accelerating the pace of online processing of all business of courts at all levels. Based on the information collecting, editing and distributing system of traditional paper media and news websites, it is necessary to build a court media system that connects with external systems such as litigation services, judicial transparency and legal services and includes contents such as news, judicial transparency and legal consultation. A highly integrated system for collecting, processing and publishing text, image, audio and video information should be built, and a publicity platform for the full integration of newspapers, periodicals, television, websites, microblogs, WeChat and short videos should be formed. To conform to the full integration of traditional libraries and new-fashioned libraries under the rapid development of the Internet, we should build an online library of the people’s court to widely connect with the collection resources of libraries at home and abroad, fully integrate Chinese and foreign legal databases, and gather a large number of digital legal literature resources. It provides multiform and multichannel legal information resources for judges, court staff and the people. It is necessary to build an online training platform for people’s courts, give full play to the advantages of training resources of the National Judges College and its branches in various provinces, districts and municipalities, and support the sharing of courses, teachers, library resources and academic papers through the management of education and training and the implementation of remote education platforms. By extensively linking with the official websites of national supreme courts of the world’s two major legal systems, it is necessary to provide students with global judicial cases, judicial documents, library information and judicial trial information. Through the “bilingual training” of Mongolian, Tibetan and Uygur language training services, the training needs of the court staff from ethnic minority areas can be met. Through the operation of the specific court network and the Internet, trainees can not only watch live, recorded and online courses in the office but can also study at home at their free time to meet the learning and training needs of the vast number of court staff to the greatest extent. VII.

Needs of Big Data Management and Service Platform

In addition to the application systems directly serving all kinds of users, smart courts also need strong data resource management and service capabilities; thus, the judicial big data management and service platform plays a decisive role. At the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the judicial big data management and service platform of the People’s Court was already able to automatically gather the characteristic information of court cases at all levels, support the analysis of trial situations, and create a good foundation for the transformation and upgrading of smart courts. According to the requirements of building the “data-centered” People’s Court Informatization Version 3.0, the main needs of the construction of big data management and service platforms are to further improve the ability of data aggregation, strengthen judicial data management, continuously improve data quality and expand judicial big data services during the 13th Five-Year Plan period.

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It is necessary to steadily promote the automatic aggregation of basic case information, gradually achieve full coverage of courts, judges, cases and judicial statistics, and lay a solid foundation for the realization of fully automatic judicial statistics in courts throughout the country. Meanwhile, it is necessary to extensively collect judicial personnel, judicial administration, judicial research and external data of courts nationwide to make the big data management and service platform of the people’s court the largest, most comprehensive and richest type of judicial big data resource bank in the world. In view of the rich and diverse data structures, it is necessary to use a distributed computing environment and large-scale parallel processing architecture and adopt iterative and flexible data management technology to support the data storage, management and backup of big data management and service platforms to ensure the orderly expansion, flexible use, safety and reliability of data resources. Data quality should be regarded as the most important factor. According to the data quality inspection indicator system, automatic data verification tools should be used to carry out full data quality verification, support data error traceability and positioning, and ensure that the data confidence of the big data management and service platform is always running at a high level through an effective data quality control mode. It is necessary to give full play to the huge judicial and social value of the data gathered by the big data management and service platform, fully utilize the massive judicial big data resources from different levels, such as statistical display, internal correlation analysis, knowledge generation and external correlation analysis, to serve the court staff, support judicial decision-making and provide an important reference for social governance.

2.3 Support Needs Any business application system needs to run on the corresponding computer and server. The increasing data resources need sufficient storage space to be saved and managed. The internal and external information exchange needs communication transmission equipment to be realized. The user operation control needs to be carried out on the terminal equipment, and many systems also have specific facilities and working environment requirements. All these constitute the support needs of the smart courts. Computing resources are the operational support that information systems directly rely on, and the type of operating system, the variety, quantity and deployment mode of servers should be determined based on the requirements of the operating environment, scale, computing load, concurrency and time response of application software, as well as the operational support and deployment mode of cloud services that rely on the cloud computing environment. These specific needs are also closely related to the number of users and their geographical distribution.

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Data flow in the information system is the life source of the information system. Storage resources are necessary for the information system to save and manage data. The appropriate database system, data server type, quantity and interface mode should be selected based on the scale, type, mode and throughput requirements of the application system to gather and manage data. The corresponding backup management resources should also be considered according to the characteristics of the data content. Communication resources play an extremely important role in the network system, which is the link to connect all kinds of users and application systems and to carry all kinds of business data flow. According to the characteristics of information exchange within courts, between courts at different levels, between courts and external institutions, and between courts and the people, the construction requirements of network system composition, network structure, transmission bandwidth and network switching of LAN, specific WAN, specific external network, Internet and mobile Internet should be determined. Terminal equipment is the operation object directly faced by most users, which is related to the final experience of users. To provide users with the most appropriate and convenient services, it is necessary to equip appropriate operating terminals according to the general requirements of ergonomics, the input and output and display control characteristics of user objects, application scenarios and service contents. The construction of smart courts also needs to consider the support needs of many special facilities with court characteristics, such as large screen displays, remote sharing and multiparty involvement, as well as the respective business characteristics of trial and enforcement, litigation service and judicial management. Based on these, important conditions and indicator parameters, such as space size, site layout, access system and technical specifications, can be determined. I.

Needs of Computing Resource Support

The information system must provide corresponding computing resources to support its operation according to the different characteristics of different business application systems. Smart courts mainly include major types of business application systems such as websites, audio and video management, big data analysis and transactions, and different types of application systems have different needs for computing support. Website and audio and video management business application systems include enforcement information open networks, court live broadcast open networks and electronic case file management systems. Such applications mainly meet the access requests of the public or court staff, carry out business logic calculations by using the data of the background database and file set, and finally feed back the calculation results to users. These applications generally need to adopt the front-end cluster deployment mode, and when the access pressure rises, they can meet the concurrent requests of users through horizontal expansion. Each application usually has low requirements for the computing performance of a single node, which can be met by selecting a cloud host with moderate performance. Transaction applications, such as the case handling system, the enforcement of investigation and control systems and the punishment system for credit default,

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mainly serve the court staff and handle various data requests in the case handling process with complex business logic. Such applications generally require centralized deployment. With the progress of the case handling process, the server needs to face frequent case content addition, query, modification and other operations, which requires high computing performance of a single node. Centralized deployment also requires a single node server to reserve free slots and increase CPU and memory and other vertical expansion capabilities to meet the increasing number of cases. These applications need to choose physical servers with moderate performance or cloud hosts with high performance to meet their computing power support needs. Big data analysis applications, such as big data management and service platforms and electronic case file intelligent auxiliary systems, need to perform frequent and multidimensional retrieval, processing, analysis and data flow operations for large electronic files and court video data, so they need to be supported by relatively strong intensive computing power, and physical servers with moderate or high performance must be selected to meet the computing power requirements. For server selection, the cloud host generally uses a general two-way server to meet the demand. Physical servers need to be selected from two-way and four-way models based on the computing power requirements of different business application systems. For the choice of operating system, different operating systems have different computing power consumption of CPU and memory, and server equipment with higher computing power requirements often needs to choose the basic operating system with lower computing power consumption of CPU and memory. II.

Needs of Storage Resource Support

Information systems need to provide necessary data storage support for various business application systems. The smart courts business application system needs to store four types of data, including the configuration data of the application system itself, structured data, audio and video unstructured data and file data. According to the data type characteristics of different applications, the corresponding storage scale, IO performance, throughput capacity, interface type and security support should be provided to meet the needs of the application system. The configuration data of the application system itself include software data, configuration files, log files, monitoring data, etc. Such data are mainly generated by the operation of the application system. After being read into the database, repeated reading and writing operations rarely occur. It does not have high requirements for the IO performance and throughput capacity of the storage. It only needs that the storage scale be expanded on demand with the growth of applications. Structured data, such as the information data and financial data of the person subject to enforcement. need to adopt a database structure based on centralized deployment. With the progress of case handling or workflows, an increase in access volume and frequent reading and writing operations need to be performed, thus requiring higher IO storage performance. Because the scale of structured data increases linearly with the number of cases, the storage scale and throughput capacity can meet the needs of application systems only by planning according to business growth.

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Unstructured audio, video and file data, such as court voice, court video, electronic files, etc., are mainly used in the process of handling cases and are used as case files and judicial big data to support long-term analysis and application after the case is concluded, so it is necessary to have the ability of long-term reliable, credible and safe storage, as well as the ability of flexible expansion of the data scale. It also needs to have a high throughput capability of reading and writing large blocks of data to meet business needs such as big data analysis applications. Document data, such as Word, Excel and picture files generated by daily office work, are mainly generated by the daily work process of court staff, which does not require high IO performance and throughput capacity of storage, and the storage scale increases linearly with the increase in the number of staff. However, as not all court staff are IT professionals, they have higher requirements for ease of use and convenience of storage, and a storage system to provide folder-level system service support is often needed. For some core data resources, such as enforcement investigation and control data and retrieval of judicial big data, the requirements for real-time and IO response efficiency are extremely high, which requires the storage system to have high-performance access service capabilities based on SSD. The interface type of the storage system also needs to adapt to the different characteristics of the business application system. Structured data have higher IO performance and security requirements and need to adopt similar storage interface methods, such as FC-SAN interfaces based on optical fibers. Unstructured audio, video and volume data have higher requirements for throughput and storage scale and require similar storage methods, such as Ethernet-based 10 Gigabit interfaces. III.

Needs of Communication Resource Support

Court work involves not only the internal circulation of a great amount of case file information but also many information exchanges with the parties. There is not only judicial information that should be fully disclosed according to law but also internal work information that should be controlled because of the requirements of trial regulations, as well as secret state information that should be strictly protected in accordance with the provisions of state secrecy law. There is not only extensive information sharing among various departments and levels within the court but also close cooperation with relevant external departments, enterprises and institutions. In the era of mobile Internet, the majority of court staff are required to be able to work on the Internet efficiently in their offices, and some of them are required to be able to deal with emergency affairs on business trips. Therefore, smart courts need to support the data transmission of various business application systems through rich and comprehensive communication resources, such as specific court networks, the Internet, specific external networks, specific mobile networks and confidential networks. The court’s internal office case handling needs to support the efficient flow of internal data through the specific network. In terms of coverage, the specific court network needs to cover all courts in the country and the dispatched tribunals that are fit for daily case handling work. The specific internal network of each court

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needs to have large bandwidth and fast response transmission capability to meet the frequent communication requirements of the court business. The courts at all levels need to adopt the corresponding specific network based on the actual needs of business applications and the principle of ensuring application. Courts with centralized deployment of important application systems need to have sufficient low-latency transmission capability to meet the centralized access requirements of corresponding business applications. In view of the great differences between data transmission and video transmission applications, the specific court network needs to be divided into data and video subnets to better meet business needs. The diversified dispute resolution, litigation services and judicial openness of courts at all levels need to be open to the public through the Internet. Many file transfers and video conferences that do not involve work secrets can also be conducted through the Internet. Each court can access the Internet through its own unified port or through several ports according to the geographical distribution. Regardless of the form, it is necessary to configure a reasonable interface control strategy based on the actual business requirements. The courts at all levels, especially the Supreme People’s Court and high people’s courts, need to communicate with the cooperating departments in a head-to-head or point-to-point way through the specific external network. The specific external network should not only meet the requirements of information exchange, data sharing and business collaboration among departments but also meet the network security requirements of each department itself. With the increasing popularity of mobile terminals, the specific court network needs to be rapidly extended to mobile ends through the specific mobile network to meet the needs of the majority of court staff to go out to handle cases, conduct circuit trials, etc. A private mobile network needs to provide corresponding service according to business application needs and must ensure that court work secrets are always strictly protected. Many business application systems of smart courts rely on cross-network data interaction. It is necessary to build a data exchange platform with the specific court network as a link to realize the data sharing and exchange system between higher- and lower-level courts, between courts and other departments, and between different networks and to support efficient communication transmission among various applications. IV.

Needs of Terminal Equipment Support

Information systems need to serve users through terminal equipment. In the construction of smart courts, some application systems have been developed and launched with considerable manpower and material resources and have won the recognition of most users but may be criticized by some users. In most cases, this is caused by the performance of these users’ terminal equipment or even the parameter settings being unsuitable, thus resulting in dysfunction or poor operation experience. This

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phenomenon is one of the largest regrets in the application of information technology. Therefore, the construction and application of smart courts need scientific and reasonable terminal equipment support. It is necessary to carefully select PC terminals, PAD devices, mobile phones, operating systems and other general software that match these terminals, as well as printers, scanners and other terminal devices to serve all kinds of users. The PC terminal is the first choice for most users, especially the court staff, to handle cases in the courts. According to the characteristics of different network systems, different user types and different application scenarios, it is necessary to select terminal equipment with consideration of computing performance, such as main frequency, memory, disk space, basic software configuration, machine size and display screen size, to ensure excellent performance, good operating experience, ease of use, stability and comfort. In the case of using multiple PC terminals at the same station, it is also necessary to provide users with the support capability of convenient switching. Mobile terminals, such as individual soldier equipment, PADs and mobile phones, should be reasonably selected according to the service application type and use conditions and key technical indicators, such as the corresponding network connectivity and audio and video processing capability. Meanwhile, the security, compatibility and scalability requirements of the terminal should also be fully considered. For printers, scanners and other peripheral terminals, it is necessary to meet the relevant requirements of different business scenarios, such as the use environment, user characteristics, printing and scanning speed, paper specifications, printing and scanning clarity, to meet the requirements of practicality and thrift as much as possible. General basic software such as operating system, browser and office software installed on various terminal devices shall be selected based on the characteristics of hardware devices, use environment and application software to meet different requirements in terms of ease of use, compatibility and scalability. V.

Needs of Special Facilities Support

The information infrastructure of smart courts involves general computing resources, storage resources, communication resources and terminal equipment. In addition, it is also necessary to improve the informatization level through a series of special facilities, such as scientific and technological courtrooms, digital adjudication committees, information management centers, enforcement command centers, litigation service guidance centers, digital libraries and all-media press release halls, according to the characteristics of court business applications. For the installation of special facilities, it is necessary to determine the appropriate spatial layout, physical composition, internal and external connection relationship and application software deployment according to business application requirements. An open space for gathering and consultation and separate areas and seats are normally needed for specific business matters. Special information equipment such

2.4 Guarantee Needs

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as operation, display, control, processing and operation and maintenance to provide users with daily professional services needs to be provided. In addition, large display screens to support a certain number of people for consultation and discussion should be equipped with. The specific court network and the Internet should be connected at the same time to support the access and retrial of the court’s internal and external data resources at any time. Some facilities also need to be connected to specific mobile networks, specific external networks or confidential intranets to meet specific business application requirements. Many special facilities not only need to deploy corresponding application software according to special business requirements but also need to configure more application software systems according to business expansion and other possible application scenarios to play a multipurpose role. All kinds of special facilities need to be provided with specialized system function support according to the characteristics of business applications. It should also have general information support, such as using various terminal equipment to input and output information, using voice input and text conversion equipment to input and generate text records, using a large screen display to support information aggregation and research analysis, using cloud resources to realize remote calls of important application systems, and realizing remote video applications through the specific court network or the Internet. All kinds of special facilities also need to be developed to form special system applications to support their own business application scenarios. These special application methods are often the combination of a series of system equipment and its functions. Through application scenario analysis and application optimization, the best application effect with the least resource consumption can be achieved.

2.4 Guarantee Needs An important characteristic of information systems, especially complex information systems, is that their whole life cycle goes hand in hand with the construction of network security, operation and maintenance, human resources and other support conditions. In theory, it is possible for information systems without security assurance to operate independently. However, in fact, information systems are directly related to personal rights and interests, organizational operations and even national security, and security risks are always synchronized with technology applications. Therefore, network security is an essential condition for the construction of information systems. According to the requirements of keeping state secrets, protecting work secrets, ensuring public rights and interests, and fulfilling relevant business responsibilities, it is necessary to ensure the hierarchical protection and protection levels of information systems and then clarify the corresponding network security requirements, such as identity authentication, border security and data security, to ensure that network security and informatization are planned, constructed, deployed and tested synchronically.

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Generally, after the information system is deployed and put on line, software installation, equipment adjustment, registration management, operation training and problem solving are the basic requirements to ensure the normal operation of the system, while normal operation monitoring, status reporting, quality and efficiency analysis and emergency response are the necessary functions to improve the application effectiveness. Thus, smart court information systems are composed of various information infrastructures, application systems, data resources and network security means, and strong operation and maintenance guarantees are the common requirements of courts at or above the middle and senior levels. According to the business application characteristics, system coverage, resource management mode, network security requirements and operation deployment status, the operation and maintenance requirements of the court information system should be built to guide the construction of the follow-up quality and efficiency operation and maintenance guarantee system. The development, integration, deployment and application of information systems require all kinds of professional personnel to cooperate in business analysis, technical implementation and organizational management. Therefore, adequate human resources are important for the construction of smart courts. In many cases, the factors affecting the effectiveness of construction are not limited to technology or funds but the quality of personnel and the ability of team organization and management. The larger the scale of the system and the more complex the structure, the higher the requirements for policy measures, organizational management and personnel quality. Therefore, according to the business type, system scale and expected results, it is necessary to comprehensively coordinate the business departments, information management departments and development manufacturers to form practical human resources and ensure that the construction objectives are achieved through effective organizational management and financial support. I.

Network Security Needs

The construction and application of smart courts face diverse and complex network security challenges; therefore, it is necessary to guide and standardize the network security of courts at all levels according to the security protection requirements of the national information system as well as the Overall Construction Plan of Information Security Guarantee of People’s Courts to promote the construction of an information security system. It is necessary to clarify the levels of protection of important information systems in nonconfidential networks, formulate measures for the construction and management of confidential internal networks and confidential information systems, promote the construction of security and compliance of various information systems in accordance with the requirements of hierarchical protection, and promote the unified identity authentication system of the court business system in accordance with the technical requirements for unified identity authentication. Security declarations and compliance assessments of information systems will be carried out continuously. According to the characteristics of the system structure and key components of the smart courts information system, it is necessary to adopt systematic security protection methods, highlight the key points of network security, build password protection infrastructure, and lay the cornerstone of information security protection. It is also

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necessary to strengthen the border security protection of the five major networks and strengthen the overall protection effectiveness as well as strengthen the network security of confidential information systems and strictly prevent any infringement of state secrets. Meanwhile, security protection means for cloud computing technology should be comprehensively applied to improve the information security level of cloud platforms, the security protection of big data management and service platforms should be strengthened, and the security of key sensitive information and data should be guaranteed. It is necessary to build a security isolation and switching platform according to the requirements of security isolation and business application among the five major network systems to realize security isolation between different network systems and the security exchange of business application data, improve the quality and efficiency of business collaboration and data sharing, and provide security guarantees for efficient cross-network data sharing and business collaboration of application systems. It is necessary to implement comprehensive security supervision over all kinds of infrastructure, business applications, data resources and operation and maintenance facilities of the people’s courts, build a unified security data processing center, and vertically link up the four levels of courts from the aspects of security situation, security operation and maintenance management, security incident tracking and response, security risk warning and prevention. It is also necessary to improve the security situation control, incident handling, strategy adjustment, operation and maintenance management and risk prevention capabilities of the smart courts information system. In accordance with the principle of paying equal attention to technology and management, while using technical means to strengthen the security protection of information systems, a standardized security management system and mechanism must be established to continuously improve the standardized security management level of smart courts information systems from the aspects of security management institutions, strategies, rules and regulations, and operational processes. It is necessary to firmly establish a dynamic and comprehensive concept of security protection, to establish a normal security assessment mechanism in view of the increasingly severe network security situations, such as the increasing potential risks, the increasing sources of threats, and the continuous updating of attacking methods, and to strengthen network security inspection and assessment. It is necessary to timely and effectively discover the weak links of security of various information systems, upgrade and improve the information security assurance system with a definite aim, actively respond to security risks and attack threats, and achieve active defense and security control. II.

Needs of Operation and Maintenance Support

With the continuous expansion and deepening of the application of smart court construction and various information systems, the scope of application is getting increasingly wider, and the interaction is becoming increasingly more complex, which requires that information operation and maintenance not only be able to detect and deal with various faults in time but also ensure that all systems are in normal

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operation. It is also necessary to fully control the operation status and load status of all information infrastructure, the users’ experience and application effectiveness of application systems, the convergence and utilization efficiency of data resources, the security situation and control protection of network areas to support the realization of the due value of information construction. First, it needs to meet the requirements of installation and deployment, user consultation and rapid response to system failures and disposal and recovery. The fault handling and emergency response of five networks, three clouds, various litigation services, trial and enforcement and judicial management information facilities should be guaranteed, and the basic support capacity should be comprehensively enhanced. It is necessary to ensure the stable operation of the business application system, reduce the incidence of failures, improve the stability, reliability and availability of the system, and strive to perceive the hidden dangers in advance and eliminate them in time to maximize the normal and efficient operation of the court business. In view of the different kinds of data generated and aggregated in the process of court informatization operation, it is necessary to strengthen data governance, improve data quality, protect resource security, and ensure timely, effective and recoverable data backup. It is also necessary to provide security management, monitoring and recording support for the normal and compliant operation of infrastructure, application systems and data resources in accordance with the requirements of relevant standards such as hierarchical protection. Second, according to the requirements of improving the application effectiveness, it is necessary to actively monitor the quality and effectiveness of information operation, monitor the application effectiveness of system elements such as infrastructure, application system, data resources, network security, operation and maintenance support online and in real time, and monitor and compare the indicators related to user operation experience by means of manual click and simulation loading. It is also necessary to timely grasp the status and ability of each system element to support business and the use effect of the application system to ensure that faults can be found at the first time, and timely warning can be given to possible faults or events. Third, in view of the disadvantages of traditional operation and maintenance tools, such as small and scattered, awkward interfaces, complex operations and single management objects, according to the requirements of smart court information system management and evaluation, it is necessary to build, deploy and use unified visual operation and maintenance management tools to achieve both the coverage of five major network systems and the coverage of information infrastructure, business applications, data resources, network security and operation and maintenance security. Meanwhile, it is also necessary to guarantee the monitoring and management of the information operation status of the courts in the jurisdiction, support that quality and efficiency indicators can be quantified, operation data can be visualized, analysis results can be assessed, and application results can be evaluated. Fourth, based on comprehensive, scientific and reasonable evaluation indicators, it is necessary to give full play to the advantages of mutual support, close cooperation and comprehensive guarantees between operation and maintenance work and quality-based visual operation and maintenance platforms, establish an evaluation,

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notification and improvement mechanism for the effectiveness of information application, and analyze the quality and effectiveness of information operation through different scopes and cycles. It is necessary to support the overall control of the construction and application of smart courts, organize timely investigation, rectification and optimization, and provide strong support for the continuous improvement of the application effectiveness of smart courts. III.

Needs of Policy Measure Guarantee

The construction and development of smart courts also need to be guaranteed and coordinated from the aspects of management mechanisms, financial support, talent organization, etc. First, smart court construction is a complex system project. To ensure the unified and coordinated progress of the construction of the smart courts at the four-level courts, first, a management mechanism throughout the whole process of construction needs to be established. The overall role of the leading groups of network security and informatization of courts at all levels and strengthening coordination and guidance should be given full play. It is necessary to formulate a project management mechanism for the whole process of information project demand analysis, project establishment, procurement, construction, acceptance and application to ensure compliance construction. The evaluation, notification and improvement mechanism of the effectiveness of information application should be established and applied. It is also necessary to establish a publicity and training mechanism for the achievements of the construction of smart courts and improve the level of information application of court staff at all levels of courts. Second, funding is essential for the construction of smart courts, and the information construction and information system operation and maintenance of courts at all levels rely on national and local financial support. As the smart courts information system gradually presents the development trend of integration and interconnection, it is necessary to coordinate the central and local financial funds, rationally allocate funds, and control any arbitrary spending of financial funds while meeting the needs of construction of smart courts. In addition to financial support, courts at all levels also need to actively strive for funding support for major construction projects and scientific and technological innovation research from local development and reform departments to continuously improve the systematisms and innovation of the construction of smart courts. Third, adequate human resources are an important guarantee for the construction and application of smart courts. It is necessary to establish and improve the court information personnel system, coordinate and strengthen all kinds of professionals, and form a professional management and technical personnel team. It is necessary to establish an expert advisory team and use social forces to provide technical support. It is also necessary to further improve the promotion channels for professional and technical personnel, strengthen practical training, and form an ideal mechanism for the growth of talent. It is also necessary to strictly manage the talent team and ensure the healthy development of the construction of smart courts.

Chapter 3

Top-Level Design

Top-level design plays a leading role in smart court system projects. The top-level design of engineering technology is applied to formulate the blueprint for the development of the system and the main implementation plan and to guide and coordinate the follow-up construction tasks. It is responsible for the construction and application of the whole system as well. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt a series of engineering methods, such as normative constraints, tackling key problems and innovation, testing and evaluation, and organizational management to continuously pay attention to, supervise and promote the development, integration, interaction and optimization of the system to lead the overall construction of smart courts. Generally, due to the large scale and complexity of the system project, the implementation process adopts the segmentation and fragmentation method. The planning demonstration is completed by the professional planning teams, but they are not responsible for the follow-up implementation. The feasibility demonstration and preliminary design of a certain stage or special project shall be completed by the professional consulting teams, but they are not responsible for the research and development of the specific system. The standardization team compiles a certain range of standards and specifications according to industry development and technological progress and provides technical guidelines for system development and integration of the system. The R&D integration and deployment of various systems are independently undertaken by many professional manufacturers, who are only responsible for the corresponding projects but are not responsible for the overall effectiveness of the system. The above mentioned mode conforms to the basic principles of specialization, limited objectives and step-by-step implementation and can meet the construction requirements of the initial stage of the system project. However, its shortcomings are also obvious. There is no professional team to assume technical responsibility for the construction effect of the whole system, and it is difficult to adapt to the requirements of system engineering integration and continuous optimization under the circumstances of an increasing number of systems, expanding coverage, and especially increasing technical complexity.

© People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1_3

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In view of this, the construction of smart courts emphasizes that top-level design should cover the whole life cycle of system engineering in terms of time, cover all systems of various technical categories in terms of scope, and cover from blueprint scheme to standard specification, scientific research, efficiency evaluation and quality improvement in terms of function to realize the development mode of closed-loop management and gradual iteration. The most important technical link is to organize, fully utilize, continuously maintain and continuously optimize the overall design of the whole system. Through the specific and clear information relationship, action mechanism and technical indicators among many systems, the planning demonstration, project research and development and system integration can be documented and followed by rules to realize controllable, predictable and up-to-standard system engineering.

3.1 Development Planning Formulating and revising the development plan of information construction on a regular updating basis is the primary link in the top-level design of smart courts, and the plan should be overall, macro, long-term, leading and practical. The comprehensiveness is reflected in the adequate analysis and demonstration of the target images, development philosophy and key tasks of various elements involved in the smart courts system project, such as business support, infrastructure, application system, data resources, network security, operation and maintenance, and organizational support, to fully master the development of the smart courts. The macro nature is reflected in the focus on “what to do” as the benchmark to elaborate the major needs, main gaps, guiding ideas, main objectives, key tasks and implementation paths of the construction of smart courts, rather than adhering to the complex relationship between systems and implementation details, to form a concise development orientation. The long-term nature is reflected in the long-term development vision. As the construction of smart courts is a long-term task, many goals are difficult to complete in a short time, and many tasks will be affected by the long-term accumulation effect of past tasks, so only by taking a long-term view can the overall layout be more scientific and reasonable. Leadership is embodied in giving full play to the role of outline, which can not only guide top-level design work such as overall design, standard compilation, scientific research, evaluation and promotion but also provide sufficient guidance for follow-up work planning, project declaration, research and development, and popularization and application. Practicality is reflected in the fact that the content must not be vague and bombastic. The problem analysis must be to the point that the target image must be clear and traceable, the task decomposition must be reasonable and feasible, and the implementation path of each key task should be explained according to the annual stage target to support the annual evaluation of the plan and timely revision and adjustment.

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The implementation of the development plan must be evaluated and revised year by year to maintain its vitality. Meanwhile, the informatization construction development plan of courts at all levels should be synchronized with the five-year development plan of the national economy as much as possible. Because the central and local governments need to promote the establishment of projects, carry out midterm evaluation, evaluate and accept projects according to the five-year plan, the smart courts development ideas and key tasks being supported by local development and reform departments or the financial departments are important guarantees for promoting informatization construction. I.

Construction Status

A comprehensive investigation and understanding of the current situation of the construction and application of the courts’ information system is the basis for the planning and design of smart courts. The existing system is the most definite and visible entity. If the structural characteristics and application effects of the existing system are not accurately understood, no one can scientifically predict and plan the development blueprint of the future system. Therefore, the primary task of formulating the development plan of informatization construction is to sort out the current situation of construction, mainly through the four main steps, namely, existing material analysis, comprehensive survey and research, field investigation and research, data integration and processing. First, the existing materials are analyzed. After years of development, court informatization construction has accumulated important information such as various policy documents, project files, summary reports, task accounts, asset lists, etc. Courts at all levels have also published a large number of publicity materials for informatization construction and application through newspapers, magazines, electronic journals and WeChat. In recent years, the internal evaluation of the national smart courts organized by the Supreme People’s Court and the third-party evaluation organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have summarized and evaluated the development of court informatization year by year from the internal and external perspectives, and the quality and effectiveness analysis report of court informatization operation has been formed regularly, which reflects the current informatization construction and application. Comprehensive collection, collation and analysis of these first-hand materials are needed, which can not only form a preliminary judgment on the current situation of court informatization construction more quickly but also make the follow-up research work more targeted, avoid repeated research, and reduce the workload of research departments. Second, we conducted a comprehensive survey and research. According to the analysis results of the existing materials, it is important to conduct a general survey and research on the overall, focal and strategic issues of smart courts business applications, data resources, infrastructure, network security, security system, standards and norms within the local courts and major R&D manufacturers by issuing a comprehensive, focused and detailed survey form. The survey form should formally summarize the key issues that need to be considered in the current construction of smart

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courts, which can clearly and objectively inspire the thinking and cognitive judgment of the respondents and facilitate the simple filling-in and batch processing and summary statistics of a large amount of information. Comprehensive census research should not be repeated by the same department or related departments in a similar period of time, which increases the workload of the respondents, yet consistent and high-quality research results may not be obtained. The third is field investigation and research. As the saying goes, seeing is believing. For the construction of smart courts, especially the application status, face-to-face communication and close operation observation are irreplaceable. Therefore, many court leaders now inspect the construction and application of smart courts, often by watching the information operation process directly and experiencing in person the availability, ease of use and differences of information systems. To scientifically formulate the development plan, it is necessary to conduct on-sit research, understand the people’s concern in the litigation service hall, understand the use experience of judges and clerks in their workplaces, experience the interactive effect of the main application systems online, and listen to opinions and suggestions from all sides through meetings and seminars. Due to the rich functions of multiparty video consultation provided by the specific court network and the Internet, consultation and exchange of views can be organized without distance constraints, which greatly improves the efficiency and effectiveness of research. Fourth, data integration and processing were performed. The information construction and application obtained through investigation and research are the basic data reflecting the overall picture of the smart courts and of great value, which must be carefully analyzed and integrated and processed by special tools to form easy-to-understand and easy-to-reuse documents. The current situation analysis in the development plan is normally overall, which does not require attention to the technical structure, function points, number of users and other details of a single system but pays more attention to the issues such as whether the business applications of courts at all levels are complete, whether the functions are complete, whether the systems are interconnected, and how the application effect is. As there might be a lot of repetitive, divergent or lost information in many materials from all aspects and different levels, researchers must simplify the complex, discard the dross and select the essence, eliminate the false and retain the true, summarize and integrate them into views and conclusions that meet the planning requirements. Meanwhile, to effectively support the follow-up requirements analysis, structure design, target image description and other work, special tools should be used to microscopically describe the information system in structural views and tables, incorporate them into the top-level design knowledge base, continuously support the analysis of the composition structure, main capabilities, achievements and shortcomings of the existing system, and provide mature templates for the follow-up work. II.

Major Need Analysis

For development planning research, it is necessary to comprehensively study the major needs of smart courts at present and in the future. The main content should not focus on the system function performance indicators, detailed information interfaces,

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the amount of equipment involved and other details but should focus on major topics such as national strategic guidance, people’s concerns, court construction reform, scientific and technological development and progress, and key system construction. At any time and under any conditions, the national policy is the primary guide for the construction and development of smart courts. The strategy of comprehensive law-based governance of the country provides a programmatic guide for the construction of smart courts. The strategy for building China into a cyberpower, digital China, smart society and the “Internet+” action plan and other national informatization strategies have also provided a series of important guidance for the construction of smart courts. Many national plans also play a large role in the construction of smart courts, such as the inclusion of smart courts in the national informatization development strategy, plans during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, and the inclusion of electronic litigation as an indicator of development, which undoubtedly creates better development conditions for court informatization. In the information age, people have high expectations for the process of judicial activities. Adhering to the people-centered development concept, we must carefully study the concerns of the general public about the work of courts, especially those related to informatization, and prioritize the construction of smart courts. Judicial reform and information construction are the driving forces that promote the modernization of the judicial system and capacity. Therefore, the selfconstruction of people’s courts at all levels has put forward a series of clear requirements for smart courts. At the same time, many judicial reform tasks are based on the use of information technology to achieve reform goals. For example, a series of reform measures centered on strengthening the judicial responsibility system during the 13th Five-Year Plan period are complementary to the construction of information technology. Therefore, the plan for the construction of smart courts must give full consideration of the requirements of court construction and reform. The rapid development of electronic information technology has had a significant impact on the structure, application field and operation mode of smart court information systems. For example, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, cloud computing technology completely changed the structure mode and service capability of the information infrastructure of smart courts. Mobile interconnection technology has promoted the wide application of mobile electronic litigation throughout the country, and artificial intelligence technology has provided all-around smart assistance for the trial of cases. It can be expected that blockchain technology will further promote the extension of the court information system to the economic field during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period. Therefore, paying attention to the development trend of information technology, studying and analyzing its possible influence on the information system of smart courts can help us to predict many construction needs of smart courts. After years of construction, many backbone information systems have been formed in the smart courts system, such as trial case handling systems, enforcement command systems, enforcement case handling systems, big data management and service platforms, four judicial open platforms and China Mobile WeCourt, which play an irreplaceable and important role in the court’s business work. To study the

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development plan, the development needs in terms of coverage, depth, function and performance must be further tapped according to the construction and application of these backbone systems, and altogether, they will be the main demands for the construction of smart courts in the new stage. III.

Problem Orientation

Demand analysis mainly studies and demonstrates the development direction of the system from an external perspective, whereas problem orientation focuses on the internal state of the system to analyze and summarize the focus of construction and application. Just as no one is perfect, any product, system or project might have some deficiencies caused by subjective and objective conditions at any time. Studying and analyzing the deficiencies and shortcomings of system engineering in development planning and identifying major and urgent problems will help clarify the key direction of construction and application. Specifically, we can start from the following aspects. The first aspect is the analysis of construction content. Smart court information systems are large in scale and cover a wide range of areas. Regardless of how well they are considered, there will always be missing links or elements in the construction of infrastructure, application systems, data resources and network security and missing links in top-level design, training promotion and operation and maintenance support. Some missing parts and deficiencies often have a significant impact on the construction and application, which need to be filled in time in the follow-up development. The second aspect is the analysis of functional performance. Smart courts support various business applications through the service functions provided by various information systems, and many differences may exist in the basic functions of information systems with the same name developed by different manufacturers or even the same manufacturer for different courts. The functions of the same system will also vary greatly due to the differences in technical level, implementation mode, hardware support and application environment, which will directly affect the user’s operation experience. It is necessary to analyze and identify the essential gaps in the key functions and performance of important systems and seek solutions. Third, there is a lack of analysis of application effectiveness. Improving the effectiveness of application is the fundamental purpose of building smart courts. People have clear application effect expectations for intelligent service, intelligent trial, intelligent enforcement, intelligent management and transparent justice and other business application systems at the beginning of construction. However, after online operation, the applications may be far from achieving the desired effect due to incorrect concepts, unreasonable designs, inconvenient operations, inadequate training, etc. Such key problems must be addressed to solve them and avoid further recurrence. Fourth, the analysis of the overall state. Smart courts information systems are very complex, and there might be problems such as interfaces that are not interconnected, information that is not interoperable, data that are not shared, business that is not coordinated or other problems. After those problems are focused on and solved, the efficiency of the system can be greatly improved.

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Fifth, comparison analysis is insufficient. In recent years, court leaders around the country have devoted much effort to the construction of smart courts and have achieved remarkable results. However, some court leaders may find it difficult to continue to carry forward the construction of smart courts from the local court perspective. In this case, consulting the system construction and its application of other courts or other government departments would inspire them to promote higher quality development. IV.

Overall Guiding Concept

A development plan is the guiding outline for the construction and application of smart courts for a long time in the future, whereas the guiding concept is the most refined summary of the whole development plan. Therefore, from the overall situation, an outline and concrete guiding concept should be formulated. First, all the work should be guided by the national policy. The construction of smart courts is inseparable from the grand background of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The principles and policies of the Party Central Committee in governing the country have kept pace with the times and constantly enriched the development of domestic and international situations. The construction of smart courts must also keep pace with the times, focus on the major decision and deployment of the Party Central Committee, conform to the overall layout of the national economic development plan, and meet the requirements of the national strategic planning. Second, the main work of the court should be the focus. Building smart courts promotes the modernization of the work of the court. With the deepening of comprehensive law-based governance, court construction and judicial reform, the focus and standards of the reform and development of the people’s courts have been constantly expanded and upgraded. The construction of smart courts must always take meeting judicial needs and serving users as the fundamental starting point and focus on the prominent needs of court modernization to keep the correct direction of construction in the long-term and complex construction process. Third, macro development thinking should be kept in mind. The more complicated and complex the construction and application tasks faced by the development of smart courts are, the more important it is to grasp the objective laws of information construction and to form a reasonable, concise and practical development concept in accordance with the principle of clear interface and mutual support to reach a consensus from all aspects and guide the decomposition and refinement of specific work tasks. Fourth, there are many detailed and specific work objectives in every period and content of the construction of smart courts. It is necessary to combine the requirements of the modernization of the people’s courts with the development trend of emerging information technology, brainstorming and summarizing the development of the whole smart courts in the medium and long term in the future, to achieve great improvement over the existing system in terms of technology, architecture, coverage and application and provide important guidance for the description of target images in various specific fields.

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Target Image Description

The development plan of court informatization construction is mainly aimed at the smart courts information system. Although the system is complex, it is still a system with clear boundaries and clear hierarchy, and there is a specific system form anytime and anywhere. Therefore, for a future information system, grasping the structural form and main characteristics of the system and describing the concrete target images are the necessary prerequisites for better guiding the follow-up construction, which is also a very challenging task in development planning. First, the challenge lies in the fact that we should reflect the overall picture of the system and the decomposition relationship through a series of architecture views. The overall view should cover each subview, and the subviews should correspond to each construction task. As the smart courts information system always has a specific entity form, a system image at any time theoretically exists. However, due to the huge scale and complex relationship, it is difficult for planners to construct the specific image of the system, which may lead to the lack of a comprehensive understanding of the future system and affect the quality of planning itself and its subsequent application. The challenge is that the target image must not only reflect the main components of the whole system but also clarify the important relationships between the components. The most often overlooked and the most difficult aspect of the target image description is the description of the interrelationships between the components. However, the information system is composed of a series of components with specific functions through the interaction relationship between them, and ignoring the interaction may lead to the ignorance of the main logic and mechanism of the system. Just as information exchange, data sharing and business collaboration often focus on establishing or optimizing some interaction relationship, improving the relationship between the various components is the focus of construction that needs special attention in development planning. The challenge is also reflected in the need to scientifically and reasonably reflect the phased evolution of the target image. Medium- and long-term development goals often need to be achieved in stages on the basis of existing construction, so the target image must be able to intuitively show the characteristics of the system state in each stage and better show the rationality of the whole planning and the accessibility of the goals in each stage. VI.

Decomposition of Work Tasks

Development planning focuses on answering the question of “what to do”. Therefore, according to the guiding concept, basic principles, development ideas and target images, a series of basic tasks covering all aspects of court informatization construction are decomposed and formed, which is the main content of studying and demonstrating high-quality development planning. Task decomposition should follow the following principles: First, it should be fully covered. System construction is the main content of information construction, which should be reasonably arranged according to different

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categories, such as infrastructure, application system, data resources, network security and operation and maintenance support. Top-level design is an important work that affects the overall situation of informatization and runs through the whole life cycle of the system, so it also needs to be implemented with the corresponding key tasks. The vitality of the information system lies in the application, so in addition to the design and construction tasks, it is necessary to clarify the corresponding measures and tasks for improving the application effectiveness. In addition, the construction and application of information technology cannot be separated from various aspects of the security conditions, and strengthening the security conditions should also be a key task in the construction of smart courts in a certain period. Second, we should adhere to the key points. The task of building smart courts is complicated and involves a large number of tasks. Priority should be given to tasks that can directly reflect the development ideas, have a profound impact on the realization of the objectives, effectively meet the key business needs of the people and court staff, or solve key and difficult problems and have the significance of affecting the whole system structure to have them play a guiding role in the construction of smart courts. Third, coordination and balance are needed. The development plan lays out the future development from a macro perspective, and all tasks should form a corresponding connection with the development ideas and target images. Key tasks contained in each category of information construction and application should be balanced. Meanwhile, the decomposition of each task should also be balanced, and no obvious disparity in terms of workload among different tasks is acceptable, so it is necessary to carefully integrate or decompose various related tasks. Fourth, the work should be feasible. The description of each task does not need to elaborate a lot of background or reasons, but it must be concise, clear and specific to describe the work content and the objectives to be achieved, to truly highlight the theme, provide clear and feasible guidance for the subsequent system design and construction, and provide sufficient basis for regular evaluation during the implementation of the plan. VII.

Step by Step Implementation

Medium- and long-term planning generally takes three to five years, and each key task obviously needs to be implemented across the year. With the rapid development of smart court construction, a large number of design, research and development, deployment and promotion tasks need to be completed every year. If a key task in the development plan is difficult to achieve the progressive target annually, it shows that the planner might not truly know the task. Therefore, the last important step of planning research and demonstration is to form annual implementation objectives for each task to obtain a more detailed and comprehensive implementation path for the construction of smart courts in the future. The following aspects should be considered.

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The first is the progression of work content. A complex task usually includes a number of interconnected tasks. Program design, system research and development, online deployment, pilot application, comprehensive promotion and so on are essential tasks, and they can be carried out step by step. The second is the progression of implementation scope. A key task in the construction of smart courts will involve many courts. As the conditions are different, it is difficult to achieve the goal in a short period of time, and the implementation is bound to be gradual, from the pilot scale to the large scale. To form a scientific and reasonable implementation process, the key tasks must be carried out with consideration of the difficulty of the tasks and the actual situation of the court, and the scope of the annual goal should be clearly defined. The third is the progression of functional performance. The smart courts information system needs to achieve a series of specified functions and performance indicators. However, the practice of system development shows that many functions and performances cannot be achieved in one step. In general, the information system can gradually be carried out online first on a pilot basis, then to local application and then to large-scale promotion when it meets the main functional requirements and the performance indicators. Meanwhile, it can be upgraded and improved in the process of application. Therefore, the implementation stages of the development plan also include the step-by-step progression of system function and performance. Fourth, the progression of the application effect. Any information system, especially those that have reached a certain scale, will inevitably have a process of continuous improvement in user frequency, proficiency and other application effects. Therefore, the step-by-step realization of the development planning objectives of smart courts needs to be implemented into the gradual improvement of the application results of various system construction achievements. VIII.

Annual Revision

The vitality of development planning lies in its constant implementation. However, medium- and long-term development plans are usually taken seriously when they are first formulated and issued and then shelved for a long time. The first reason is that major and arduous tasks often require both deployment and implementation; however, the deployment of development plans only accounts for a small proportion in the whole implementation. It is not easy to adhere to the long-term plan for a long time. The second reason is that, due to the lack of regular evaluation and timely correction, people tend to fall into the routine track without realizing it, and scientific and rational development planning is difficult to play its due role. The third is that, due to the limitation of planners’ understanding and ability, there will always be much content in the development plan that may not meet the development requirements, which will easily lead to the consequences of giving up. Fourth, with the rapid development of comprehensive comprehensive law-based governance, judicial system reform, court work and advanced information technology, the key tasks and priorities of smart court construction will also change greatly in medium- and longterm implementation, so the development plan also needs to be adjusted in time. Therefore, the establishment of a mechanism for annual evaluation and revision is

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necessary to maintain the vitality of the development plan of smart courts. In this regard, the following key links need to be considered. The first is the collection and monitoring of court planning at all levels. Although the research and compilation of the development plan of the smart courts has gone through the process of extensive consultation, it is limited to the level of graphic communication and lacks sufficient practical test. In the planning implementation, we must pay attention to collecting and monitoring the construction, operation and application of the development plan and determine the application effect and existing problems in time to master the actual effect of development planning more comprehensively. The second is annual target evaluation and analysis. As the development plan has been decomposed into annual targets for key tasks, the relevant responsible departments must analyze and evaluate the achievement of the annual targets for each key task at the end of each year according to the data collected and mastered, including the internal and third-party evaluation reports, investigate the main problems affecting the achievement of the targets, and form corresponding countermeasures. Third, according to the latest development needs of the court’s central work and important business, as well as the innovative achievements of advanced information technology, the key tasks listed in the development plan should be analyzed regularly, and the corresponding updating should be made. Fourth, at the beginning of each year, according to the evaluation of the previous year’s objectives and the development needs of the new situation, we should revise and adjust the corresponding contents of the development plan, adjust their progress indicators, and form an updated development plan based on this to keep pace with the times. Fifth, the annual revision of the development plan mainly focuses on the optimization and adjustment of key tasks, whereas the guiding concept and construction objectives of the smart courts should be fully implemented from beginning to end, and the system framework and development ideas of the system construction should not be changed greatly. When the national five-year plan is about to be completed, it is necessary to reorganize large-scale research and demonstrations and formulate a new five-year development plan for smart courts in accordance with the development requirements of the state and the people’s courts in the new era.

3.2 Overall Design To understand the key role of overall design in system engineering, we should first distinguish the relationship between overall design and top-level design, development planning and system design. Overall design is an important part of top-level design, but it is not the whole of it. For a long time, people have recognized the importance of top-level design for the development of complex giant systems, so they often regard macrolevel research and demonstration, such as policy formulation and development planning, as the

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important content of top-level design and regard the formulation of standards to regulate and restrict the specific implementation as the content of top-level design. However, the work at these levels is still relatively broad, and it is difficult to form rigid constraints on the implementation of each part of the system to promote optimization. Therefore, it is necessary to further clarify the relevant issue through the overall design to ensure the effective integration of each part of the system. The most concise difference between overall design and development planning is that the latter focuses on “what to do”, while the former focuses on “how to do”. In view of the macro significance of development planning, it is difficult to require it to demonstrate and define in depth the complex relationships between the various systems that constitute the system. However, it is also difficult to carry out the R&D and construction of each part of the system directly according to the development plan. According to the development ideas and key tasks proposed in the development plan, the interface relationship and action mechanism among the components must be further clarified through the overall design to rigidly restrict the R&D and construction of each part of the system and ensure the optimization and integration of the whole system. Compared with the specific project or system design, the overall design of the system is undoubtedly at the top level. This is because the specific system design needs to consider its internal structure and working mechanism, while the overall design of the system only needs to clarify the relationship between the systems, which is also the main reason for bringing the overall design into the top-level design of the system. In fact, without a comprehensive overall system design, many system interface relationships cannot be set up at all, and the formulation of standards and specifications belonging to the top-level design category is also difficult to be comprehensive and accurate. Finally, it should be emphasized that the overall design of the smart courts system is not a phased work because the smart courts information system has existed for a long time and will be developed continuously. The overall design must be carried out continuously in accordance with the engineering method and constantly incorporate new contents to form a system construction drawing that keeps pace with the time, which will provide normative, detailed and effective engineering guidance for all new construction, renovation and integration work. I.

Technical Reference Model

The technical reference model is the overall framework to guide the system design, which is formed by highly summarizing and abstracting the information system. In 1987, Zachman (J. A. Zachman) put forward the model framework of large and medium-sized information systems in the Information System Architecture Framework, which provides an important reference for many information system engineering designs. The Zachman model is a general model for all industries and pays little attention to the interactions between the components of the system. In fact, since Zachman, many other industries have proposed similar information system technology reference models, but they do not pay much attention to the interaction between the various components. In the long-term practice of information system

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engineering, the author has noticed that the realization of the goal of the whole system includes not only the various systems participating in the system but also the interaction between various systems. To a large extent, the interaction between the systems is as important as these systems. Therefore, the technical reference model must fully support the analysis of the interaction between the systems. The technical reference model of smart courts information systems not only takes into account the general characteristics of general information systems but also focuses on the main business application systems of smart courts, including nine components: intelligent trial, intelligent enforcement, intelligent service, intelligent management, big data management and knowledge service platform, smart cloud network, integrated security, operation and maintenance guarantee, and top-level design. The biggest difference from other technical reference models is that it specifies the interaction relationship between various components, which we call the information relationship, as shown in Fig. 3.1.

Fig. 3.1 Technical reference model

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Intelligent trial, intelligent enforcement, intelligent service and intelligent management are the main embodiments for smart courts to serve all kinds of users. The information relationship between them is mainly information flow. At the same time, they all have information flow relationships with big data management and knowledge service platforms and are supported by smart cloud networks, integrated security and operation and maintenance guarantee services. The big data management and knowledge service platform gathers all kinds of business data and rich knowledge resources and provides data/knowledge services for various application systems, such as intelligent trial, intelligent enforcement, intelligent service and intelligent management. A smart cloud network is the sum of all kinds of information infrastructure, providing basic services such as computing, storage, database and communication network for all kinds of application systems, big data management and knowledge service platforms, integrated security and operation and maintenance support systems. An integrated security system is a collection of systems that realize identity authentication, border protection, security supervision and other security functions and provides information security services for other systems. The operation and maintenance support system is a collection of information systems that ensure system operation, handle system failures, evaluate operation quality and efficiency, and provide operation and maintenance support services for other types of systems. Top-level design is a collection of planning, design, evaluation and other work, instead of a materialized part of the system, so it does not need to be included in the technical reference model. The main consideration of incorporating the top-level design into the smart courts technology reference model is to emphasize its important leading role in the construction of various information systems. II.

Information Relationship Design

The information system can run smoothly only through interaction between various components. For further specification, we define these interactions as informational relationships, which reflect the content of the interface and the mechanism of action between components. An important task of the overall design is to clarify the information relationship between the components to rigidly restrict the development and construction of each part of the system and ensure the effective integration of the whole system. Looking at all kinds of information systems, the information relationship can be divided into eight types, including information flow, data/knowledge service, computing service, storage service, database service, communication network service, information security service and operation and maintenance guarantee service, which can be further subdivided into 19 subcategories (as shown in Table 3.1). Information flow is the most common information relationship. Many application systems process, display and support business applications mainly through the exchange of information flow. The content of information flow varies with different business applications. As the demand for various application systems for specialized data or knowledge platforms is not limited to specific business data content, a wide range of data push and knowledge-driven service capabilities is

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Table 3.1 Types of information system interaction Serial number

Interaction type

Interaction type subcategory

Description

1

Information flow

__________

Information exchanged between business application systems, which can be generally classified according to business types. For example, in the military information system, the information flow includes intelligence information, command and control information, environmental information, weapon information and so on; In the court information system, the information flow includes litigation service information, trial information, enforcement information and judicial management information

2

Data/ knowledge service

__________

Data or knowledge content provided by data and knowledge platform, which can be generally classified according to business type. For example, in the court information system, data services include trial and enforcement data, judicial personnel data, judicial research data, judicial administration data, information management data, etc.; Knowledge service includes descriptive, regular, rule-based, and entity relationship knowledge services

3

Computing services

Local computing services

The capabilities provided by computing units such as CPUs and GPUs in a complex information system, mainly including local and cloud computing services

4

Cloud host services

(continued)

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Table 3.1 (continued) Serial number

Interaction type

Interaction type subcategory

5

Storage service

Local storage service

Database services

Local database services

6

7 8

9 10

11

The capability provided by Cloud storage services storage system units such as disk arrays and hard disks in a complex information system, mainly including local and cloud storage services

Cloud database services

Communication network services

Information security services

Description

Data storage management capabilities provided by relational and nonrelational databases in complex information systems, mainly including local and cloud database services

Local network services Transmission capabilities provided by wired or wireless means of communication in complex information systems. In the court information system, the communication network includes Internet, specific confidential network, specific mobile network, specific external network and specific court network

Cloud network services

Network security

Services security protection services for systems or devices within the network, such as cipher machine, intrusion detection, security auditing, etc.

12

Border security services

Security protection services for network interconnection of different security levels, such as firewall, network isolation, etc.

13

Platform security service

Security protection services for computers and storage systems, such as virus killing, vulnerability scanning, storage security (continued)

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Table 3.1 (continued) Serial number

Interaction type subcategory

Description

14

Security and secrecy management service

The service is oriented to information security monitoring, management and other services, such as security situation awareness, security policy management, certificate management

15

Identity authentication The service is aimed at service identifying and authenticating the identity of system users

16

Interaction type

Operation and maintenance support services

Infrastructure operation and maintenance services

Operation and maintenance support service for servers, communication networks and other infrastructure

17

Application system operation and maintenance service

Operation and maintenance support service for business application systems

18

Data resource operation and maintenance service

Operation and maintenance guarantee service for data resource

19

Information security operation and maintenance service

Operation and maintenance guarantee service for information security systems or equipment

needed, and data/knowledge services are actually an important abstraction of the capabilities provided by data and knowledge platforms. Data and knowledge platforms provide different data/knowledge services for different application systems. Computing services, storage services, database services, communication network services, information security services and operation and maintenance support services are indispensable supporting requirements for the safe operation of various information systems. Different information systems have different requirements for these supporting services and need precise support. The information relationship design method based on special tools, as shown in Fig. 3.2, has been formed in the construction practice of smart court system projects. The method comprises the following steps: First, listing all first-level component contents of an information system, including the application system, data resources, infrastructure, network security and operation and maintenance guarantee, through an Excel table, and then filling in specific information flow or service contents between every two components in the table to form all first-level information relationships of the whole system. It can be seen that by establishing the information relationship

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Fig. 3.2 Comparison between table and diagram regarding information relation

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of the system in this way, each component can be infinitely expanded, the information relationship between two components can be easily filled in and modified, and the hierarchical decomposition of the system can also be expressed through the same table or different tables, which is an effective method to support the long-term maintenance of information relationship design results. We have developed a dedicated table-graph conversion tool that can select the set of components to be considered from the entire information relationship table to form an information relationship graph between the elements, greatly improving the visualization of the information relationship design results and efficiently supporting the research and analysis of engineers and technicians at different stages of planning, design, development and testing. Using this set of overall design methods and tools, we can build a reusable, expandable and maintainable overall design database and chart library to ensure the consistency and relevance of design data and add a powerful tool for the construction of smart courts systems. III.

Main Indicators Demonstration

An information system has to achieve a series of corresponding business and technical indicators before meeting the construction and use requirements of users. Therefore, the main indicator is an important goal of the construction of the smart courts system and a key element to measure the quality of various smart courts information systems. The demonstration of the main indicator is the core content of the overall design of the smart courts. The main indicators are generally divided into two parts: function and performance. Choosing an appropriate indicator system and quantifying it are the central content of the main indicator demonstration, which should follow these principles: First, the principle of pertinence. The indicator should be task-oriented, and different indicators should be used for different tasks of the smart courts. The second is the principle of consistency. The same indicators of different systems in the smart courts system should have the same definition and connotation. Third, the principle of measurability. The selected indicators can be expressed quantitatively as far as possible and can be obtained through mathematical calculation, platform testing and empirical statistics. Fourth, the principle of objectivity. The selected indicators can objectively reflect the changes in the internal state of the smart courts system, express the ability characteristics of the information system, and do not change with the change in observers. In fact, the main indicators of an information system can be embodied in its specific ability to input, process and output information, and the measurement indicators of information can directly reflect the main indicators of an information system. The smart courts information system processes and outputs information that exists objectively in it. The paper Research on the Model and Measurement of Objective Information published by the author puts forward the definition model, basic properties and main measurements of information in the objective world, forming the basic framework of objective information theory, which has also been verified in the demonstration of the main indicators of the smart courts information system.

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According to the idea of objective information theory, the six-tuple model of information includes six elements, such as subject, state occurrence time, state function, carrier, reflection time and reflection function, from which nine kinds of measurements of information can be defined, such as coverage, detail, delay, volume, authenticity, etc. Based on this, many main indicators of information systems can be directly derived from the actual situation of smart courts. It should be emphasized that the indicators listed in Table 3.2 do not fully cover the information system of smart courts, especially for support and guarantee systems such as infrastructure, network security and operation and maintenance guarantees. The main indicators may not directly correspond to the measurement of the output information but inevitably indirectly affect the measurement of the output information in various ways, which requires targeted research and demonstration. Only in this way can a scientific and reasonable indicator system be obtained. IV.

Subsystem Design

An information system is always composed of many different parts, especially the one that contains many systems. Therefore, for the information system architecture, the subsystem design briefly describes the various systems it contains. For the information system, the subsystem design describes each subsystem separately. In any case, subsystem design is an important part of the overall design of an information system or architecture. If the internal structure, function, performance and external interface relationship of each component cannot be summarized, it is difficult to form a comprehensive understanding of the whole system. Information systems can be divided in different ways, such as information flow links, system forms, and application fields. According to information flow links, an information system can be divided into information acquisition, transmission, processing, storage, distribution and use subsystems. According to the system form, information systems can be divided into embedded information systems and independent information systems. According to the business application field, the information system can be divided into common information infrastructure, general business function system, special business application system, etc. According to the technical reference model, we divide the smart courts information system into eight important components: intelligent trial, intelligent enforcement, intelligent service, intelligent management, big data management and knowledge service platform, smart cloud network, integrated security and operation and maintenance guarantee. Subsystem design can give a brief description of these eight components. The first task of subsystem design is to summarize the internal structure of the subsystem with diagrams and words, which can form the secondary decomposition of the whole system and support the analysis of the rationality and feasibility of the whole system structure. The second task is to summarize the main functions of the subsystem and support the analysis of the decomposition and implementation of the main functional indicators of the whole system. The third task is to summarize the main performance indicators of the subsystem and support the analysis of the decomposition and accessibility of the performance indicators of the whole system. The fourth task is to summarize the external interface relationship of the subsystem

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Table 3.2 Relationship between information metrics and some main indicators of smart courts Serial number

Name

Meaning

1

The breadth of Coverage scope of In general, the information information wider the coverage, subject the higher the value of the corresponding information system

The scope and quantity of courts covered by information source

2

The degree of fineness of information

The degree to which the information can be traced to specific judges and cases

3

The duration The intensity and of information span of the occurance of information

In general, the The sample rate of higher the all kinds of frequency of business in courts information collection, the higher the value of the corresponding information system

4

The richness The richness of of information the information subject

In general, the richer the content of the subject reflected by the information system, the higher the value

The number of types of court data resource catalogs; the types of human–computer interaction, state display and situation display of the information system

5

The storage of information

The storage space required by information

In general, the larger the volume that the information system needs and can store and process, the higher the value

The sotrage and processing capacities of the information system of the court

6

The delay of information

It reflects the delay of time to the actual occurrence time of a certain state

Generally, the shorter the output delay of information system, the higher the value

The output delay of information system and the response time of user operation

The degree to which the information subject can be broken down into details

Interpretation of the meaning

In general, the finer the detail, the higher the value of the corresponding information system

Corresponding indicator example

(continued)

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Table 3.2 (continued) Serial number

Name

7

Meaning

Interpretation of the meaning

Corresponding indicator example

The ubiquity The distribution of information scope of the carrier of information

In most cases, the wider the scope of information released by the information system, the higher the value; There are also scenarios in which the narrower the scope of information release, the higher the value

The user range and click traffic distribution range of the court information system

8

The The difference authenticity of between the state information of the subject reflected by information and the actual state of subject

In general, the higher the authenticity of the information possessed and output by the information system, the higher the value

The accuracy of data of various courts, cases, files and videos

9

The suitability The degree to of information which information accurately meets the needs of users

In general, the higher the accuracy of information, the higher the value

User satisfaction of various information systems in smart courts

and support the analysis of the corresponding implementation of the information relationship within the system. It can be seen that the subsystem design does not need to be detailed or trivial, and the requirements can be met as long as the analysis and demonstration of the replicability of the whole system can be fully supported at the overall design level. V.

Analysis of Key Issues

System construction faces a series of difficult problems, and these problems may differ in terms of attribute, degree of difficulty and scope of influence. If the key issues that may affect the realization of the objectives at the initial stage of the project implementation are not fully understood, many unexpected problems may occur in the construction process, which will affect the progress of the project implementation or even cause some or all of the objectives to be difficult to achieve. Therefore, the overall design must analyze the key problems that may affect the realization of the information system construction objectives, put forward the corresponding solutions and schemes, and carry out a more adequate demonstration according to the priorities

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to ensure the implementation of construction. In case there are problems, it could also be carried out in an orderly manner. The analysis of key problems in the overall design of the smart courts information system mainly focuses on the analysis and discovery of key technologies, management, promotion and application problems faced in the construction of the system and puts forward corresponding solutions and measures. Among them, the key technical problems may include the shortness, structure, completeness, conflict, redundancy, repeatability and isolation of the system, as well as the technical measures that need to be taken in advance, such as research, calculation and test verification. Key management issues may include human resources, funding, schedule and project management issues faced in the implementation of the project, as well as management measures such as resource integration, reward and punishment mechanisms and comprehensive support. The promotion and application problems may include the problems of deployment, user training, large traffic impact that may be faced after product development, as well as the steady promotion mechanisms such as local pilot, typical demonstration and emergency response that need to be adopted. VI.

Formulation of Implementation Plan

The last important task of the overall design of the smart courts information system is to formulate the implementation plan of the system engineering, ensure the feasibility of the design scheme and guide the follow-up project management through the form of roadmap and timetable. The implementation process of smart courts information system construction is the same as that of general e-government project construction, which can be basically divided into different stages, such as demand analysis, system design, research and development, test and verification, deployment online, promotion and training, operation and maintenance, and improvement and upgrading. On the other hand, as mentioned above, the smart courts information system needs to be decomposed into several subsystems, and each subsystem in the construction and implementation will go through the above different stages successively, meanwhile, subject to the impact of many factors, such as the urgency of demand, the maturity of technology and the intensity of investment. The main content of the whole project implementation plan can be clearly presented through two-dimensional graphics such a plan network diagram. It should be noted that the factors affecting the implementation of the whole project are not limited to the construction progress of each entity component but also include quality management measures, test environment, document configuration management, investment and human resources allocation, so the implementation plan must include the progress of all these elements and their relationship with related tasks. Only in this way can a complete plan link be formed to ensure that the whole engineering system is interlinked and seamless.

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3.3 Standards and Specifications It is the basic requirement of general system engineering to formulate and comply with a series of standards or specifications, support system development and integration, and improve the connectivity, modularity, universality, interoperability, collaboration and reconfigurability of products. Data standards are the first consideration in the construction of court informatization. The 05 and 09 legal standards that have been widely used by courts at all levels are data standards, which have played a prominent role in the construction of case management systems and big data platforms. Since the 13th Five-Year Plan, the standards and norms of smart courts have expanded the data content according to the business norms of courts and expanded to application systems, infrastructure, network security, operation and maintenance, and process management, forming a relatively comprehensive FYB system, adopting many practical measures that still need to be further promoted. First, relying on domestic standardization experts and superior enterprises that have been engaged in the construction of court informatization for a long time, a professional team engaged in the research and compilation of standards and norms for smart courts has been organized and established. Second, based on the characteristics and requirements of specialization, regularization and the process of judicial work, cooperation should be actively built with the court tribunals to study and formulate business standards, and as a fundamental basis, technical standards and norms should be compiled as soon as possible. Third, it is necessary to actively implement the standards, adhere to the principle of steady progress and scientific measures, and successfully implement the 2015 legal standards in 32 higher people’s courts and the people’s courts of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. Fourth, it is necessary to constantly enrich the compilation of standards and norms into the key objectives of the construction of smart courts every year and allocate special funds to ensure that the standard and normative system continues to expand according to the urgent needs of construction and application. Fifth, innovation-driven, timely absorption of scientific and technological progress. Cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, blockchains and other new technologies in the application of court information systems should be guaranteed to be transformed into corresponding standards and norms as soon as possible to promote the further promotion of follow-up construction. Sixth, gradual improvement. Due to the relatively weak foundation, there might exist many flaws in the standardization and integrity of some standards in the initial stage, so the working team should strive to constantly improve the standard system of smart courts. I.

General Basic Standards

General basic standards mainly cover technical standards that play a general supporting role in the standardization work of smart courts, including terminology, subject words, standardization work guidelines, etc. At present, the Supreme People’s Court has organized the compilation and publication of three general basic standards, namely, the Standard System Table of People’s Court Informatization, the

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Structure and Compilation Rules of Court Informatization Standards and the Basic Terminology of Court Informatization. The Standard System Table of People’s Court Informatization is the basis for the revision of the whole court informatization standard system. From the three perspectives of basic standards, technical standards and management standards, it plans the main standard system that needs to be formed and followed in the construction of smart courts, including the court standards organized or planned by the Supreme People’s Court, as well as international standards or advanced domestic standards adopted after analysis and research. A total of 127 standards are currently planned, among which 27 are national standards, 3 are industry standards and 97 are court informatization industry standards compiled by the Supreme People’s Court. It not only lists the issued standards and the standards being compiled but also contains the standards in the future, covering various business such as court information data, application, infrastructure, network security and operation and maintenance guarantee, and fully supports the implementation of the smart courts system project. The Standard System Table of People’s Court Informatization reflects the overall picture of the court’s informatization standard work and the gaps in the system. It provides a basis to coordinate human, material and financial resources to formulate standard preparation plans and carry out standard compilation work according to the main direction and priorities. According to the actual needs of the construction of smart courts and the progress of relevant research, the general basic standards of smart courts will continue to be supplemented and improved. II.

Data Technical standards

The research and compilation of data technical standards is the initial work of the court’s standards formulation and revision. As early as 2002, the Supreme People’s Court compiled and issued the Technical Specification for the Construction of People’s Court Information Network System, which pioneered the revision of court informatization standards. In 2005 and 2009, it was revised successively, and it focused on the standardization and unification of the content and structure of data resources. In 2016, while establishing the information standard system of the people’s court for the first time, the Supreme People’s Court also organized the compilation and issuance of more than 20 data technical standards, such as the Technical Specification for Case Type Code, the Technical Specification for Case Classification and Code, and the Quality Requirements for Trial Information Data. It makes detailed provisions on the data content, data format and data quality of judicial information resources, supports data sharing and exchange of various information systems, and provides solid standard support for the construction of the national judicial information resource bank and the research and development of court application systems at all levels. At the end of 2016, under the strong impetus of the Supreme People’s Court, the judicial statistical reports of the courts were automatically generated based on the big data management and service platform of the people’s court, which relied on the unified norms of data technical standards and laid a foundation for the follow-up development of high-quality big data aggregation and in-depth analysis.

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At present, 33 data technical standards have been issued, including 21 business entity relationship standards such as Basic Data Information Technical Specification and Criminal Case Information Technical Specification, 8 information classification and code standards such as Case Type Code Technical Specification, 2 information resource exchange standards and 2 data quality technical standards. The business entity relationship standard defines and standardizes the data exchange set and defines the information composition, logical relationship and data structure description of 11 categories of trial and enforcement cases as well as basic data information, petition matters, audio and video application data entity relationships, and information management basic data. It is a logical structure that is different from physical structures such as databases and tables in the actual production environment. Taking the Information Technical Specification for Criminal Cases as an example, it specifies in detail the data information items, data types and code values of various criminal cases at all stages of case handling, such as first-instance trial, second-instance trial, trial supervision, review and compulsory medical treatment. The business entity relationship standard of case information is the basis of information exchange between courts, which can meet the service needs of the court judicial data to achieve connecting and sharing of information exchange and centralized data management. At the same time, the big data management and service platform of the people’s court gathers case information in an all-round way and supports the establishment of data analysis and release mechanisms such as judicial big data reports, monthly reports of trial situations, in-depth research on special topics and public releases of special topics. The Data Quality Requirements for Trial Information defines the methods of data quality inspection and evaluation in courts and clarifies the relevant rules of data governance. The first part puts forward four quality indicators suitable for structured case information, such as “coverage rate, qualification rate, timeliness rate and confidence rate”, and the corresponding calculation methods, and clarifies the data quality requirements of structured case information generated by the court case handling system, which is suitable for the quality inspection and evaluation of structured case information. The second part stipulates the quality requirements, such as normative requirements and inspection methods of unstructured document information in the trial information resource database, and puts forward quality indicators, such as document coverage rate, document timeliness rate and document standardization rate, which are used for data quality management of unstructured document information. Through the implementation of relevant data quality standards, the credibility level of trial data in the courts has been effectively proven to stabilize at more than 99% for a long time. III.

Application Technical Standards

The application technical standards are used to define and standardize the application classification, basic functions and data interfaces of the court information business application system, including general technical standards, application construction

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standards for serving the people, trial and enforcement, and judicial management. At present, 44 standards have been issued, including Classification Standards for Informatization Applications, Technical Requirements for Online Litigation Service Application, Technical Requirements for Court Online Mediation Application and Technical Requirements for Scientific and Technological Courtroom Application. The Classification Standards for Informatization Applications stipulates the unified classification of informatization business applications in courts throughout the country and summarizes the application of the court informatization business from the perspective of serving the people, trial and enforcement and judicial management, thus forming an application system. Informatization business applications consist of 3 types of services, 25 first-level applications and 113 second-level applications. From the perspective of serving the people, 5 types of applications are defined, including judicial transparency, litigation services, judicial publicity, supervision and reporting, and mobile services. From the perspective of serving trial and enforcement, 8 types of applications are defined, including trial, enforcement, petition, management and support. From the perspective of serving judicial management, it defines 12 types of applications, such as administrative affairs, archives, personnel, financial affairs and material. The standards define and explain each application, which solves the problems of insufficient systematicness, standardization and measurability in the construction of the court information business application system in the past. The Technical Requirements for Online Litigation Services Application aims to use the concept of “Internet+” to promote the combination of online and offline litigation services, realize the seamless connection between online information technology services and traditional window services, and effectively reduce the burden on people. Standards guide local courts in building litigation service networks to realize the main functions of information inquiry, litigation guidance, appointment filing, online filing, acceptance of applications, material reception, contact with judges, online reviewing, online complaint and petition, and appointment reception. The Technical Requirements for Scientific and Technological Courtroom Application are applicable to standardizing the data and technical contents of the application of scientific and technological courtrooms and guiding the construction and application of scientific and technological courtrooms. The main contents include the functional requirements, data requirements and technical requirements for the construction of scientific and technological courtrooms, which are used to guide the development of application systems for scientific and technological courtrooms. The functional requirements include basic application functions, equipment control and management. The basic application functions stipulate the requirements of information security management, court session synchronization, evidence display, court session live recording, live broadcast, storage, display on-demand, information sharing, remote court session and mobile scientific and technological courtrooms. Equipment control and management specifies the requirements for equipment control, monitoring, fault detection and alarm, and remote litigation seat management. Meanwhile, it also stipulates the requirements for open interfaces of third-party applications and intercourts interconnection applications.

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3 Top-Level Design

Infrastructure Standards

Infrastructure technical standards are used to regulate the construction of infrastructure such as special information sites, networks and cloud computing in courts. In terms of information technical standards for the construction of special places, five standards have been compiled and issued, namely, Guidelines for the Informatization Construction of Scientific and Technological Courtrooms, Guidelines for the Informatization Construction of Litigation Service Hall, Guidelines for the Informatization Construction of Trial Business Building, Guidelines for Informatization Construction of Circuit Courts and Requirements for Informatization Construction of Information Management Center. They standardize the construction requirements of information equipment configuration, supporting network and supporting software systems in important places such as court litigation service halls. The Guidelines for the Informatization Construction of Litigation Service Hall clearly stipulate the overall objectives and principles, infrastructure requirements, functional requirements, data requirements and construction plans for the construction of litigation service halls and propose the configuration and functional requirements of various service areas, such as litigation guidance, business windows, litigation mediation, petition reception, self-service litigation and convenience services. Considering the differences in the actual construction needs of different types of courts, the different configurations of basic function type, standard function type and extended function type are distinguished. For example, the extended function litigation service hall can be configured with intelligent guidance functions such as self-service registration by parties, intelligent navigation in the hall, and virtual character guidance. In terms of network and cloud computing standards, 3 standards have been compiled and issued, namely, the Domain Name Coding Specification for Specific Court Network, the Technical Specification for Court Cloud Computing Platform Part 1: Specific Cloud, and the Technical Specification for Court Cloud Computing Platform Part 2: Open Cloud. The Domain Name Coding Specification for Specific Court Network stipulates the rules for domain name coding of people’s courts at all levels, which is applicable to the management and access of domain names by people’s courts and requires the unique correspondence between the domain name of a specific court network and the court to avoid the problem of domain name duplication. The main content of the Technical Specification for Court Cloud Computing Platform Part 1: Specific Cloud includes the general requirements, IaaS level requirements, PaaS level requirements, DaaS level requirements, security requirements, operation and maintenance requirements of the court’s specific cloud computing platform. It stipulates that the Supreme People’s Court and the higher people’s courts can rely on the specific court network to build a specific cloud computing platform or rent a cloud computing platform from a service provider and that the court’s office network and the specific cloud platform are connected by a dedicated line. The data exchange between the specific cloud computing platforms of the people’s courts at all levels and other network systems shall meet the security isolation requirements between the court

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network systems, and the data exchange with the open cloud computing platforms shall be carried out through the border switching system. V.

Network Security Standards

Network security standards are used to regulate the security protection of various information systems, as well as the security protection, detection and alarm of access and application, including classified network technical standards and nonclassified network technical standards. At present, the issued standards include Requirements for the Construction of Security Isolation and Information Exchange Platform, Requirements for the Use and Management of Security Isolation and Information Exchange Platform, Standards for Security Protection and Access of Secretrelated Intranet, Standards for the Construction of Secret-related Intranet Trust Service System and Standards for the Development, Deployment and Operation of Secret-related Intranet Application System. According to the development trend of information security technology and the demand and current situation of information exchange between court networks, the Requirements for the Construction of Security Isolation and Information Exchange Platform puts forward a more comprehensive requirement and implementation guide for the construction of security isolation and information exchange platforms. The security isolation and information exchange platform is standardized from three aspects, namely, framework structure, technical requirements and construction requirements. The framework structure specifies the system framework and functional structure of the platform. The technical requirements specify the specific functions and performance indicators, as well as the corresponding security and regulatory requirements. The construction requirements specify the specific construction scope, exchange mode requirements and access requirements. The platform exchange type is only applicable to database exchange and file exchange, not to streaming media data exchange. For the security isolation and exchange of the confidential Intranet, a dual one-way mode was designed, and the means of security protection and isolation were designed and standardized. However, in the actual construction stage, the courts must also prepare a separate design plan in accordance with the requirements of the national secrecy laws and regulations, and according to the principle of “one case, one discussion”, the design plan should be submitted to the secrecy Bureau for review and approval. It is also stipulated that equipment with one-way information import can be constructed only after it has been evaluated and approved. VI.

Operation and Maintenance Guarantee Standards

Operation and maintenance guarantee standards are used to classify the operation and maintenance services, restrict and standardize the service delivery of infrastructure operations and maintenance, data operations and maintenance, application operations and maintenance, security operations and maintenance, and restrict and standardize the construction of quality and efficiency operations and management systems. The standards include the classification specifications of operation and management services, service delivery specifications, quality and efficiency operation and construction specifications, aiming at standardizing the smart courts information system and

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improving operation and maintenance quality and efficiency. At present, the issued standards include 6 items, namely, the Quality and Efficiency Operation and Maintenance Service Specification Part 1: General Principles; Part 2: Infrastructure Operation and Maintenance; Part 3: Security Operation and maintenance; Part 4: Application Operation and maintenance; Part 5: Data operation and maintenance; Part 6: Emergency Treatment. The Quality and Efficiency Operation and Maintenance Service Specification Part 1: General Principles puts forward the model of quality-based operation and maintenance of courts and defines the operation and maintenance service system with key quality and efficiency indicators as the core, infrastructure, application, data and information security as the object, personnel management, process management and resource management as the guarantee, and the PDCA model and quality and efficiency evaluation as the key. It is the general basic requirement for the people’s court to carry out quality and efficiency operation and maintenance services. Among them, personnel management mainly defines the corresponding requirements from the aspects of organizational structure, post responsibilities, personnel reserve, training and assessment of operation and maintenance. Resource management is an important auxiliary means of operation and maintenance services, mainly including service desks, spare parts libraries, knowledge bases and operation and maintenance tools. Process management is an important guarantee for the people’s court to implement quality and efficiency operation and maintenance. By formulating the corresponding management system and service process, the operation and maintenance process and results can be controlled. From Part 2 to Part 6, the routine operation, response support, optimization and improvement, quality and efficiency analysis and other related work contents of five specific operation and maintenance objects, namely, infrastructure, security, data and emergency response, are stipulated to guide the transformation and upgrading of the operation and maintenance work of courts at all levels from intact type to quality and efficiency type.

3.4 Scientific Research Layout With the strong support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the national key R&D plan began to support the construction of smart courts, which created valuable conditions for mobilizing domestic scientific research forces, focusing on the basic, key and overall scientific and technological problems of smart courts, carrying out key research and laying a technical foundation. Scientific research involves basic theory, key technology, key equipment, system integration and cross-border extension at all levels, covering infrastructure, application systems, data resources, network security and operation and maintenance of various categories. The work layout is based on development planning and overall design, and the main results directly support the preparation of standards and specifications, as well as the development of various systems. It is an important link in the top-level design of smart courts.

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In the scientific research work of smart courts, special attention needs to be paid to the following principles. First, it is necessary to always focus on the difficulties and hard tasks in the application, to be devoted to solving the urgent technical problems faced by smart courts, and to effectively prevent the deviation between scientific research and actual construction that often occurs. The second is integration. It is necessary to organize scientific research and judicial experts to jointly study and tackle key problems to ensure that all work not only conforms to the characteristics of judicial law but also meets the requirements of system reform, which reflects the pace of technological change. Third, innovation. It is necessary to have courage to explore the popularization and application of advanced technology represented by artificial intelligence in the judicial field, not only to meet the needs of modernization of trial and enforcement but also to promote the development of advanced science and technology. Fourth, integration. It is necessary to attach great importance to the key technical issues that have long limited the development of smart courts, such as the unification of various system portals, information sharing and collaborative linkage. The research results must be integrated and verified by the smart courts laboratory and at the same time tested in the information systems above the jurisdiction of the higher people’s court. Fifth, standardization. It is necessary to not only make full use of the advanced technological achievements created by scientific research work itself but also attach great importance to the standardized demonstration, research, trial production and testing mode of scientific research work and extend it to the development and construction of general systems to improve the overall scientific and technological level of the smart courts system project. I.

Innovation of Theory and Method

It is a natural process for human beings to understand and transform the world from practice to theory, then to practice, and constantly iterate and upgrade. Theoretical methods are not only the summary of practical experience but also the conscious force to guide and promote higher-level practice. Smart courts system engineering follows the universal law of nature, and theoretical and methodological innovations can be constantly produced in the practice of courts at all levels. More importantly, it needs to be refined and achieve breakthroughs through scientific, accurate and standardized research and tackling key problems and form basic theoretical achievements that are modeled, replicable and easy to popularize to promote new system engineering in a wider scope and at a higher level and make greater contributions to justice for the people, fair justice, modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity, and scientific development of information systems engineering. The construction of smart courts is bound to be guided and restricted by legal theory, and the development of legal theory in the information age will undoubtedly have a tremendous impact on the implementation of the smart courts system project. Experts in the field of law and information science and technology have extensively joined forces to study in depth the mechanism and reform drive of emerging information technologies such as the Internet, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and blockchains in judicial activities such as ascertaining facts, impartial adjudication, judicial supervision, transparent justice, facilitating the people and

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resolving disputes in different ways, and strive to build an Internet-based judiciary mode and legal system with Chinese characteristics. It will not only better lead the construction and application of smart courts but also contribute Chinese wisdom to the world judicial civilization in the information age. The construction and application of smart courts is a system engineering for largescale information systems. Experts in the field of information system engineering science and technology should be invited to innovate the basic theory and methods about multidepartment business collaboration requirement modeling, cross-system interoperability and collaboration technology standards, overall design for mixed system structure, multigranularity complex system simulation, large-scale heterogeneous system integration and evaluation, function and performance display based on multisource business information integration, and large-scale information system engineering management. All the work will lay a strong engineering and scientific foundation for supporting and promoting the construction and application of smart courts. The focus of the construction and application of smart courts is the information generated and relied on by various judicial business activities. Taking advantage of the integration of information science, mathematics and law, and starting from the essential connotation, basic nature and measurement index system of information, the innovative construction of the system structure model, internal driving mode, evolution logic law, evaluation index system and evaluation method environment for smart courts can be achieved, which will provide specific and detailed development and construction support for the smart courts system project. II.

Key Technology Tackling

The construction of smart courts requires a large amount of key information technology support. These key technologies are generally not original technologies for general conditions but key technologies that can greatly improve the functional performance of the system in combination with the business application needs of smart courts. Taking the courtroom speech recognition technology as an example, the general speech recognition technology has been widely used in many fields, which can achieve a high automatic recognition rate under the situation that a single user faces the microphone and uses a relatively standard accent and brings a very ideal effect to the vast number of users. However, in trial activities, judges, parties, litigation agents and many other participants may speak from different angles, with different accents, speeds and tones, or even speak at the same time; thus, the accuracy of general speech recognition will be greatly reduced, and it is difficult to meet the requirements of rapid and accurate generation of transcripts in the trial. However, in the condition of a court trial, the audio acquisition equipment can be reasonably configured according to the courtroom space; meanwhile, the speaker must follow the rules of court trial activities, and the content of the speech is also closely related to the case. Therefore, general speech recognition technology, if the voice acquisition system is scientifically designed, combined with the rules of court speech and the case characteristics being learned in advance, will greatly improve the accuracy of automatic conversion

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of speech and text under specific conditions of the court speech recognition system. If the speech recognition systems of courts all over the country are connected as a whole platform for collecting, learning and sharing, all courtrooms can flexibly cope with multilocal dialects. This is the technological breakthrough made by the National Court Smart Voice Cloud. Similarly, technologies such as automatic generation and validity review of intelligent interactive litigation materials, automatic guidance and consultation support of litigation, intelligent evaluation and early warning of litigation property preservation support the formation of an integrated and convenient litigation service system. Technologies such as multimodal recording and comparison and analysis of court trials, intelligent assistant generation of high-quality judgment documents, and precise recommendation of similar cases have promoted the construction of high-quality and efficient trial application systems. Technologies such as the analysis of the defaulter’s activities, clue analysis of concealed property involved in the case, intelligent circulation of enforcement cases and assistant supervision have promoted the formation of fine enforcement ability. Technologies such as trial risk investigation and alarm, personnel performance evaluation, risk prevention and control of court integrity, public opinion monitoring and emergency response in the whole process of trial have improved the fine management level of smart courts. Therefore, to tackle the key technologies of smart courts, we need to use the advanced technological achievements of Internet, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, block chain and so on and deeply integrate the business application needs of court litigation service, case trial, enforcement, internal management and judicial transparency to provide advanced and mature technology for the research and development of various information systems of smart courts. III.

Research and Development of Key Equipment

The capabilities of smart courts need to be realized through various equipment, mainly including application systems serving business scenarios such as litigation, trial, enforcement and management, as well as basic platforms providing services such as data, computing, communication, security, operation and maintenance. The equipment can be divided into hardware, software and equipment combining hardware and software. The equipment provides the application and integration carrier for the advanced technology of the smart courts and directly accepts the test of users and higher-level applications. Through the research and development of key equipment, the important scientific and technological innovation achievements of smart courts can be tested more comprehensively. On the other hand, practical indicators such as ease of use, safety, reliability and maintainability of equipment itself are also important objectives of scientific and technological innovation. Through standardized and strict scientific research procedures, a number of key equipment R&D and demonstration applications with advanced technology, wide application and strong driving force can be completed, which can be modeled for general equipment R&D and better promote the practical performance of smart courts. A number of national key R&D plans have strongly promoted the R&D of key equipment for smart courts. The research and development of judicial big data

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platforms, knowledge service platforms and law eye platforms are supported by key research and development projects, such as the classification and management of judicial business information resources centered on trial, the decision-making support platform centered on judicial knowledge base, and the smart courts integrated application platform. Key research and development projects, such as diversified and ubiquitous litigation services, multiaccess cross-network online mediation, and the construction of a comprehensive management platform for judicial transparency, have supported the research and development of key equipment such as China Mobile’s WeCourt and dispute diversified resolution system. Intelligent trial support technology, circuit trial and remote trial technology, new trial system construction based on artificial intelligence and other key research and development projects have supported the research and development of new scientific and technological courtrooms, intelligent trial systems and other key systems. Technical breakthroughs such as the intelligent collaboration of the enforcement business, individual law enforcement assistance, and the assistant supervision of the whole process of enforcement cases have supported the construction of enforcement investigation and control systems, automatic inspection systems for the conclusion of enforcement cases, and enforcement command systems. Technological breakthroughs such as intelligent analysis of electronic files, collection/extraction and service of court trial information, inspection of the court trial process, etc., have supported the construction of document evaluation systems, automatic inspection systems of court trials and evaluation systems of trial quality and efficiency. Aimed at the business scenarios that urgently need to be realized by intelligent courts and innovative achievements of advanced information technology, the intelligent litigation service system deeply integrated with the social governance system, smart auxiliary equipment for the whole trial process, highly intelligent network communication enforcement system and equipment, integrated judicial collaborative environment and shared service system, cross-media integrated intelligent perception and knowledge service platform, judicial data platform and smart courts brain will become the focus of equipment research and development. They will form the new generation of smart courts equipment systems. IV.

System Integration Innovation

The high integration of judicial law, system reform and technological change is the main driving force for the vigorous development of smart courts, so integrated innovation is an important part of the scientific and technological innovation of smart courts. After years of construction, hundreds of information systems have been built within the jurisdiction of the higher people’s courts, most of which have wide system distribution, intensive data flow, complex business functions and diverse user customization, while the problems of complex portals, information isolation, data barriers and poor processes are prominent. All kinds of information systems are urgently needed to achieve a wider range of integration and innovation through interface interconnection, information exchange, resource sharing and business collaboration. We should break through many business application blockages, add many urgently needed new

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functions, improve the performance indicators of many software and hardware, and tackle many difficulties to accelerate the construction of smart courts. The key research and development projects, such as the national court cloud platform based on the next-generation court business network, the intelligent service platform integration for the smart courts, the quality and efficiency security operation and maintenance of the court information system and the unified certification management, are aimed at the page integration, interface integration, data integration, service integration and platform integration of the smart courts information system. Breakthroughs have been made in the key technologies, such as data integration based on judicial big data platforms, common service integration based on knowledge service platforms, cloud integration of business application systems based on cloud platforms and virtualization, supported the integration of many heterogeneous forms and technical systems of court information systems, and achieved fruitful integration and innovation results. Supporting the integration and innovation of smart courts systems through scientific research projects, of course, cannot be simply satisfied with individual or local system interconnection and data sharing. Instead, we should aim at the problems of system integration with characteristics of universality, overall situation and demonstration, such as many isolated systems within important business areas, multisource heterogeneous, shared services of data and knowledge platforms for various business applications, and integrated support of general information infrastructure. By working this way, we can provide the courts nationwide with the promotion prototype or demonstration model developed and evaluated through standardized procedures. V.

Cross-Sectoral Expansion and Integration

With the in-depth implementation of the strategy for building China into a cyberpower, digital China, intelligent society and the “Internet+” action plan, information construction has extended to all aspects of economic and social development, and e-government has achieved remarkable results in serving the people. The national e-government project and the national key R&D plan in the field of informatization have clearly taken cross-sectoral sharing and collaboration as the main development direction. Therefore, the scientific research of smart courts cannot be limited to the key technology research and system integration innovation of court information systems but must further improve the position and broaden the vision to provide strong scientific and technological support for extending to various fields of economy and society and promoting cross-sectoral sharing and integration. According to the urgent need to solve the difficulty of enforcement, the Supreme People’s Court promotes the information system of the smart courts to actively connect with more than 4000 cooperative departments and units throughout the country, to obtain relevant information of the person subject to enforcement, to support the inquiry of their deposits, securities, investment and other assets and to transmit the information of the defaulters to the civil aviation, high-speed railway and social credit database in a timely manner. A law-abiding integrity system with the participation of all parties is intended to be built, and its system connectivity,

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data management and on-demand sharing mechanism are typical examples of the cross-sectoral expansion and integration of smart courts. Since the beginning of 2017, Shanghai Higher People’s Court has organized domestic superior scientific research forces to develop the Intelligent Assistant Case Handling System for Criminal Cases, aiming at the application of data flow and evidence identification of criminal cases among various departments of the police, procuratorial organ, court and judicial administrative organ. Breakthroughs have been made in key technologies, such as the establishment of cross-sectoral evidence chain standards for criminal cases, the secure interactive processing of cross-sectoral, crosslevel and cross-network data, the collaborative service of judicial business driven by domain models, the collaborative virtual workspace of judicial business, and the intelligent assistance of investigation, prosecution and trial based on the guidance of evidence chains. It is also an important demonstration of the cross-sectoral expansion and integration of smart courts with police, procuratorial, judicial administrative departments. Supporting the cross-sectoral expansion and integration of smart courts through scientific research projects, breakthroughs should be focused on the advantages of smart courts and sharing new mechanisms, methods, frameworks and models of intelligent governance with police security and procuratorial departments, government departments, social organizations and enterprises and institutions, such as the integrated linkage public operating environment based on blockchains, to provide innovative support for the modernization of the national governance system and capacity.

3.5 Evaluation and Promotion The basic laws and requirements of system engineering that require our work to be carried out through scientific performance evaluation are particularly important for smart court systems. Judgments are often made from different perspectives in the construction of information systems, including the scale of construction, the number of systems, and the number of user clicks to evaluate the effectiveness of construction. In fact, in the case of poor application effect, the larger the construction scale, the greater the waste, and in the case of no increase in service functions, the greater the number of systems, the more difficult it is for users to adapt, and the number of clicks is not directly proportional to user satisfaction. Therefore, the evaluation of smart courts requires the establishment of a comprehensive, concrete and enforceable index system oriented by application effectiveness, which is not only an important part of top-level design but also the main lever to take responsibility for the construction of the whole system and to continuously evaluate and promote effectiveness. According to the viewpoint of objective information theory, information is the objective reflection of things in the objective world and the subjective world and their state of motion, and only through information can all things in the world express and restore their existence and state of motion. The function and significance

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of an information system is to provide information that meets the requirements of users and has corresponding measurement indicators through the process of input, transmission, processing and output. Data are the manifestation of information in the information system, and the construction and application effect of the information system can be derived from information measurement, forming a quantifiable indicator system. Therefore, according to the content measurement indicator of the information needed by the smart courts to support trial and enforcement, litigation service and judicial management, we should study and make the specific indicator system of planning and design, infrastructure, application system, data resources, network security and operation and maintenance to realize the smart courts. We should continue to promote the construction and application of smart courts through automatic data collection, comprehensive census evaluation, key sampling methods, third-party objective evaluation and other methods to regularly evaluate the actual results, summarize and promote successful experience in a timely manner, identify problems and take corresponding measures to correct them. I.

Evaluation Indicator System

The main construction content of the smart court is the information system, which provides information that meets the requirements of users according to the business needs of the court. Therefore, the evaluation of the smart court should start from indicators of the basic characteristics of the smart courts, the information support ability of the main business and the main ability to provide information and form a relatively complete evaluation indicator system. Since 2017, the Supreme People’s Court has established a smart courts evaluation indicator system applicable to the courts nationwide, revised and improved it year by year, and organized the evaluation. The evaluation indicator system of smart court construction centers on the three basic characteristics of networking, transparency and intellectualization, including 7 first-level indicators, 21 second-level indicators and 68 third-level indicators. The structure of the evaluation indicator system is shown in Fig. 3.3. There are 7 first-level indicators, including the planning leading ability indicator, foundation support ability indicator, network application effect indicator, transparency application effect indicator, intelligent application effect indicator and comprehensive support ability indicator. From the first-level indicators, we can see that the evaluation of smart courts focuses on three major capabilities and three effects. Planning guidance, foundation support and comprehensive guarantees are the foundation of the construction of smart courts. Networking, transparency and intellectualization are the three major objectives of the construction of smart courts. The evaluation of the smart courts focuses on the inspection and judgment of the three effects, realizing the online processing of all business and building a networked court to make the whole process open according to laws, to provide all-round intelligent services and to build smart courts. There are 21 second-level indicators, focusing on the support and coverage of informatization for the work of courts at all levels. Among them, under the firstlevel indicator of network application effectiveness, according to the requirements

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Fig. 3.3 Smart courts construction evaluation indicator system

of full-service online processing, it is divided into 5 second-level indicators, namely, online case handling, online enforcement, online petition, judicial administration and data management, which can basically cover the core business of the court. Under the first-level indicator of transparency application effectiveness, according to the requirements of the whole process of openness according to law, it is divided into 3 second-level indicators, namely, judicial transparency, litigation service and

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judicial publicity, focusing on the construction and application level of the four open platforms of courts and electronic litigation. Under the first-level indicator of intelligent application effectiveness, according to the requirements of the national all-round intelligent service, it is divided into 4 second-level indicators, namely, intelligent assistance for litigation service, intelligent assistance for trial, intelligent assistance for enforcement and big data analysis service. As the intelligent application of courts around the country started relatively late, this book mainly focuses on the construction of intelligent applications. There are 68 indicators in the third level. Except for a few indicators that focus on the completion of work, the rest of the indicators are adopted according to the demand characteristics of specific information systems. All 68 indicators are applicable to the Supreme People’s Court and the higher people’s courts. Since planning guidance, network support, information security guarantee, operation and maintenance management guarantee and other work are mainly concentrated in the people’s courts above the higher level, there are 39 indicators applicable to the middle and grassroots people’s courts in view of the characteristics of the middle and grassroots people’s courts, which are mainly for applications. Specific indicators are shown in Table 3.3. II.

Automatic Collection and Evaluation

Obtaining comprehensive, complete, objective and accurate data according to the evaluation indicators of smart courts is the basis for carrying out their evaluation. The required data involve four levels of courts in the country, with more than 170 items. Because the construction of a court information system includes various modes, such as national unified construction and local court independent construction, there are various ways to obtain data. Automatic collection and evaluation has the characteristics of automatic procedure, timely information, objective and accurate and is the preferred way to evaluate smart courts. Automatic collection and evaluation means that the application system can automatically obtain business data, application data, etc., and automatically calculates evaluation indicators. With the gradual development of centralized management of national court data and the development trend of national unified business applications, the data that can be obtained by automatic collection and evaluation are gradually enriched, and the indicators that can support calculation are gradually increasing. In the evaluation process of smart court construction, the data obtained through automatic collection and evaluation and the calculated indicators are mainly shown in Fig. 3.4. In Fig. 3.4, the automatically collected evaluation data mainly come from national unified judicial open platforms such as China Trial Process Information Online and China Court Trial Online; national unified business platforms such as the enforcement case process information management system, network judicial investigation and control system; and the big data management and service platform of the people’s court. The above systems automatically acquire the application data of the four-level courts nationwide based on the data acquisition requirements corresponding to the evaluation indicators of the smart courts and aggregate them into the national smart

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Table 3.3 Smart courts evaluation indicator No

Level 1 indicator

Level 2 indicator

Level 3 indicator

1

Planning leading ability indicator

Planning and leading

Five-Year plan compilation

Basic support capability indicator

Network support

3

Information publicity and reporting Access rate of the people’s tribunal to speciific court network

4

Average bandwidth of specifice court network

5

Specific cloud construction and service

6

Open cloud construction and service

7

Construction of specific mobile network

8

Construction of confidential network

9

Construction and exchange capacity of intersystem and internetwork data exchange system

10

Site support

The coverage rate of information service in the litigation service hall

11

Enforcement command center

12

Coverage of scientific and technological courtrooms

13

System support

Business system integration

14

Coverage of audio and video application

15

Audio and video integrated scheduling management platform

16 17

Network application effectiveness indicator

Online case handling

Electronic case files Audio and video recording rate of court trial

18

Electronic signature rate

19

Network case review

20

Digital adjudication committee (continued)

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Table 3.3 (continued) No

Level 1 indicator

Level 2 indicator

Level 3 indicator

21

Case information sharing with public securtiy organs, procuratorial organs and other related departments

22

Mobile office and case handling

23

Online enforcement

Coverage of online enforcement case process management

24

Enforcement investigation and control rate

25

Credit default punishment platform

26

Internet auction rate

27

Online petition

28

Video petition reception rate Information sharing of complaint and petition

29

Judicial administration

Online office

30

Personnel management

31

Website usage rate of all levels of courts

32

Completeness of the justice management system

33

Data management

Judicial trial information resource coverage

Judicial publicity

Trial process information disclosure rate

34 35

Centralized data quality Application effectiveness transparency indicators

36

Live broadcast rate of court trial

37

Publicity rate of judgment documents

38

Publicity rate of enforcement information

39

Information disclosure rate of bankruptcy reorganization cases

40

Litigation services

Online filing rate

41

Online payment rate

42

Online evidence exchange rate (continued)

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Table 3.3 (continued) No

Level 1 indicator

Level 2 indicator

Level 3 indicator

43

Online court trial rate

44

Electronic service rate

45

Online mediation rate

46

12,368 hotline service rate

47

Judicial publicity

48 49

Update rate of judicial publicity in the government website Operation rate of Weibo and WeChat

Intelligent application effectiveness indicator

50

Intelligent assistance for litigation service

Intelligent litigation guidance

Intelligent assistance for trial Intelligent screening for filing risk

51

Court trial reminder

52

Intelligent reuse of electronic case file materials

53

Document assistance

54

Articles of law and similar cases recommendation

55

Court speech recognition transcript

56

Assistance to the standardization of sentencing in criminal cases

57

Automatic patrol inspection of court trial

58

Intelligent assistance for enforcement

Clue correlation analysis for ennforcement case

59

Big data analysis service

Intelligent statistics and analysis of trial situation data

60

Correlation analysis of cases and relevant persons

61

Thematic analysis of big data

62 63

64

Comprehensive support capability indicators

Information security support

Passing rate of important business systems

Operation and maintenance management guarantee

Completeness of quality and efficiency operation and maintenance system Visual operation and maintenance platform (continued)

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Table 3.3 (continued) No

Level 1 indicator

65

Level 2 indicator

Level 3 indicator

Organization and talent guarantee

Establishment of the leading group

66 67 68

Compliance rate of informatization talents Additional items

Additional positive items

Informatization innovation demonstration

Additional negative items

Major information security incidents

courts evaluation database. Based on the automatically collected evaluation data, the national smart court evaluation system can automatically calculate the scores of the information disclosure rate and the live broadcast rate of the trial process of courts at all levels. Taking the 35th evaluation indicator “trial process information disclosure rate” as an example, the score of this indicator is 2 points, and the coefficient is “the number of cases in which the trial process information has been disclosed through the China Trial Process Information Online/the number of cases in which the court should disclose the trial process information”. The indicator is applicable to the fourlevel courts in China, and the evaluation data come from the China Judicial Process Information Online. The China Judicial Process Information Online is established by the Supreme People’s Court and interconnected with applications of the four-level courts nationwide, so the Supreme People’s Court can directly obtain the number of cases and other information that have been made public by courts at all levels through the China Trial Process Information Online to automatically collect, evaluate, and guarantee the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the data. III.

Comprehensive Census and Evaluation

Comprehensive census and evaluation is the basis and supplement of automatic collection and evaluation and is also an indispensable method of information collection to evaluate the effectiveness of the construction of smart courts. Comprehensive census and evaluation are carried out with the working methods of systematic investigation, independent reporting, step-by-step review and crossvalidation. The first is systematic research. The Supreme People’s Court has developed a national smart courts evaluation system based on the big data management and service platform of the people’s court, which provides evaluation data collection, evaluation data review, evaluation results feedback and other functions for the four levels of courts in the country and provides information support for comprehensive census and evaluation. The second step is independent reporting. Smart courts evaluation covers four levels of courts in the country, which is different from the general system construction and application and requires the extensive participation of more than 3500 courts in the country. The evaluation work is generally carried out annually, and the courts of four levels nationwide independently log on to the national

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Fig. 3.4 Automated collection and evaluation process

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smart courts evaluation system to fill in surveys, on the one hand, to achieve the standardized entry of evaluation data and, on the other hand, to achieve a comprehensive review of the application of informatization construction in the courts under their jurisdiction. In addition, through the evaluation data, we can also learn the specific requirements and development trends of the national smart courts construction. Third, step-by-step review. Courts at all levels have different requirements and policies for the construction of smart courts. Generally, the higher people’s courts are superior to the intermediate people’s courts, which are superior to the grassroots people’s courts. Moreover, the construction of smart courts is mainly concentrated on the higher people’s courts and some intermediate courts. The evaluation and research data of smart courts must be gathered and audited step by step, which can not only ensure the correctness of the data but also help the higher and intermediate people’s courts to fully learn the overall situation of the construction of smart courts in their jurisdictions. Fourth, cross-validation was performed. The Supreme People’s Court verifies and supplements the contents of the report through the data of the big data management and service platform, the law eye platform and the general enforcement investigation and control system. If problems such as data omission or misstatement appear, the Supreme People’s Court should coordinate with the higher people’s courts to rectify them in time. The data analysis team summarizes and analyzes all the data, checks the logic of the related data, verifies the data with problems, and ensures the quality of the data. Taking the 38th evaluation indicator “online filing rate” as an example, the score of this indicator is 1 point, and the coefficient is “1/2 whether to support online filing + 1/2 the number of online filings/the total number of court filings/reference value”. The indicator is applicable to the four-level courts, and the evaluation data come from the litigation service network of courts at all levels, the Mobile WeCourt platform, etc. At present, courts around the country have built local court litigation service networks to provide electronic litigation services such as online filing for litigation participants. In addition, courts around the country can also carry out online filing through China Mobile WeCourt. The Supreme People’s Court can have the unified and automatic acquisition of China Mobile WeCourt application data, but whether the local court litigation service network supports online filing and how many online filings can be applied still depend on the local courts. The Supreme People’s Court will verify the correctness of the data through registration and inquiry of websites and systematic research. IV.

Key Sampling Inspection

Part of the data of evaluation comes from the reports of courts at all levels. Because the courts at all levels do not have adequate understanding, operational errors in the process of filling in the survey data by courts may exist, which will lead to nonobjective and inaccurate survey data and affect the evaluation results. Through key sampling inspection, the data can be verified, and the credibility of the evaluation results can be guaranteed. First, the Supreme People’s Court verifies and supplements the report through the system data of big data management and service platforms, law eye platforms and general enforcement investigation and

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control systems. If there are problems such as data omission or misstatement, the Supreme People’s Court would coordinate with the higher people’s courts to rectify them in a timely manner. For example, the number of cases accepted by the court can be automatically collected based on the big data management and service platform of the people’s court, while the courts at all levels can also obtain the number through the local case handling platform and fill in the survey form by themselves. The Supreme People’s Court will compare the two to verify the accuracy of the court’s filling-in information. Second, the data in the information system of local courts can be verified by demonstrating the functions of the system and displaying the data of the system, such as the synchronous generation of electronic case files, intelligent cataloging of files, electronic signature of files and other functions of courts at all levels. Third, the data can be verified through telephone surveys and on-site surveys. In addition, through inspection of individual courts, face-to-face communication with local court technical department personnel and business department personnel, we can understand the information configuration of local court litigation service halls, scientific and technological courtrooms and other places. Taking the 42nd evaluation indicator “online court session rate” as an example. The score of this indicator is 3 points, and the coefficient is “1/2 whether to support online court session +1/2 the number of cases held online/the number of cases accepted by the court/reference value”, which is applicable to the four-level courts nationwide. To verify the accuracy of the data, the Supreme People’s Court will automatically collect the application data of courts at all levels of China Mobile WeCourt online and then sample the construction and application data of some court litigation service network to comprehensively verify the accuracy of the data. V.

Introduction of Third Party Evaluation

The self-evaluation of smart courts mainly involves observing and evaluating the construction and application of the court’s internal organizations and personnel. The advantage is that it can master data and examples as comprehensively as possible, but the disadvantage is that it may involve some subjective elements. Therefore, for smart courts, which are concerned with hundreds of millions of people and related to judicial justice, third-party evaluation should be adopted and introduced to evaluate smart courts from a more objective and credible perspective and to promote the improvement and perfection of smart courts. In March 2016, the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Rule of Law Index Innovation Project Team and the National Rule of Law Index Research Center jointly published the Third Party Evaluation Report on Court’s Informatization in China, which was a third-party evaluation on the progress, effectiveness and problems of court informatization in China, and marked the first thirdparty evaluation on the construction of smart courts in China. Since then, the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Social Sciences Academic Press have jointly published the Blue Book on Court’s Informatization in China every year to study the progress and application effect of court informatization in China from the central and local levels and to analyze the problems faced in practice. A

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comprehensive and objective index system is used to comprehensively evaluate the smart courts. The World Bank and other international organizations also pay close attention to the development of court informatization in various countries. In October 2019, the World Bank released the 2020 Business Environment Report, which showed that China ranked 31st among 190 economies in the world in terms of global business convenience. Among them, the “Judicial Process Quality Index” measures whether each economy has adopted a series of good practices in the following four areas of its judicial system, namely, court structure and litigation procedures, case management, court automation and alternative dispute resolution. The main contents are information systems such as court online filing, judicial transparency, full-process network case handling and litigation service platforms. China’s “Judicial Procedure Quality Index” ranked among the leading countries in the world in 2017 and 2018 and ranked first in the world in 2019, with the highest score in history. This affirms the achievement of smart courts in China and helps us to further promote the construction of smart courts. Third-party evaluation plays an irreplaceable role in promoting the construction of smart courts, especially in serving the public. Compared with self-evaluation, thirdparty evaluation has the characteristics of independence and objectivity, as shown in Table 3.4. VI.

Promoting Continuous Improvement

Through the annual evaluation, courts at all levels throughout the country continue to make up for shortcomings and strengthen the construction and application of smart courts. On the one hand, courts around the country have continuously promoted the transformation and upgrading of court information infrastructure and the improvement of business applications. Special facilities such as litigation service halls, enforcement command centers and information management centers have been constantly improved and standardized, and various applications of office case handling have basically met the needs of court full-service online processing. On the other hand, courts around the country have changed the old mindset of “emphasizing construction, neglecting application” and gradually focus on improving user experience, strengthening system promotion and application, vigorously promoting electronic litigation such as online filing and online payment, reforming the traditional mode of handling cases based on paper files, and promoting the generation of electronic case files. Great efforts have been made to improve the user experience of the public and court staff. Take the courts in Qinghai as an example. Qinghai is located in the western region of China, with an underdeveloped economy and relatively poor information infrastructure, and the courts there scored relatively low in the evaluation of the smart courts in 2017. The evaluation showed that there was a large gap in information infrastructure and intelligent application. Keeping in mind the evaluation results, courts in Qinghai have faced the shortcomings, made breakthroughs in key areas, consolidated the network foundation, accomplished the access of all three-level courts, 64 dispatched tribunals and 22 external cooperation sites to the specific court network,

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Table 3.4 Comparison of smart courts self-evaluation and third-party evaluation Comparison item

Self-evaluation

Third-party evaluation

Evaluation subject

The Supreme People’s Court (some higher people’s courts also carry out the evaluation of the courts under their jurisdiction)

Third-party evaluation institutions (such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the World Bank, etc.)

Evaluation object

Comprehensive evaluation of four-level courts nationwide

Sampling investigation and evaluation

Task source

The task is carried out spontaneously by the court

Entrusted by the court or organized spontaneously

Evaluation purpose

The purpose of the evaluation is to make a thorough investigation, promote the construction and application

To promote the construction of service-oriented courts

Evaluation contents

The evaluation focuses on the informatization construction and application effect of the people’s courts, including the supporting capabilities of top-level design, infrastructure and comprehensive support, as well as the level of networking, transparency and intelligent application

The evaluation focuses on the use experience of the public and other users

Evaluation capability

Courts at all levels can be mobilized to actively cooperate with the evaluation work, so comprehensive evaluation of courts of four levels can be realized

The evaluation capability depends on the organizational ability, professional ability and input of third-party evaluation institutions

Evaluation continuity

The evaluation continues every year with guidance. The content of evaluation and the focus of the report need to be continuous, to facilitate the promotion of local courts work year by year

The continuity is according to the decision of the evaluation subject. Targeted evaluation is generally carried out for key tasks at a certain stage. Some third-party evaluations institutions such as the World Bank will continue evaluation every year

Data source

System automatic collection and comprehensive research

Third-party research

The scope of release

Release within the court

For the public

realized “one network” for case handling, office work, learning and communication of court staff, and provided support for remote trial and remote interrogation. The courts in Qinghai have deployed a unified collaborative office system to solve the problems of document circulation and communication within the court system. The courts uniformly deploy and use the intelligent editing system of legal documents, the application of the “Fa Xin” (Law and Trust) platform, the assistant system for judges to handle cases, the intelligent proofreading system of documents, and the intelligent

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research and judgment system of criminal cases to intelligently recommend similar cases, judgments and authoritative viewpoints for judges and timely discover the logical errors of judgment documents and the quotation errors of legal provisions. Based on the matching of case elements, the legal provisions of sentencing standardization are automatically pushed, and the sentencing range and reference range of similar cases are pushed. This series of construction, application and management measures have greatly improved the level of information infrastructure and intelligent application of courts in Qinghai Province and have made courts in Qinghai the first team in the evaluation of national smart courts in 2018 and 2019. From a national perspective, top-level planning as the guide has led to the rapid development of smart courts as a whole. The average index of court construction has maintained an annual growth rate of more than 8% from 72 in 2017, 78 in 2018 to 85 in 2019. According to the index of the jurisdiction of the higher people’s court, for the first time in 2019, the average index of all the higher people’s courts and the courts under their jurisdiction reached more than 60. According to the index of each court, the number of courts below index 60 in 3470 courts in China decreased from 697 in 2018 to 173 in 2019, a decrease of 75.2%, and the number of courts with index between 90–100 and between 80–90 increased significantly from 598 and 809 in 2018 to 1270 and 1035, respectively. The growth rates reached 112.4% and 27.9%, respectively. From the perspective of different levels of index, the average index of smart court construction of higher people’s courts, intermediate people’s courts and grass-roots people’s courts is 86, 86 and 83, respectively, which has been significantly improved compared with the figures in 2017 and in 2018, especially the latter two, which has basically realized the balanced development of courts at all levels throughout the country. The evaluation shows that a variety of electronic litigation means are constantly enriched to help build a modern litigation service system. In 2019, 2600 courts nationwide built information platforms for litigation service guidance centers, accounting for 74.9% of the total number of courts, and the proportion of courts realizing litigation guidance, self-service litigation services and high-definition audio and video recordings reached 59.8%, 55.0% and 86.3%, respectively, all of which were higher than those in 2018. In addition, 97.8% of the courts supported online filing, 71.6% supported online payment, 66.9% supported online evidence exchange, 58.2% supported online court sessions, and 88.2% supported electronic service. The proportion of courts supporting online mediation is 87.7%, the proportion of courts applying unified China Mobile WeCourts is 93.7%, and 26.1% of the 12,368 litigation service hotlines in China are unified to the platform of the Supreme People’s Court. With the improvement of various electronic litigation means, such as litigation service halls, online filings, cross-jurisdiction filings, and mobile WeCourt, the courts all over the country have been strongly supported in building a one-stop diversified dispute resolution and litigation service system. The evaluation data show that vigorously promoting the application of electronic file circulation has achieved remarkable results and has greatly improved the quality and effectiveness of judges’ trials. In 2019, courts at all levels across the country continued to promote the circulation and application of electronic case files. The

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number of courts supporting the synchronous generation of electronic files reached 3317, accounting for 95.6%, an increase of 10.8% compared with those in 2018. There are 2964 courts supporting online browsing of electronic case files, accounting for 85.4%, up 16% compared with those in 2018. In addition, the proportion of courts supporting digital electronic documents, intelligent cataloging and automatic filing of electronic files is 80.8%, 76.0% and 75.1%, respectively, which is much higher than those in 2018. A total of 2160 courts nationwide realized the functions of synchronous generation of electronic case files, intelligent cataloging of cases, digital electronic documents, online browsing and automatic filing of electronic files, accounting for 62.5% of the total. From the application point of view, 76.2% of the cases accepted by the courts nationwide in 2019 realized the synchronous generation of electronic case files, which increased by 16.6% compared with that in 2018, and 65.4% of the cases accepted had electronic documents. The case coverages of intelligent cataloging, online browsing and automatic filing are 45.0%, 42.7% and 37.5%, respectively, which are greatly improved compared with those in 2018. Nearly 10% of the courts in China have achieved 100% coverage of synchronous generation of electronic case files. Based on the construction of key functions of electronic case file circulation and application, trial intelligence has been promoted in an all-around way.

Chapter 4

Application System

The application system is an information system that directly aims at the work business and meets the needs of users. Smart courts application systems mainly include six types: intelligent service, intelligent trial, intelligent enforcement, intelligent management, judicial transparency and other application systems, among which there is a very rich cross-business information interaction relationship. Ideally, all the application systems should fulfill information interaction through a big data platform to simplify the information interface to the greatest extent, reduce the communication load and converge judicial data. In practical work, the implementation of this idea has achieved remarkable results. However, due to the large number of application systems, complex status and different requirements, there are still great difficulties to be overcome to carry out the ideal model. Due to different users and different natures of work, various application systems are deployed in different network systems, such as specific court networks, the Internet, specific mobile networks, and confidential networks. Some of them are connected with cooperative departments through specific external networks, which must be subject to national network security laws and regulations and court internal information security management regulations. To ensure the normal operation of the relevant application systems, we should choose the internetwork security isolation exchange mode that considers as many possible requirements as possible to solve the problem of cross-network information exchange in combination with specific system requirements. The four-level courts nationwide have corresponding needs with different business applications. In theory, the adoption of the same systems in courts nationwide can save considerable funds and helps to standardize the work flow of local courts. However, due to the unbalanced regional development in China, the business model and the foundation, focus and resources of information construction of regional courts vary greatly, so the compulsory implementation of the same systems will inevitably lead to new waste and frustrate the initiatives of local courts. In view of this, the Supreme People’s Court has taken the lead in promoting a number of key business

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application systems throughout the country, such as judicial transparency, information management of enforcement process, enforcement command and China Mobile WeCourt, and required all local courts to adopt them uniformly or through realtime information exchange and status interface between local systems and national systems to fulfill cross-level coordination and help achieve the same pattern of key applications as in a chess game nationwide. With the deepening of information application, the demand for data sharing among relevant government or economic departments is becoming increasingly obvious, which leads to the growing problem of data security and even to the deadlock that normal needs cannot be met due to departmental barriers. In this regard, the court maximizes access credibility with internal security control and audit mechanisms according to business needs and minimizes the sharing scope of information exchange through content screening between external and collaborative departments, which realizes data sharing across departments on demand and greatly improves the application effects of informatization. The smart courts application system provides online services for all kinds of users, many of which originate from offline services, and many applications rely on the support of offline activities. To adapt to different user groups, there are still many business matters that are being operated both online and offline. Therefore, all kinds of application systems must combine their own characteristics, select and deploy appropriate offline operation ports and online interface methods, and support the connection between online and offline business activities to effectively meet the development requirements of steady growth.

4.1 Intelligent Service System An intelligent service system is an informatized, intelligent system that deeply integrates modern science and technology with litigation services and supports people’s courts in building a modern litigation service system, providing online litigation, mediation, consultation, petition and law popularization services for the general public. Intelligent service systems mainly run on the Internet and need to provide information such as filings, evidence and appeals submitted by litigants or agents to intelligent trial and enforcement systems. Figure 4.1 shows the architecture of the intelligent service system. The intelligent service system should comply with the growing diversified judicial needs of the general public with the following characteristics: First, intensive efficiency. The system provides a large number of users who come up with complex litigation and varied cognition with efficient and satisfactory services with access to one-number, one-network or one-stop services. The second is multiple solutions. The system puts the nonlitigation dispute resolution mechanism as the first step, and it widely connects with various social dispute resolution channels, such as people’s mediation, professional mediation and community institutions, to solve

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Fig. 4.1 Structure of intelligent services system

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various disputes. The system connects internal links such as case circulation, mediation, quick adjudication and quick trial and provides a one-stop resolution mechanism for various disputes. Third, for the benefit of the people. The system provides home services for the majority of Internet users with the help of online services, provides on-site services for the majority of mobile users with the help of mobile services, and provides remote services for groups with little familiarity with informatization with the help of cross-regional services to minimize the burden of litigation for the people. Fourth, intelligent accuracy. The system gives full play to the advantages of judicial big data resources, develops intelligent auxiliary means such as similar case push, litigation outcome prediction, litigation risk assessment, etc., provides reliable and accurate references, and offers as convenient, credible and authoritative service channels as possible for reducing and rehandling social disputes. Fifth, transparency and interaction. In accordance with laws and regulations, through online delivery and push, the system should fully open all kinds of case information to litigation participants, eliminate the information opacity and asymmetry of litigation groups as much as possible while supporting the easy online interaction between court staff and litigants, and constantly enhance mutual trust through barrier-free communication. Sixth, blended sharing. The system should promote the further integration of litigation service systems with other application systems and judicial big data resources, support the timely sharing of information within and outside the courts in accordance with the law and on demand, promote the formation of a good situation in which the people call is responded to by the courts, and win the broad recognition of the people and judicial credibility with practical actions. I. Litigation Service Hall The litigation service hall is an important part of the litigation service center. According to the actual needs of facilitating the litigants and lawyers to exercise their litigation rights and guaranteeing the people’s right to know and supervise the judicial activities, we should expand the coverage of litigation services by means of information technology, expand service functions, enrich service contents, innovate service means, support the establishment of a multichannel, one-stop and comprehensive litigation service model, and constantly improve litigation services to meet the growing diversified judicial needs of the people. There are relevant application systems deployed in the litigation service hall on the specific court network and the Internet, providing litigation guidance, window litigation, litigation mediation, petition reception and self-service litigation and other services (as shown in Fig. 4.2). Litigation guidance services include visitor registration, navigation and guidance, information release and display, queuing and calling, satisfaction evaluation and lawyer convenience channel services. Visitor registration supports the litigants, lawyers and the public to complete identity verification, registration, print entry pass and obtain relevant guidance information by themselves. Navigation and guidance support the use of touch terminal equipment to provide services such as information about the layout of court functional areas, intelligent road guidance and peripheral service guidance for visitors. Information release and display support the release and

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Fig. 4.2 Structure of litigation service hall system

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display of case information, trial status, reservation status and other related information in the litigation service hall. Queuing and calling can be connected with the intelligent visitor system to number visitors according to the expected services. The window staff can call directly after receiving the signal. Satisfaction evaluation supports real-time statistics of the evaluation opinions of the litigants on the service quality of the window. The lawyer convenience service channel assists lawyers in quickly passing through the security gate by scanning the exclusive identity code obtained on platforms such as China Mobile WeCourt. The window litigation service includes window reception and audio and video acquisition. Window reception realizes the interconnection between litigation service halls and other business application systems and information platforms, supports the online processing of various litigation services, and provides application and handling services. Window audio and video acquisition realizes audio and video signal acquisition of the litigants and court clerks and keeps the whole process recorded for further reference. The litigation mediation service supports prelitigation/case-filing mediation and realizes mediation involving both litigants and mediators before the case is registered for filing or at the stage of case filing. The complaint and petition reception service includes complaint and petition management and remote video reception. The former realizes the whole process management for the handling of complaints and petitions through letters and visits. The latter enables the petitioner to lodge a complaint on the Internet, and the specific court network facilitates remote “face-to-face” interviews and replies. Self-service litigation services include electronic case file borrowing, self-service litigation services, intelligent assessment of litigation risk, intelligent generation of complaint documents, and intelligent material collection and transfer. Electronic case file borrowing supports relevant users in accessing the electronic files of the case. Selfservice litigation services provide convenient self-service for litigation participants and the public, including online filing, book marking, online browsing, contacting judges, inquiring about case progress, litigation guidance, court information, court location, court news, and court announcements. Intelligent assessment of litigation risk supports the assessment of litigation risk for the litigants before registration and filing and informs and guides the litigants to choose appropriate nonlitigation means to resolve disputes. Intelligent generation of complaint documents provides efficient, formatted and free self-service complaint document generation services for litigants. Intelligent material collection and transfer supports the collection and transfer of filing materials, supplementary materials and trial-related materials. II. Litigation Service Network The litigation service network is an important carrier for the court to conduct business and litigation services on the Internet, providing convenient and efficient online litigation services for litigants and litigation agents, greatly facilitating litigation, strengthening the supervision and management of court litigation services, improving the quality of litigation services, and improving the standardization level of litigation services (Fig. 4.3).

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Fig. 4.3 Structure of litigation service network system

The litigation service network mainly includes online mediation, filing fees payment, case progress inquiry, evidence exchange and cross-examination, case application, online delivery, contact judges, online browsing, online complaints and petitions through letters and visits, judicial publicity and other functions. The online mediation function supports the application for online mediation and uploads relevant application materials. Judges and staff can also organize online mediation for both litigants and their litigation agents during the process of trial. The filling payment function supports litigation participants in submitting litigation materials online and paying litigation fees online. The case progress inquiry function supports litigation participants in inquiring about online filing progress, case handling progress, etc. Evidence exchange and cross-examination function support the agents of both litigants and their litigation agents to submit evidence materials and counter evidence materials on the Internet and fill in cross-examination opinions. Business application supports various applications, such as litigation fee reduction and exemption, withdrawal, postponement of hearing, litigation preservation, investigation and evidence collection, witness appearance in court and other applications. The online delivery function supports the online service of documents in accordance with the law to the addressee who agrees to receive online service. The contact judge function supports the litigants and their litigation agents in communicating online with the judges. The online browsing function supports the application for reviewing case-related documents and realizes offline access to paper files or online viewing

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and downloading of electronic case files. The online petition function supports petitioners in applying for online petition. The judicial publicity function links the trial process, judgment documents, trial activities and enforcement information disclosure websites. The litigation service network carries out business collaboration with the relevant application systems of the specific court network and the Internet. On the specific court network, the litigation service network is connected with the trial case handling system, the enforcement case handling system and the electronic archives system to realize the functions of online filing, online browsing, case application, evidence exchange and cross-examination, and contacting judges. It is also connected with the big data management and service platform to realize the aggregation management of case data. On the Internet side, it connects with the online mediation platform of the people’s court, the online complaint petition platform and the unified service platform of the courts nationwide to realize the functions of online mediation, online complaint and petition and unified delivery service. III. Litigation Service Hotline The 12,368 intelligent litigation service platform is a full-scene litigation service platform developed and launched in accordance with the concept of one-number and one-stop service, relying on the convenience and interactive service advantages of the court’s public hotline (as shown in Fig. 4.4). Its purpose is to support the people in conducting litigation consultation, case inquiry, court information inquiry, contacting judges and other litigation services by calling hotlines or through network consultation so that the people can enjoy convenient, fast and high-quality litigation services. The 12,368 intelligent litigation service platform mainly operates on the Internet and the specific court network and mainly has core functions such as hotline service, network consultation service, intelligent voice service, general service, work list management, report circulation, quality inspection center, knowledge base, contacting judge, outgoing call with the same number display, 12,368 SMS and statistical center. The hotline service supports the litigants in communicating with the hotline attendants and answering the consultation questions raised by the litigants in real time; the network consulting service achieves multichannel access. For example, through the mobile WeCourt, the litigants can directly consult with the agent online. Intelligent voice consultation supports the litigants to realize self-service inquiry and consultation for 24 h. General service connects with other business management systems of the people’s court, realizes one-stop inquiry ability and general service push, and reduces the number of agents operating between multiple platforms and provides diversified services for the people. Work list management and report circulation can classify and record the claims of the litigants, and in case of special or important events, the work list can be transferred to court judges or other staff in the form of reports, and the processing results can be synchronized to the 12,368 platform. The quality inspection center can supervise the work of the attendants, supervise the overall service and personnel, and add classic cases to the knowledge base for

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Fig. 4.4 Structure of 12,368 intelligent litigation service platform system

others to learn. The knowledge base can provide the retrieval and management of legal knowledge, common questions and answers, and service skills for the agents and improve the service level of the agents. The judging system supports contacting judges to the party’s appeal through various channels, such as work list or report circulation, CoCall message notification, telephone, and message. The outgoing call with the same number display supports the telephone of other platforms of the court connecting 12,368, so that it can make outgoing calls with 12,368 number as the sole screen display number; 12,368 short messages can unify short messages sent by court to provide the information of litigation service, and increase the identification and reliability of court short messages; The statistical center can analyze and visualize the data, and provide data support for the management and decision-making of litigation services.

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A total of 12,368 intelligent litigation service platforms carry out business collaboration with related application systems of the Internet and specific court networks. On the Internet, the 12,368 intelligent litigation service platform is connected with the unified identity authentication system to verify the identity of the litigants. It is connected with the lawyer service platform to realize lawyer identity authentication and lawyer consultation information feedback. It is connected with China Mobile WeCourt to realize network consultation and provide general service. It is connected with a unified service platform, mediation platform, preservation system, appraisal system, trial information network and enforcement information publicity network to achieve one-stop inquiry service, preservation, appraisal, case and defaulter information and to collect people’s opinions and suggestions on various platforms through the suggestion feedback function. It is connected with a 12,368 short message platform to realize the use of outgoing short messages with the same number displaying function. It is connected with the system of complaints and petitions through letters and visits to realize the sharing of information. The specific court network is connected with the instant messaging CoCall system and the local case handling system to realize the service and reply of the work list. It is connected with the national 12,368 unified dispatch center to realize the data collection and reporting of the national 12,368 hotline service. IV. Electronic Litigation Platform Revolving around execution and trial, the electronic litigation platform is an online litigation service system covering the whole process of trial and enforcement (as shown in Fig. 4.5), which moves the offline litigation activities up online and realizes the paperless online processing of the whole litigation process. The litigants and agents can handle litigation activities on the same platform, and the information of the trial process, exchange of opinions, case files and feedback processing is fully transparent and open, which fully guarantees the litigation rights of the litigants and lawyers and enables them to enjoy court litigation services quickly and conveniently through the Internet to make the litigation process more open and transparent. It also eliminates the impact of time, space and other factors on lawsuits. The electronic litigation platform mainly runs on the Internet and has the functions of online mediation, online filing, material submission, online payment, electronic delivery, contactingjudges, online preservation, evidence exchange and crossexamination, online browsing, online court session, online enforcement application and enforcement clue reporting. Online mediation functions provide online prelitigation and in-litigation mediation services for litigants and litigation agents; Online filing function supports online appeal and online application for retrial; Material submission function supports the uploading of case filing materials and evidence materials; Online payment and refund function supports the payment and refund of litigation fees; Electronic service function provides convenient and fast service methods such as short message service, mail service and network download service for the litigants and litigation agents; Contacting judges function supports communication between litigants and judges at any time; Online preservation function supports various preservation methods such as

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Fig. 4.5 Structure of electronic Litigtion platform

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property and evidence preservation before or during litigation; Evidence exchange and cross-examination function supports the exchange and cross-examination of evidence materials among multiple litigants and lawyers; Online browsing function supports litigation participants to apply for and read electronic case files materials; Online trial function supports judges to participate in the trial online in the courtroom, and lawyers, litigants participate in the real-time trial online outside the courtroom; Online enforcement application function supports the query and application for enforcement; Enforcement clue report function supports the reporting of the enforcement clue of the person subject to enforcement. The electronic litigation platform carries out business collaboration with the Internet and the relevant application systems of the specific court network. On the Internet, it is connected with China Judicial Process Information Online, China Judgment Online and China Enforcement Information Online to realize the publicity of judicial information; it is connected with the electronic evidence platform of the block chain to realize storage and verification of electronic data. The specific court network is connected with the trial system to realize the handling of the whole business process of the trial. It is connected with the electronic case file system to realize the push of electronic case file information. It is connected with the litigation fee management system, document generation system and preservation system to realize the payment of litigation fees, document generation and application for preservation. It is connected with the scientific and technological courtroom system to achieve a multiparty, cross-network online video trial. It is connected with the enforcement investigation and control system to realize the query of enforcement investigation and control information and connected with the big data management and service platform to realize the convergence of business data. V. Court Mediation Platform The people’s court mediation platform is an information system that supports onestop diversified dispute resolution, putting the nonlitigation dispute resolution mechanism as the first step, proceeding from the diverse judicial needs of the people, forming a systematic, comprehensive and synergistic dispute resolution mechanism, realizing online mediation the whole process, and providing great convenience for the litigants to participate in mediation to provide effective system support for the smooth development of litigation source management (as shown in Fig. 4.6). The people’s court mediation platform mainly operates on the Internet, supporting the litigants to the dispute, mediators, mediation organizations and courts to participate in dispute resolution online. The litigants to the dispute can fill in the details of the dispute, upload evidence materials, select mediators and apply for mediation online through the platform. After the mediator accepts the case, the litigants to the dispute can conduct audio and video mediation online in response to the arrangement of the mediator, and the whole mediation process is video taped to facilitate the inquiry of the mediation process at any time after the case file. After mediation, the mediator can push the mediation agreement online to both litigants to confirm the content of the agreement and sign it online. After the litigants to the dispute reach a mediation agreement, they can apply online to the court with jurisdiction for judicial

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Fig. 4.6 Structure of people’s court mediation platform system

confirmation of the mediation agreement or issue a mediation legal document. If the mediation fails, they can also fill in the filing information online to apply for filing. In addition, courts can also push cases that meet the mediation requirements in the specific court network case handling system to the mediation platform of the people’s court to mediate. In addition to comprehensive coverage of the mediation process, the people’s court mediation platform also has a strong statistical capacity, which can display data statistics and graphics of various cases in the mediation process so that courts at all levels can know better about the mediation work. The people’s court mediation platform carries out collaboration with the relevant application systems of the specific court network and the Internet. On the Internet, it connects with the road traffic accident dispute prelitigation mediation platform, the mediation service platform of the Federation of Industry and Commerce, the mediation platform of the People’s Bank of China and other types of industrial mediation platforms to support the circulation of cases between platforms and to provide litigation and mediation transfer support for industrial mediation platforms. The private court network connects with the trial and case handling system of the

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court, supporting the internal network cases to be pushed to the mediation platform, the judicial confirmation application, mediation application and online filing application of the external network, and supporting the online transfer between litigation and mediation. It connects with the judicial chain platform, and the mediation agreement signed by the litigants can be stored on the chain platform in real time, providing guarantees for the rights and interests of both litigants. It connects with the big data management and service platform and the information platform of the litigation service guidance center to support the converged management and display analysis of the national court mediation data. VI. Internet Court An Internet court is an important measure for the judiciary to actively adapt to the trend of Internet development. Compared with the traditional people’s court, the Internet court can put litigation links online, such as case acceptance, case delivery, mediation, evidence exchange, pretrial preparation, trial, and sentencing. At present, China has established three Internet courts in Hangzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou that rely on online Internet litigation platforms, among which the information system structures are basically similar, with slight differences in terms of local construction foundation and actual case handling. The Internet court litigation platform is deployed on the Internet and mainly includes three components: the litigant service platform, the judge working platform and the judicial big data platform (as shown in Fig. 4.7). The litigant service platform provides the functions of online filing, online electronic delivery and reception, evidence submission, application for payment order, online mediation, online judicial auction, online performance and online court session for the litigants and litigation agents. Compared with the traditional court litigation service network, 12,368 litigation service hotline and other service platforms, the Internet court litigation platform provides online mass filing, block chain electronic evidence submission, payment order application, online performance and other special services for litigants, and according to the needs of the case, it can apply for shopping transactions, payment details and auction information of the Internet service platform with one click, changing the traditional mode of searching and evidence collecting in litigation and turning into a new Internet mode of case-based data smartness. The judge working platform provides the whole process of an intelligent case handling function for judges, assists judges in quickly filing and accepting cases, conducts evidence reviews with one click and mass online joint trial, etc. Judges in charge of filing, trial and enforcement as well as mediators can safely and conveniently log on to the judge working platform to handle cases through the Internet integrated business platform, litigation service network and court app. Compared with the traditional case handling system, the Internet court judge working platform has richer auxiliary functions and more comprehensive judicial capabilities. Online case acceptance supports mass acceptance, such as element-based and questionand-answer guidance. The payment order system supports online application and one-click issuance of payment orders. Intellectual property cases provide intelligent

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Fig. 4.7 Structure of internet court litigation platform system

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comparison and verification of electronic evidence. Electronic delivery has the ability to repair the loss of data about litigants through multiple channels. The Internet intelligent scheduling court session (court trial code) system can automatically schedule according to the timetable of the litigants and judges. The platform also supports the quick adjudication of financial, intellectual property, property, road traffic and other cases and the intelligent trial of single cases. Through information exchange and data connection with financial institutions, industrial and commercial administration, mediation and arbitration, market supervision and other political and legal organs, the judicial big data platform achieves efficient and accurate judicial collaboration, including supporting litigation participants to receive legal documents and sign online alarm for litigation over vocational disputes, public opinion monitoring, case data support, law reference matching, intelligent generation of documents and other big data computing support. The Internet court litigation platform carries out business collaboration with relevant application systems of the specific court network and the Internet terminal. On the Internet, in accordance with the types of cases and characteristics of Internet courts, we should make full use of the electronic service platform to complete the signing of online judicial documents. It connects with the judicial open platform to complete the information disclosure in time. It supports connections with enterprises such as Internet e-commerce platforms, logistics network information platforms, judicial auction platforms and Internet payment platforms and realizes the information exchange of order information, service information, auction information and payment information. It makes full use of the advantages of the network, avoids the inefficient offline coinvestigation mode in the past, improves trial efficiency and saves litigation costs. The specific court network exchanges case information, enforcement information and evidence storage information with the trial case handling platform, enforcement case handling platform and judicial block chain platform to realize the unified and centralized management of data. VII. Mobile WeCourt China Mobile WeCourt is a mobile Internet litigation service platform developed by the people’s court in accordance with the concept of one-network and one-stop service, relying on the advantages of WeChat App., which has a wide audience and is easy to use (Fig. 4.8). Its purpose is to support the litigants and lawyers in handling litigation matters at any time and anywhere. It can make the public enjoy convenient, fast and high-quality litigation services and effectively support the construction of a one-stop diversified dispute resolution and litigation service system. China Mobile WeCourt mainly operates on the Internet and integrates trial management, enforcement process management, archive management, scientific and technological courtrooms, big data platforms and other systems to support cross-jurisdiction and cross-level online processing of litigation matters. The system mainly has 10 core functions, such as filing and payment, diversified dispute mediation, court trial cross-examination, case coordination handling, preservation and

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Fig. 4.8 Structure of China mobile WeCourt system

appraisal, service, complains and petitions through letters and visits, lawyer’s business functions, intelligent assistant tools, system management and quality and efficiency management. Among them, the filing payment function supports litigation participants submitting litigation materials online and paying litigation fees online; the diversified dispute mediation function supports litigants applying for online mediation and participating in video mediation; the court trial cross-examination

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function supports litigant participants participating in online cross-examination and video trials remotely; the coordination handling of cases function supports litigation participants achieving online browsing and case matter application; preservation and appraisal supports the litigants applying for preservation and appraisal online and tracking the handling of case property preservation and case property appraisal online; the service function supports litigation participants receiving legal documents and signing for them online; the complaints and petitions function supports litigants lodging complaints online and checking complaints; and Lawyer’s function supports lawyer identity authentication, applying for agent relationships, etc. Intelligent assistant tools provide services such as litigation risk assessment, intelligent generation of complaints and calculation of litigation fees; system management and quality and efficiency management provide services such as authority management, background configuration and data analysis and display. China Mobile WeCourt conducts business collaboration with specific court networks, Internet-related application systems and external units such as the Ministry of Justice. The specific court network connects with the trial process management system and the enforcement process information management system to support the functions of case process handling and case handling procedures notification. It connects with the case payment system to support the online payment function. It connects with the scientific and technological courtroom system to support the function of court information notification and online Internet court sessions. It connects with the archives management system to support the online browsing function; it connects with the delivery platform of the people’s court to support the function of document delivery. It connects with the big data management and service platform and the information platform of the litigation service guidance center to support the convergence management and display analysis of WeCourt data. It connects with a visual quality and efficiency operation and maintenance monitoring management platform to support the dynamic monitoring and quality and efficiency evaluation of the system operation status. It connects with the judicial chain platform to support data storage and certificate verification functions. On the Internet, it connects with the mediation platform, the management system of complaint & petition visits or letters, the entrusted appraisal system and the online preservation system to support the related functions of case dispute mediation, online complaint and petition, online appraisal and online preservation. It connects with the information system of the Ministry of Justice and obtains the identity information of lawyers to support the online authentication function. VIII. Complaint and Petition System The people’s court petition information system realizes the handling of complaint visits or complaint letters, remote video interviews and online petition handling; provides online service for petition-related matters for the litigants, litigation agents, court staff, case-filing judges and litigation service center personnel; realizes the interactive sharing of petition data among courts; and effectively supports the construction of the court litigation service system (Fig. 4.9). The people’s court complaint and petition information system includes the online complaint and petition platform deployed on the Internet, the people’s court

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Fig. 4.9 Structure of people’s court complaint and petition information system

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complaint and petition management system and the people’s court complaint and petition data analysis platform deployed on the specific court network. The online complaint and petition platform provides functions such as petition entry, material management, review and submission, and feedback viewing. The complaint and petition entry function supports the input and submission of complaint and petition information. The material management function supports users submitting electronic materials online. The review and submission function supports the online submission of complaint and petition case information by petitioners, and the system will automatically ferry the petition material to the Intranet through the FGAP for online processing by judges. The feedback viewing function supports the petitioner viewing the case handling outcomes online. The complaint and petition system provides functions such as complaint letter handling, complaint face-to-face interviews, video interviews, online complaint screening and handling, and supports users in conducting process management. The entry management of complaints and petitions through letters and visits realizes the data input of complaints and petitions through letters and visits, online petitions, and video interviews. The process management function provides standardized process management services for various matters; the review and management function supports case review and approval services for users; and the material management function provides users with services such as uploading, modifying, viewing and downloading materials to facilitate access to electronic case materials. Through the connection between the petition system and the trial system, the transfer service can realize the transfer of petition cases to the case handling system and can receive the outcomes of case filing and case conclusion. The statistical query service provides users with data statistics to meet the basic statistical query requirements. The four-level transfer service receives the reply information reported by the lower courts through the business interface of the four-level courts and realizes the linkage processing of complaint and petition of the four-level courts. The data analysis platform of complaints and petitions through letters and visits provides data support for petition business systems. The data management service runs through the four-level courts to realize the integration and sharing of complaint and petition data. Through the data management service, the courts at all levels upload local data, download the data handed over by the higher courts, and conduct quality verification for the data uploaded by the lower courts. The petition analysis system provides different dimensions of analysis and display of basic data of courts at all levels, including petition information, petitioner information, case information, region information, etc. The petition profile function provides services such as the petitioner’s petition record and the analysis of related cases. The people’s court petition information system cooperates with the relevant application systems of the specific court network and the Internet. The specific court network connects with the case handling platform to support the transfer of petition data and material push and to accept the case filing results. It connects with the petition system of local courts to realize the functions of data submission, verification and statistical analysis of local courts. It connects with the big data management and service platform to realize the functions of likepushing and congregating the full

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amount of petition data, calling the original data and calling the citizenship information data. It connects with the 12,368 litigation service hotline to provide data inquiry service for hotline calls. It connects with the information platform of the people’s court litigation service guidance center to realize the push function of petition index data. On the Internet, it connects with China Mobile WeCourt to realize the function of mobile online complaints and petitions; it connects with the litigation service network to realize the functions of online filing, cross-region filing and lawyer appointment filing. IX. Delivery System The delivery platform of the people’s court meets the service needs of four-level courts nationwide and realizes the precise positioning of the addressee, the multichannel service of litigation documents, and the multichannel, multiway reception of litigation documents by the litigants (see Fig. 4.10). The terminal for judges of the service platform runs on the specific court network, and the terminal for litigants runs on the Internet. The system has the core functions of litigation activity notification data query, electronic service, telephone notification, litigation activity notification, mail service, announcement service, entrustment service and direct service. The data query function of litigation activity notification supports the query of the real-name authentication mobile phone number of the litigants, the information of past legal document service, the information of past cases involved, the identity information of household registration, e-mail address and other data; The telephone notification function supports online dialing and uploads the call record as a proof of service; The litigation activity notification function supports notifying the litigants of the acceptance of the case by SMS and mails; Electronic service supports pushing electronic litigation documents to the litigants, notifying the litigants by means of short messages and e-mails, and supporting the litigants to check the documents online; Mail service function supports the online sending of mail delivery tasks to the postal system, and supports the postal system to upload the delivery status, tracking information and other data to the service platform; Announcement service function supports to send announcement publication request to the People’s Court Announcement Network, and online payment, scheduling, publication and other related matters; The entrustment service function supports the mutual entrustment of service tasks by courts in different regions to solve the problem of cross-region service; Direct service function supports data recording of offline direct service, which is convenient for judges to manage and file. The people’s court service platform also has the functions of service data management and statistical analysis, providing multidimensional and comprehensive data service for judges of courts nationwide. Meanwhile, it also provides a variety of service inquiry services for the recipient on the Internet, such as electronic documents service, mail service tracking status, announcement payment notice and published announcements through computers, mobile browsers and WeChat App. The service platform of the people’s court has realized the connection with the three major telecom operators, China Post, the big data management and service

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Fig. 4.10 Structure of people’s court service platform system

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platform of the people’s court and the household registration network of the public security, exchanged data with the data platforms of various industries, constructed a constantly enriched and improved information resource database, approached the problem of locating relevant participants in the process of service, and shared relevant data resources with local service platforms of local courts. The people’s court service platform is also integrated with the China Judicial Process Information Online, Mobile WeCourt, lawyer service platform, China Post, people’s court announcement network, appraisal platform and other related systems to support judges in analyzing the authenticity of the recipient’s network account and selecting one or more channels for document service. At the same time, it also meets the needs of the litigants for multichannel and multiway service acceptance and greatly improves the efficiency of service. X. Litigation Service Guidance Center Platform The litigation service guidance center platform is an information-based comprehensive platform that fully demonstrates the quality and efficiency of the overall work of court litigation service, with the five business modules of diversified dispute resolution, distribution, mediation ruling and adjudication, filing service, trial assistance and complaint & petition as the horizontal axis, with the four links of building mechanism, setting rules, building platform and promoting application as the vertical axis, and with the quality & effectiveness evaluation index system as the grip. According to the regulatory policies and normative requirements of litigation service management, it can intelligently capture the information of litigation services to realize the onestop diversified dispute resolution and the analysis, judgment and precise guidance of litigation services of the court (Fig. 4.11). The platform of the litigation service guidance center runs on the specific court network, showing the main situation of litigation services through the core index system, including the quality and efficiency evaluation module and platform service module. Quality and efficiency evaluation includes indicator formulation, data aggregation, indicator calculation, application analysis, quality and efficiency reports and other functions. The content of the indicators is based on the scoring standard of the national court litigation service quality and efficiency evaluation system. The quality and efficiency evaluation module collects court litigation service data, objectively evaluates and automatically scores the litigation service work of courts at all levels according to the indicators, statistically analyses the scores, and finally forms a onestop diversified dispute resolution and litigation service system construction quality and efficiency report. Platform services include functions such as video surveillance, reporting and issuing, filling systems, matter requests and experience exchanges. Video surveillance applies in five key places, namely, court entrance, security channel, service hall, filing window and petition window; Reporting and issuing supports the reporting and issuing of notices and documents between courts; The filling system supports the uploading of files for establishing mechanisms and rules; Exchange of experience supports online communication between courts.

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Fig. 4.11 Structure of litigation service guidance center system

The litigation service guidance center platform carries out business collaboration with related application systems on the specific court network and Internet. The specific court network connects with the court complaint management system and the court video surveillance system to realize the convergence of court complaint data and video surveillance data. It connects with the big data management and service platform of the court to realize the convergence of case data such as the first-instance civil trial, first-instance administrative trail, preservation and appraisal. On the Internet, it connects with China Mobile WeCourt, people’s court mediation

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platform, delivery platform of all courts nationawide, people’s court online preservation system, 12,368 litigation service platform, lawyer service platform and external entrustment appraisal system of people’s court, and collects all kinds of work data of the court’s diversified dispute resolution and litigation services.

4.2 Intelligent Trial System An intelligent trial system is an information-based and intelligent system that deeply integrates modern science and technology with trial work and supports the people’s court in building a modern case trial system, providing online browsing, collegial discussion, trial and judgment assistance services for judges. The intelligent trial system mainly runs on the specific court network and specific mobile network, providing case trial information to the intelligent service system, case judgment outcome information to the intelligent enforcement system, case trial process information to the intelligent management system, and process information, trial video and judgment documents that should be made public according to law to the judicial open system. Figure 4.12 shows the architecture of the intelligent trial system. The intelligent trial system should be based on the trial and case handling system and take the synchronous generation and in-depth application of electronic case files as the main line to continuously improve the smart level of the case trial. First, the online circulation of the whole case files should be realized. All litigation file materials will be uploaded or scanned into the case handling system for automatic circulation as soon as they are accepted by the court so that information and intelligent means can automatically and accurately support the trial of cases based on case information. Second, online trials for all staff should be realized. All case handlers, such as judges, assistant judges and clerks, can skillfully use the case handling system to carry out case trials, and through online case handling, they can obtain great convenience in case file reading, document inquiry, element reference, document entry and parallel trial. Third, full real-time data collection should be realized. The basic information of all kinds of cases, case file materials and court audio and video should be automatically collected to the case handling system and the court data center in real time. It links to the national court data platform to ensure that important judicial data resources can be timely integrated into standardized, orderly and reliable management. Fourth, online support in the whole process should be realized. While providing rich desktop online support for the whole process, we should also provide digital, visual and remote support to meet specific needs according to the characteristics of important trial links, such as trials, collegial panels and trial committees. We should further break through the time and space limits and improve the efficiency of handling cases through online means. Fifth, comprehensive intelligent assistance should be achieved. We should sort out and analyze the specific work content and attribute characteristics of each case trial link, explore the use of artificial intelligent methods such as speech recognition, character recognition, semantic understanding, automatic retrieval, machine learning, data science and assistant decision-making,

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Fig. 4.12 Structure of intelligent trial system

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and try every means to hand over repetitive and routine work to computers to continuously improve the quality of trial judgment while minimizing the heavy load of judges. Sixth, the sharing of data on demand should be realized. facing the difficult problems of file transfer in cross-level trials, such as appeal trials and applications for retrial, as well as the need for whole-process supervision in trial management, we should, while ensuring file materials going online legally, breakdown the barriers of court levels and departments, set up access and review authority according to law, and give full play to the advantages of online circulation, thus effectively tackling the long-term difficulties in cross-level case file transfer and trial supervision. I. Trial and Case Handling System The trial and case handling system is the core platform to support the judge’s trial case handling and the main axis of the intelligent trial system. According to service-based, component-based, integration-based design, it integrates advanced technologies such as legal artificial intelligence and blockchain and provides multi-scenario trial case handling services for trial judges, such as intelligent assistant case handling, team cooperation case handling, paperless case handling in the whole process, and intensive and efficient case handling. The trial case handling system takes the application of electronic case file circulation as the main line, uses modern information technology to provide all-round services for all kinds of users from the aspects of process, practice and decision-making, maximizes the use of intelligent means to assist judges in handling cases, optimizes the use experience, and becomes the right assistant for judges, assistant judges, clerks, trial managers and supervisors in handling cases (as shown in Fig. 4.13). The trial and case handling system is deployed on the specific court network, including the main modules of case filing, case circulation management, case filing assistance, scheduling management, delivery management, collegial panel review, case conclusion and appeal, document generation, intelligent case file browsing, case archiving, data sharing services, query statistics, trial management, system management and system efficiency. Among them, the case filing module supports the filing judges to directly register the case information offline and examine the filing applications submitted by the litigants online through various channels; The case circulation management module supports the case-filing judges to complete the automatic case circulation manually or online; The case-filing assistant module supports the material identification submitted by the litigants and the filing risk identification; The scheduling module provides services like online courtroom booking, intelligent alarm of court conflicts and automatic generation of procedural documents; The delivery management module supports judges to deliver legal documents by mails, emails and other means, and to track the delivery outcomes online; The collegial panel review module supports online appointment of professional judges’ meetings, meeting approval, meeting arrangement and meeting management; The case conclusion and appeal module supports the extraction and filling-in of case conclusion information from judgment documents, and supports the online transfer of appeal cases by lower courts; The document generation module supports judges to make document templates and automatically generate legal document frameworks to improve the

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Fig. 4.13 Structure of the judicial case handling system

efficiency of document generation; Intelligent case file browsing module supports judges to arrange electronic case file contents according to case handling routines and browse electronic case file materials online; The case archiving module supports automatic interconnection of case file contents and archives catalog as well as one-click automatic case file archive transfer; The data sharing service module provides realtime download services such as case information and electronic case file information, provides data services for relevant applications, improves the collaboration ability

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between systems, and has the functions of interface security auditing and interface operation status supervision; The query and statistics module supports the query of case information, and supports the statistics of various information about case filing, conclusion or pending status according to different dimensions like time, department, personnel and other criteria; The trial management module provides review and approval management and key case management for trial managers to support the improvement of the quality and efficiency of trial work; The system management and system effectiveness module supports the management and maintenance of system operation parameters and the effectiveness analysis of key application function points. The trial case handling system realizes business collaboration with many application systems on the specific court network and the Internet and connects with the China Mobile WeCourt, litigation service network, road traffic integration platform, online preservation system and lawyer service platform to support online filing application, mediation and preservation. It connects with the diversion system to support intelligent identification and automatic diversion of complex and simple cases. It connects with the litigation fee management system to support the litigants in paying online or offline. It connects with the political and legal collaborative case handling system to support the coordinated handling of criminal cases by public security, procuratorial, judicial and other departments; it connects with Faxin 2.0 to support the functions of laws and regulations retrieval, intelligent push of similar cases, related cases, string case analysis, application of civil code, etc. It connects with the scientific and technological courtroom system support the sharing of scheduling information, automatic backfilling of court transcripts and videos; it connects with the judicial appraisal system to support online application for appraisal and evaluation, and online feedback of appraisal and evaluation reports; it connects with the synchronous generation system of electronic case files to support judges to consult the electronic case files online; it connects with the archive system to support one-click filing of electronic archives; it connects with the China Judicial Process Information Online to support the disclosure of trial process information to the litigants in accordance with the law; it connects with big data management and service platform to support the collection and upload of trial data; and it connects with the delivery system to support judges to serve legal documents by mail, emails and other means. II. Synchronous Generation of Electronic Case Files The synchronous generation system of electronic case files is an information-based assistant system that supports the synchronization or scanning and uploading of all litigation materials to the case handling information system at the time of case acceptance by court, completely changing the previous case handling mode based on paper case file circulation, and takes mostly the electronic case file circulation and application, which is an important basis for the construction and application of smart courts (Fig. 4.14).

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Fig. 4.14 Structure of synchronous generation of electronic case files system

The synchronous generation system of electronic case files mainly includes electronic case file collection, electronic case file catalog compilation, digital electronic documents, whole-process information backfill, multi-scenario online case file browsing, whole-process electronic case file disclosure, assistant intelligent research and judgment, assistant generation of various documents, automatic archiving of case files and other modules. The electronic case file collection module can receive the electronic case file materials generated in all stages of case handling from service, filing to conclusion in the way of unified interface service, and support the scanning and uploading of paper and online materials. After collection, it can automatically correct deviation and eliminate blank pages and other proofreading operations. The module of compiling the electronic case file catalog formulates the rules of the electronic case file contents according to the reading habits of judges, formulates the rules of the archiving catalog according to the requirements of electronic archives, and realizes the automatic typesetting, classification and archiving of electronic case files by using image recognition, machine learning and other technologies. Through text and

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semantic recognition technology, the digital electronic document module documentates, structures and digitizes electronic documents such as scanned pictures, converts them into selectable and reproducible data resources, automatically extracts structured case information, and provides information output services to support judges in copying case file text and assisting legal document generation. The whole-process information backfill module can extract the basic information of the case in the process of filing and hearing, generate electronic documents, check the same information items in multiple documents, and backfill the confirmed outcomes to the case handling system to reduce the workload of manual input and proofreading. The multi-scenario online case file browsing module supports applications such as electronic case file circulation, online case file browsing of collegial panel members, online collegial panel, court session case files browsing, trial committee discussion and mobile case handling and optimizes the browsing and operation experience of electronic case files to realize assistant functions such as copying the text of the electronic files at will, zooming the size as needed, clicking the content to the corresponding place, retrieving the full-text content, and marking the file flexibly. The whole-process electronic case file disclosure module can rely on the litigation service platform or judicial open platform to provide online application, browsing, borrowing and other services for litigants and lawyers according to law. The assistant intelligent research and judgment module can automatically extract the case elements from the electronic case files, automatically push the specific provisions of relevant laws and regulations, and automatically push similar cases matching the case or the focus of disputes. The module of assisted generation of various documents can intelligently analyze and extract case information and intelligently generate legal documents according to the selected document template. The case file automatic archiving module supports the automatic generation of electronic case file cover and contents, converts the electronic case files into an electronic archive, and ensures that the electronic case file content is consistent with the paper file content (if any) except for the electronic page number. The synchronous generation system of electronic case files needs to have business collaboration with the related application systems on specific court networks and the Internet as well as some external units. The specific court network connects with the trial system, the enforcement case handling system and the file scanning system to obtain the scanned electronic documents and complete the file collection. It connects with the court trial system and the trial committee system to push the case file materials to the court trial and adjudication committee system and supports online browsing of case files in different business scenarios. It connects with the archive system, pushing the files that meet the archiving conditions to the archive system to complete the archiving operation. On the Internet, it connects with the electronic litigation platform and the WeCourt to obtain the litigation materials submitted by the litigants or litigation agents. It connects with the public security, procuratorial other legal collaborative systems, receives electronic documents from external units, carries out unified storage and management, provides electronic case files to relevant units for sharing, and promotes online exchange, sharing and business collaboration of case information among relevant departments.

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Fig. 4.15 Structure of automated electronic case file cataloging system

III. Automatic Cataloging of Electronic Case Files The electronic case file automatic cataloging system is a trial function assistant system that identifies and classifies all kinds of scanned and uploaded litigation file materials and automatically classifies them into the corresponding catalog system. It is a prerequisite to ensure that the electronic case file management is more orderly and compliant, to provide full convenience for judges in the follow-up case handling, trial, collegial discussion and other links and to support the in-depth application of electronic case files (as shown in Fig. 4.15). The automatic cataloging system of electronic case files mainly includes three modules: file identification and learning ability, automatic cataloging and intelligent cataloging. The file identification and learning ability module identifies, classifies and names the electronic document materials uploaded to the system through the network, scanner or high-speed camera in the process of filing and handling cases by using OCR, image recognition and machine learning technology, assists the filing and handling judges in completing the generation of electronic case files, and automatically classifies them into case files. Meanwhile, it supports automatic collection of cataloging outcomes after manual correction, gives feedback of the optimal outcomes to the learning framework of the cataloging system, and continuously improves the accuracy of the automatic cataloging algorithm through iterative optimization of machine learning. The automatic cataloging module supports the user in automatically cataloging the uploaded materials through the functions of main

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volume content cataloging, assistant volume content cataloging, present cataloging, etc., and supports the user in directly correcting the materials with wrong cataloging by moving the mouse, and the correction results are automatically added to machine learning. According to the actual content, title, seal, signature, stamp and other information of the file materials, the intelligent cataloging module classifies and identifies the materials and names them as a whole, supports judges in clearly understanding the specific composition of the case file materials according to the content structure when browsing the electronic case file, and improves the browsing experience. It can be seen that the automatic cataloging system provides two main ways of cataloging. One is intelligent cataloging, which is realized automatically and completely by relying on the information system. It features completing the cataloging quickly, reducing the involvement of many clerks. However, due to the difference in case files, some errors might have occurred in the process. The other is a combination of automatic and manual modes in which the automatically completed cataloging needs to be supplemented with manual correction, and the results are fed back to the intelligent system for further algorithm optimization. The automatic cataloging system of electronic case files needs to be connected with the electronic file system in the specific court network to receive the file materials and feed back the file catalog. IV. Intelligent Retrieval of Legal Provisions The intelligent retrieval system of legal provisions is a digital network platform that deeply integrates legal knowledge services and case big data services, providing authoritative and accurate legal knowledge services such as massive legal provisions, case gist, legal viewpoints and judgment documents for court case handlers and legal professional groups (as shown in Fig. 4.16). The intelligent retrieval system of legal provisions runs on the Internet and the private court network at the same time with a full amount of laws, cases, knowledge resource database, retrieval navigation system and one-stop legal knowledge service architecture. The legal resource database collects the current full amount of legal knowledge literature and case data resources covering legal documents, legal interpretations, case gists, legal viewpoints, judgment documents, books, journal papers, model documents, industry standards and other content resources. With a frequency of two hours to update, tens of thousands of newly released legal documents and cases from domestic legislative, administrative and judicial organs are updated rapidly every day. It has a huge capacity for stock resources and a rapid updating speed for incremental documents, forming a legal knowledge system with the largest scale, the most complete system and the widest coverage. Meanwhile, it supports the professional knowledge system retrieval path in addition to the regular retrieval method of keywords and realizes the function of providing “one-stop” legal professional knowledge solutions for legal professional groups using a knowledge system in accurate connection with knowledge elements. The intelligent question & answer system supports question-and-answer retrieval of all types of legal resources and adopts two underlying technologies of standard question-and-answer and professional semantic identification in which all answers are extracted and quoted from

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Fig. 4.16 Structure of intelligent retrieval of legal provisions system

authoritative sources, and index labels of answer sources and legal foundation are provided as well. The intelligent retrieval system of legal provisions connects with the copyright content resources of publishing houses, digital copyright content operators, public data resources, data service providers and online judgment document websites on the Internet to obtain resource input. It connects with the court case handling platform and other application systems on the specific court network, comprehensively improves the intelligent level of in-depth application of electronic case files, and meets the needs of judges to intelligently retrieve laws, cases and knowledge in the whole process of case handling. V. Intelligent Push of Similar Cases The similar case intelligent push system is oriented to the retrieval needs of similar cases based on legal facts, legal relations and practical judgments and provides efficient and accurate similar case push services, which is an important intelligent support to promote the unification of judgment criteria, to improve the quality and efficiency of trials and to ensure judicial justice (Fig. 4.17). The case intelligent push system mainly runs on the specific court network. It intelligently identifies the case documents uploaded by the electronic case file system and the court trial system, makes full use of big data computing, natural language processing and artificial intelligence technologies, analyzes all 1,414 causes of cases,

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Fig. 4.17 Structure of typical cases intelligent push system

marks 153,000 similar case dimensions, and supports prompt response to the multicondition retrieval of 100 million judgment documents. At present, it has covered and connected the trial and case handling systems of higher people’s courts and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps courts nationwide, realized the ability to extract basic information, identify key points and identify legal issues, and intelligently recommended similar cases to provide services for four-level courts nationwide. The system supports three active retrieval methods, including keyword retrieval, text retrieval and guided retrieval. The keyword retrieval intelligently relates the cause of the case, the focus of the dispute and the characteristics of the case. Guided retrieval integrates three sets of similar case dimension systems, namely, the judgment fact dimension, legal knowledge dimension and judicial practice dimension, to realize the holographic portrait of legal big data. For text retrieval, the elements of the case, such as the cause of the case, the facts of the case, the focus of disputes and the application of law, are extracted from the case description, documents and files to quickly construct the semantic portraits of the cases, and on this basis, similar cases are found from a large number of precedent cases, which are actively and orderly pushed to assist judges in handling cases and promote the unification of judgment criteria. The system carries out tag extraction, case identification and structured segmentation of the collected document data, and the search result page supports viewing the full text of the judgment document. According to the outcomes of case retrieval, the case retrieval report carries out multidimensional intelligent analysis,

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comparison and reasoning to form high-quality output and returns it to the electronic case file system. The similar case intelligent push system has been deeply connected with the electronic case file system, the court trial system and the judgment document network on the specific court network and receives document data from the judgment document network, case file information from the court trial system and electronic case file system as the main basis for intelligent retrieval. VI. Assistant Generation of Legal Documents Legal documents are the general name of all kinds of documents that the people’s court needs to serve to the litigants or agents in the process of trial and enforcement, and they are the concrete embodiment of exercising judicial power on behalf of the state. Making legal documents is an important part of the daily work of court case handlers. The assisted generation system of legal documents makes full use of all kinds of case electronic resources and legal information resources to automatically generate standard legal documents or the first draft of judgment documents for specific cases, supplemented by a dual-screen intelligent writing mode, which is an intelligent assistant system to support the improvement of the efficiency and quality of judges in writing judgment documents (as shown in Fig. 4.18). The editing of judgment documents is the key content for the making of legal documents. According to the judge’s habit of writing documents, the assisted generation system of legal documents automatically drafts the first version of documents according to the selected document template through the analysis of case-related

Fig. 4.18 Structure of legal documents assistant generation system

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documents and intelligent extraction of information, which is convenient for judges to further modify and improve on this basis. It mainly includes three core functions: document assembly, document template and document generation. Based on semantic analysis, document retrieval engines, document analysis engines and other technologies, the document assembly function realizes the intelligent analysis of predocuments such as indictments and court transcripts and file information, extracts relevant case information, and quickly compiles the first draft of the document according to the document template in combination with the content of judgment reasoning. The document template function provides multiple document template formats, including the default style template, user-defined template, shared template, collection template and draft template, and supports the system in flexibly and automatically selecting and quickly using those templates according to users’ needs. The document generation function provides intelligent document generation and edits intelligent assistant services. It automatically associates relevant files in the case trial system as predocuments after choosing the document template and automatically generates the first draft of the judgment document in combination with the case information. The dual-screen intelligent writing mode provides judges with assistant services such as left screen reading and right screen writing, word/WPS plug-in, voice input, law and regulation enquiry, similar case push, automatic generation of subsequent documents, etc. The assisted generation system of legal documents needs to collaborate with the trial system and the electronic case file system on the specific court network. It connects with the trial system to obtain the information of the litigants and cases and connects with the electronic case file system to obtain predocuments to support the extraction of case information. VII. Intelligent Error Correction of Judgment Documents The error correction system of judgment documents is an information system that is based on the judicial interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court, the norms of document production and the style of documents, and checks the format standardization, information integrity, logical consistency and accuracy of law citation of various court adjudicative documents, such as criminal, civil, administrative, enforcement and compensation cases, reminds errors or doubts to facilitate the judges to find the document problems quickly and correct them in time, and supports to improve the quality of the judgment documents. The judicial document error correction system of the people’s court is such a trial auxiliary information system (as shown in Fig. 4.19). In addition, the system provides a one-click automatic typesetting function, which saves the workload of the clerks in adjusting the document format, improves the work efficiency and enhances the document quality. The main functions of the intelligent error correction system of the judgment document are as follows: the automatic typesetting function supports the intelligent adjustment of fonts, paragraphs, page numbers, margins, etc., judges whether the last part is a separate page, and ensures that the typesetting effect meets the requirements through intelligent operation. The voice proofreading function aims at the situations in which the word order is often mistaken or the missing words are not checked out

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Fig. 4.19 Structure of error correction system for judicial documents in people’s courts

in the document checking process. By voice proofreading, the document is checked through listening to the content of the document to reduce the work burden of clerks, and the text is converted into an audio format through a text-to-speech engine and is available for output. The function of spelling and grammar checking is to check the spelling accuracy of wrong characters, repeated sentences, punctuation marks, serial numbers, dates and place names in documents. The function of law verification is to check and verify the laws and regulations that may be cited in the judgment documents and whether the writing of the law is correct and standardized. The document content integrity verification function checks the content integrity of key information items in judicial documents according to the requirements of document style, such as applicant information, respondent information, and ruling result content. According to the requirements of document style, the normative verification function of document content verifies whether the key information items in the document are written in accordance with the norms, such as whether the case number is written in accordance with the norms. The context logic verification function checks whether the context of the same information item in the document remains consistent and whether it meets the time sequence requirements. The intelligent error correction system not only provides judges with intelligent assistant tools for judicial document proofreading but also effectively reduces the

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workload of judges. It also provides an effective tool for the trial management department to carry out document quality evaluation and supports the improvement of the modernization level of trial management.

4.3 Intelligent Enforcement System An intelligent enforcement system is an information and intelligent system that deeply integrates modern science and technology with enforcement work and supports the people’s court to build a modern enforcement system. It provides online case handling, searching for people and property, property disposal, punishment of defaulters, information disclosure and command coordination services for enforcement judges. The intelligent enforcement system mainly operates on the specific court network, specific mobile network, specific external network and the Internet, providing information about the enforcement process of cases to the intelligent service and intelligent management system and providing information about the person subject to enforcement, defaulters and conclusion of cases that should be disclosed according to law to the judicial open system. Figure 4.20 shows the architecture of the intelligent enforcement system. The intelligent enforcement system should take the enforcement command system as the main axis, the enforcement process information management system and the enforcement information disclosure system as the two sides, and the enforcement investigation and control, punishment for defaulters, judicial auction, inquiry and evaluation systems as the extension to continuously improve the intelligence level of enforcement. First, we should strengthen strict norms. According to the rigid requirement of enforcement work, we should provide convenient and clear rule guidance and operational support of all kinds of enforcement activities for enforcement judges, avoid any violation of rules and regulations, and lay a solid and smooth operation track for the standardized enforcement according to law. Second, we should strengthen the upper and lower linkages. In accordance with the requirements of effectively solving the difficulties in enforcement and tackling the main challenges, we should ensure the real-time exchange of information. Third, we should strengthen internal and external coordination, give full play to the advantages of the system with Chinese characteristics, fully establish and apply the mechanism of information sharing with relevant government departments, enterprises and institutions on demand, and make efforts to form a situation of joint management. Fourth, we should strengthen intelligent management and control, promote the further integration of artificial intelligence and enforcement work, and strive to achieve automatic verification of case information, automatic reminder of enforcement procedures, automatic generation of enforcement documents, automatic freezing of violations, automatic push of related cases, and intelligent inspection of case quality to continuously improve the precise management and control ability of enforcement work. Fifth, we should strengthen security and credibility and continue to strengthen authority management, enquiry control,

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Fig. 4.20 Structure of intelligent enforcement system

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release monitoring and security auditing mechanisms in view of the complex characteristics of enforcement work and the strong privacy and high sensitivity of enforcement information to provide a strong information security guarantee for solving the problems of enforcement. I. Enforcement Command System The comprehensive management platform of the enforcement command center of the people’s court is a command system (as shown in Fig. 4.21) to promote the efficient management and coordination of the enforcement work of four-level courts nationwide, which commands enforcement matters such as case handling, enforcement management, enforcement command, supervision & assessment, and decision analysis and promotes the formation of a new enforcement management mode of unified management, unified coordination and unified command of the four levels of courts nationwide. The integrated management platform of the enforcement command center is a unified platform for the four-level courts nationwide, which uses the microservice architecture and consists of the unified portal of the platform and various sub-business systems. It mainly has 16 core functions, such as enforcement supervision, enforcement cooperation, enforcement case conclusion management, enforcement caserelated compliance and petition, double investigation for one case, core indicators, enforcement quality and efficiency, special activities, comprehensive supervision, one case with one account, court president channel, reporting and issuing, team management, item request, on-duty patrol inspection, visual centralized control, etc. Among them, the enforcement supervision function supports direct, level-bylevel, manual and automatic supervision; The function of enforcement cooperation supports the entrustment of cross-provincial and cross-court matters and the coordination of enforcement within the jurisdiction; The enforcement case conclusion management function supports the centralized management of the enforcement case conclusion, the network investigation and control after the case’s conclusion, the property verification, the resumption of examination and approval, the removal from the defaulters list and the supervision of the whole cycle of the enforcement case conclusion; The function of enforcement case complaint and petition supports the registration, circulation, screening, online handover and verification of complaint and petition nationwide; The function of double investigation of one case supports the tracking of the whole process of clue registration, handling, initial verification, investigation and consultation; The function of core indicators demonstration focuses on the achievement of the “3 + 1” core indicators of the courts in the jurisdiction to tackle the difficulties in enforcement; The function of enforcement quality and efficiency is to construct a unified evaluation system of enforcement quality and efficiency of courts nationwide including statistical indicators of case quality and efficiency, comprehensive management indicators, evaluation indicators of case quality and efficiency, and comprehensive management assessment indicators; The special activity function supports the extraction, verification, proposal and supervision of seven types of special cases; The comprehensive supervision function supports the construction of four-layer visual display of core indicators, such as “overview-special topic-special

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Fig. 4.21 System structure of the comprehensive management platform of enforcement command center of the people’s court

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project” and “ranking-list details”; The function of “one case, one account” gathers the data of “one case, one account” in the courts nationwide, and realizes the unified supervision of the amount paid, the amount refunded and the amount not refunded; The court president’s channel function supports the direct interconnection of court leaders at all levels; The function of reporting and issuing supports the construction of flat enforcement index data and electronic document transmission channels for courts nationwide; The team management function provides organization maintenance, personnel information maintenance, address book maintenance, data verification, password modification and other services; The item request function provides services such as item request initiation, transfer, reply, completion and tracking, and supports online access to common questions and answers of various enforcement systems; The function of on-duty patrol inspection supports the formulation of onduty plan, on-duty sign-in, registration and query of patrol inspection results; The visual centralized control function relies on the large screen of the enforcement command center to display the data elements of the enforcement command with visual, graphical and three-dimensional effects. The comprehensive management platform of the enforcement command center is connected with the enforcement case process information management system, the online enforcement investigation and control system, the inquiry and evaluation system, the online judicial auction management system, the punishment management system for the defaulters, the extravagant spending restriction system for the defaulters, and the big data management and service platform through the specific court network to realize synchronization of data sharing, supervision and backfill of case information, investigation and control information, evaluation information, auction information, punishment information for credit default, restriction of consumption information, entrustment information, civil and commercial case information of first instance, investigation information of case regarding refusal to perform enforcement case duties, and one case and one account information. Meanwhile, the entrusted supervision information will be pushed to the internal network mobile enforcement App, and the enforcement case conclusion information will be pushed to the internal network enforcement information open network to support business collaboration between internal and external networks. II. Enforcement Process Management System The enforcement case process information management system is an information platform for enforcement judges nationwide to handle daily cases and realize enforcement process management (as shown in Fig. 4.22). It plays a very important supporting role in standardizing the court enforcement case handling process, realizing the enforcement mode reform from offline case handling to online case handling. It also helps to realize whole-process recording, monitoring and disclosure of the enforcement cases. The enforcement case process information management system runs on the specific court network; interacts with the trial system, punishment for defaulters, matter entrustment, online auction inquiry and other systems; and supports the online filing application and enforcement information disclosure of the WeCourt

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Fig. 4.22 Structure of enforcement process management system

litigation service through the Internet. The system mainly includes core modules such as enforcement case filing, enforcement notification, in-depth application of electronic case files, document delivery, online investigation and control, traditional investigation and control, intensive inquiry, extravagant spending restriction of defaulters, property control, automatic disposal of property, case fund management, case archiving, enforcement case conclusion management and intelligent assistance. Among them, the enforcement filing module is the entrance of the case into the system, which supports the enforcement case acceptance and filing; The enforcement notification module supports the case to enter the enforcement stage and generates the documents related to the enforcement case; The in-depth application module of

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electronic case files supports the functions of digital processing of materials, OCR automatic recognition and extraction, intelligent browsing and automatic filling-in, and can automatically generate corresponding documents according to corresponding procedures; The document delivery module supports the document delivery to case litigants; The online investigation and control module supports the online inquiry and control of the property of the person subject to enforcement; The traditional investigation and control module supports the offline search of information on people and property, such as summons, investigation and search; The intensive investigation and control module supports the system to automatically initiate the general online investigation and control of the person subject to enforcement after the case is filed; The extravagant spending restriction for defaulters module supports the disciplinary restrictions for credit default against the defaulters; The property control module supports mandatory measures such as checking, freezing and withholding of the property; The automatic property disposal module supports the appraisal, inquiry and auction disposal of non-cash deposit property; The case fund management module supports the comprehensive management of the receipt, distribution, and deposit of case funds; The conclusion and archiving module supports the conclusion and archiving of cases; The enforcement case conclusion management module supports the centralized management of enforcement case conclusion, and realizes regular property inquiry, clue reminder and case recovery; The intelligent assistant module integrates the functions of enforcement supervision, risk alarm, correlation analysis, automatic reminder and patrol inspection to assist judges in handling cases. The enforcement case process information system carries out business collaboration with relevant application systems on the specific court network and the Internet. On the private court network, it connects with the identity verification database to realize consistency verification of the identity of the litigants involved in the case; It connects with the trial system to obtain the information of the original case and the information of the litigants at the stage of accepting the filing of case; It connects with the enforcement investigation and control system to realize the online investigation and control of the property of the person subject to enforcement; It connects with the judicial chain platform to support the data storage function of the case; It connects with the punishment system for credit default to support the punishment of the defaulters in the case; It connects with the unified service platform to support the delivery of relevant documents to the litigants involved in the case; It connects with the archives system to support the archiving function after the enforcement case is concluded; It connects with the enforcement command platform to support case supervision and coordinate the acquisition and feedback of case information; It connects with the electronic signature management platform to support the file signature application in the process of handling cases; It connects with the entrusted appraisal system to support the application and feedback of property appraisal in the case; It connects with the inquiry and evaluation system to support the application for inquiry and evaluation of the property of the person subject to enforcement in the case, and providing a preliminary basis for the subsequent auction; It connects with the online auction platform to support the auction and disposal of the property of the person subject to enforcement in the case; It connects with the case payment

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system of “one case, one account” to support the acquisition of virtual sub-account information according to the circumstances of the case and the litigants, and solve the problem of non-transparency of case payment; It connects with the database of the enforcement center to support the reporting of case data of each province, comparing the data of two databases, providing data analysis of the first-level deployment system and other extended functions; It connects with the big data management and service platform to support the further convergence of enforcement cases to the judicial big data resources. On the Internet, it connects with the litigation service network and China mobile WeCourt to support litigants in applying for filing enforcement cases through the Internet and receiving feedback information. It connects with the enforcement information disclosure network to support the disclosure of case information according to law. It connects with the China Judgment Online to support the publicity of case documents according to law. III. Enforcement System of Inspection and Control The national court online enforcement system of inspection and control is centrally deployed in the four-level courts based on the existing valid legal provisions, opens up a normal communication channel for enforcement information within the people’s courts and among the assistant enforcement departments, and exchanges credible information with the assistant enforcement departments through specific network channels in a standardized data format. It is an information platform for courts at different levels nationwide to provide online inspection and control services for the executees and their property (as shown in Fig. 4.23). The enforcement inspection and control system mainly runs on the specific court network and the specific external network and is deeply integrated with the national court enforcement process information management system. It mainly has 11 main modules, including identity security verification, enforcement case conclusion verification, bankruptcy case verification, application for investigation and control, generation of enforcement documents, examination and signature of enforcement documents, intensive processing, fund deduction, push interaction of assistance enforcement documents, reception and processing of assistant enforcement results, and demonstration of investigation and control results. The identity security verification module supports the identity authentication of the network operator, and supports the identity consistency verification of the person subject to enforcement, and ensures the trusted operation of the online investigation and control; The enforcement case conclusion verification module supports the verification and acceptance of the case conclusion investigation request, and verifies the consistency of the reasons for concluding the case; The bankruptcy case verification module supports the verification and acceptance of bankruptcy case inquiry request; The inspection and control application module supports the automatic introduction of the case and the information of the person subject to enforcement, and supports the applicant to handle application for online inquiry, control and other application matters; The enforcement document generation module supports automatic extraction of case information and investigation and control application element information, online editing of enforcement documents, and document protection of investigation and control element

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Fig. 4.23 Structure of network enforcement investigation and control system

information; The enforcement document approval module supports the automatic signature and seal of documents and the online processing of the approval process; The intensive and efficiency processing module supports automatically initiating an intensive and efficiency online inquiry application to the relevant assistant enforcement departments in the jurisdiction of the case and the place where the household registration of the person subject to enforcement is located; The related deduction

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module supports the first execution case to be related to the execution preservation case for property related deduction, and the final execution case is related to the first execution case for property related deduction. The assistant enforcement document pushing interaction module supports the interactive management of online investigation and control matters, document interactive encryption and interactive identity authentication. The reception and processing module of the enforcement result supports the classified management and display of the result data and generates the feedback information table. The enforcement inspection and control system needs to collaborate with the relevant application systems on the private court network and the private external network and the departments assisting in the enforcement. The private court network connects with the identity verification database to support the identity consistency verification function of the litigants; it connects with the enforcement process information management system to support the online inspection and control of enforcement cases; it connects with the enforcement command management platform to realize the automatic reception and inquiry function of the conclusion case and to support the conclusion case control; and it connects with the bankruptcy case management system to support the acceptance of bankruptcy cases and the application for inquiry of bankruptcy cases. The specific external network connects with the People’s Bank of China to support the function of account opening information inquiry; it connects with the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission to support the investigation and control of commercial bank accounts. IV. Punishment System for Defaulters The punishment system for defaulters takes joint punishment as its core and maximum protection of the legitimate rights and interests of the execution applicants and executives as its goal, strengthens its enforcement, builds a credit supervision, warning and punishment mechanism for the defaulters, and promotes the construction of a social credit mechanism. It is an online collaborative work platform for the release of information on credit default, extravagant spending restricted and entry & exit restricted defaulters as well as for the interconnection and sharing of various credit default information (as shown in Fig. 4.24). The defaulter’s punishment system mainly operates on the private court network and the private external network. The release function of credit defaulters provides the registration and disposal service for the enforcement judges; The release function of entry & exit restriction supports the management of the person subject to entry & exit restriction and the handling of related examination and approval matters; The cancellation and correction function provides the enforcement judges with the authority to manage the released information of defaulters, and to remove those who have fulfilled their execution obligations from the list; The function of single cancellation mainly supports the application and approval of temporary ticket purchase for extravagant spending restricted defaulters who meet the relevant requirement to get the qualification for ticket purchase; The function of assisting in enforcement is mainly aimed at supporting the court handling the enforcement case to request the court in other

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Fig. 4.24 Structure of the national punishment system for credit default

places to assist in detaining the person subject to enforcement through the enforcement command center when the person is detained at other ports due to his entry & exit restriction; The special subject reporting service is mainly aimed at some local governments to be included in the management of defaulters list; The management and maintenance function of the joint disciplinary unit is mainly aimed at the maintenance of the information about the joint disciplinary unit; The dishonest punishment information push service supports the synchronization of the processed information of defaulters to the data of assistant enforcement departments on the specific external network; Credit default punishment feedback information management realizes the unified management of punishment information for the defaulter who is subject to extravagant spending restriction; The function of statistical analysis of credit default

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punishment information provides statistical analysis and inquiry services of punishment information for enforcement judges and relevant departments through further processing of punishment information. The punishment system for credit default collaborates with the relevant application systems of the specific court network, the Internet terminal and the specific external network, as well as the external assistant enforcement units and the Immigration Bureau. On the specific court network, it connects with the enforcement process management system to support the information extraction of the person subject to enforcement and the enforcement case and to examine and approve the entry & exit restriction. It connects with the integrated management platform of the enforcement command center to provide the supervision and assessment data of the punishment data for credit default, and meanwhile, it uses the enforcement coordination to realize the coordinated disposal between different courts regarding the detention of entry & exit restricted persons at different ports. On the Internet, it connects with the China Enforcement Information Online to support the functions of releasing and inquiring the information of the discredited and extravagant spending restricted persons. Through the specific external network, it supports the functions of information release and punishment information collection for the defaulters. It connects with the data of the Immigration Bureau to support the data of entry and exit restricted persons to be distributed to the ports nationwide. V. Judicial Auction System The online judicial auction management system of the people’s court is a unified property disposal system used by the four-level courts nationwide (as shown in Fig. 4.25), which connects the enforcement case process information management system of local courts, fully simplifies the registration process of the subject matter information and auction information of judicial auction in the process of handling cases, and fully integrates the auction resources of the whole society. It gives full play to the advantages of online judicial auctions, such as open and transparent processes, high turnover rates, high premium rates and zero commission, and it has become the main channel to solve the problem of property monetization in the process of enforcement. The online judicial auction management system of the people’s court collaborates with the enforcement case process information management system, the enforcement command center comprehensive management platform, the Internet and the auction websites on the specific court network. It has the core functions of bidder management, announcement management and target management. Among them, the bidder management function supports adding and editing bidder information, setting joint bidder information, setting priorities, etc. The announcement management function supports issuing announcements, suspending, terminating and withdrawing announcements, etc. The target management function supports editing target objects, selecting property, making target objects, uploading pictures and videos. The auction information in the process of online auction is regularly pushed to the auction website on the Internet through online auction collaboration, and the auction result

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Fig. 4.25 Structure of judicial auction management system

information of the auction website is regularly sent back to the specific court network through the online auction system. As a page function, the online judicial auction management system is embedded in the enforcement case process information management system of local courts. Enforcement judges operate in the enforcement case process information management system and cooperate with auction websites on the Internet. Meanwhile, the auction outcomes will be synchronized to the comprehensive management platform of the enforcement command center on the specific court network to provide basic data for statistical analysis. VI. Specific Portable Terminal System The specific portable terminal system is a comprehensive mobile platform that can provide information browsing, enforcement case handling, instant messaging, online learning and other services for enforcement judges. It can also support the public in understanding the work of the court, provide a channel for the litigants to communicate with the court, and let the litigants know the progress of the enforcement case in a timely manner on a mobile service platform (as shown in Fig. 4.26).

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Fig. 4.26 Structure of specific portable terminal system

The specific portable terminal system mainly runs on the Internet, comprehensively applying 5G, big data, artificial intelligence and other new Internet technologies to provide various functional services for enforcement judges, the public and the litigants. The judge terminal mainly has the functions including instant messaging, enforcement headlines, learning and training, mobile case handling, enforcement assistance, command and dispatch, common tools. Among them, the instant messaging function supports enforcement judges sending files, pictures and small video information online. The function of enforcement headlines provides dynamic news and related information of court enforcement and supports online browsing. The learning and training function supports online business training,

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browsing videos and online exams. The mobile case handling function provides law enforcement evidence collection, node collection, clue verification, message browsing and reply, team case handling, etc. The enforcement collaboration function supports the mobile handling of entrusted matters, online collaboration, etc. The command and dispatch function supports one-click requests for help to the command center, provides enforcement conference service, supports conference appointments and instant conferences, and supports online video consultation. Common tools include law and regulation retrieval, enforcement norms, document templates, expert questions and answers, inquiry of defaulters, enforcement fee calculators, interest calculators for delayed performance, loan information calculators and other common tools related to enforcement. The public end of the litigants mainly has the functions of document generation, enforcement tools, enforcement interaction, case progress, opinions and suggestions, comprehensive inquiry and so on. Among them, the litigants can apply the document enforcement function to generate application documents with one click. Common calculation tools are provided in the enforcement tool function. The interactive function provides the service of leaving messages and submitting clues to judges, and the litigants can consult the court and send the enforcement clues to the court. The case progress function actively discloses the progress of the enforcement case to the litigants concerned. The function of opinions and suggestions provides a channel for the litigants to propose suggestions, advice and opinions. The comprehensive inquiry function supports the inquiry of the information about the person subject to enforcement, through which the litigants can understand the situation regarding credit default and restriction of extravagant spending. The specific portable terminal system collaborates with the relevant application systems on the specific court network and the Internet. On the specific court network, it connects with the comprehensive management platform of the enforcement command center to realize that the enforcement matters can be viewed and handled in the enforcement individual soldier system. It connects with the enforcement process information management system to support the judges in filling-in the materials such as audio, video and evidence generated by the enforcement individual soldier system to the enforcement process system to ensure the integrity of the enforcement case information in the process system on the specific court network. On the Internet, it connects with the GIS visual combat management system to realize the interconnection between the enforcement judges and the command center; it integrates the “comprehensive inquiry” service in China Enforcement Information Online for the public end and supports the comprehensive inquiry of the defaulters and extravagant spending restricted defaulters through this service.

4.4 Intelligent Management System An intelligent management system is an information and intelligent system that deeply integrates modern science and technology with management decision-making and supports the people’s court in building a modern judicial management system,

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providing online office, personnel, administration, affairs and archive management services for the majority of court staff. The intelligent management system mainly runs on the specific court network and the specific mobile network. Figure 4.27 shows the architecture of the intelligent management system. The intelligent management system should be based on the online office system, extend to various departments’ business management systems, and constantly improve the intelligent level of judicial management. First, we should highlight the timeliness and accuracy, give full play to the what-you-see-is-what-you-want advantages of information systems, collect and process all kinds of management

Fig. 4.27 Structure of intelligent management system

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information in time and form a new mode of data basis, quantitative evaluation and visual management, and promote the management of courts to be more scientific and standardized. Second, we should attach importance to efficient supervision. In view of the new situation and requirements faced by judicial supervision and judicial management under the background of judicial reform, we should make full use of the characteristics of the whole-process recording of information-based operation highly parallel with the process operation and support the realization of well-controlled decentralization and blind-area-free supervision through reasonable and compliant online evaluation and silent supervision. Third, we should highlight the integration, promote the connection and information exchange between various management systems and business application systems, and maximize the data sharing among management departments. Fourth, we should highlight mobile applications, expand all kinds of management systems to mobile terminals as far as possible through specific mobile networks, and provide convenient access services for court staff. Fifth, we should highlight information security, strictly distinguish the different nature of state secrets, work secrets, internal sensitive information and public information, clearly determine the operation network system, data security exchange and terminal management mode of corresponding application systems, and promote management informatization on the precondition of ensuring information security. I. Online Office System The online office system integrates document management, supervision management, administrative management, work communication management, daily management and work item management (as shown in Fig. 4.28). Due to its widest application, it is undoubtedly the main axis of the intelligent management system and provides a unified, efficient, shared and extendable collaborative office platform for all kinds of staff. The online office system of courts runs on the specific court network, mainly including eight core modules, such as document drafting, document entrustment, document approval, document monitoring, document circulation, document statistics, document inquiry and document archiving, as well as intelligent assistant modules, such as document error correction, document typesetting, electronic signature, mail sending and receiving, and address book. The document drafting module supports the online drafting of one type of incoming document and five types of outgoing documents, and the drafting content includes four elements, namely, document information, text content, relevant documents and attachments. The document entrustment module supports the user in self-defining the assigner, assignment time limit, assigned items, assignment opinions and other contents to meet personal work needs. The official document approval module supports the online free circulation of official documents, including functions such as delivery, completion, circulation, copying, drafting new documents based on this article, signing and approving opinions, etc. The document monitoring management module supports the current user to monitor all the documents initiated or handled by the current user, and requires and supports supervised persons to give feedback; The document circulation management module supports the registration and circulation of the reading documents that do not

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Fig. 4.28 Structure of Online Office System

need to be handled, supports the marking of required and selected viewers, and automatically tracks the browsing time and details of circulation; The document statistics management module supports the statistics of the number of documents and circulation times according to different dimensions and supports the document statistics according to individuals, departments and units, and supports the user-defined date statistics; The document query module is used to manage the entrance of personal matters including document availability, to be done, done, sent, tracking, attention documents and other functions, and supports the classification display and search of all personal documents to facilitate the timely handling of personal work; The document archiving module supports the automatic generation of archives according to the requirements of non-litigation case archiving and connects with the electronic archives system to realize the archiving of non-litigation documents; The document error correction module supports the intelligent error correction in terms of document format standardization, writing rule compliance, content logic verification, language

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and character verification, wrong characters check, etc.; The official document typesetting module supports the automatic adjustment of the format according to the official document style standard including font, size, word spacing, line spacing, text position, page, page number, page margin, etc. The electronic signature module supports the office platform to apply for the electronic seal and can receive the sealed documents from the electronic signature system. The mail sending and receiving module supports users in automatically generating mailbox accounts and realizes mail sending and receiving management based on the office platform. The address book module supports browsing the information of all court staff in the unit, including name, department, contact number, etc. The online office system is integrated with personnel systems, vehicle systems, NPC representative contact platforms, electronic archive systems, electronic signature systems, etc. As a review and approval center, it supports the in-depth integration with the core characteristic office business of various functional departments, realizes the unified entrance, unified review and approval and centralized management, and connects with the document error correction system, document typesetting system and CoCall to realize the intelligent assistant processing of documents. II. Personnel Management System Personnel management is the top priority of all management work. The Supreme People’s Court relies on the specific court network to build a team building informatization system covering four-level courts nationwide (as shown in Fig. 4.29), which provides strong informatization support helping to build a revolutionary, standardized, professional court staff team and making personnel management more efficient and convenient at the same time. The informatization system of team building includes 14 modules, including personnel information management, organization information management, position management, application and approval, attendance statistics, online evaluation and scoring, certificate and passport maintenance, performance files, ranking, cadre appointment and removal, random selection of jurors, training information management, online selection of trial experts, and personnel deployment. Among them, the personnel information management module supports the management of all kinds of on-the-job personnel information in the court, supports data quality verification and self-defined roster export, and can form personnel holographic portraits and personnel contact maps in combination with business data. The organization information management module supports the management of organization information, organization creation, merger, transfer and cancellation at all levels of the court. The position management module supports the management of position information at all levels of the court. The application and approval module supports the approval of personnel attendance applications and approval of applications for going abroad for personal purposes. The attendance statistics module supports the synchronous update of attendance machine punch card information, the statistics of abnormal attendance status and work overtime information, and supports the export of various attendance statistics reports. The online evaluation and scoring module supports the maintenance of the evaluation indicators system, the online scoring of personnel,

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Fig. 4.29 Structure of team building Informatization system

and the calculation, statistics and summary of the scoring results. The certificate and passport maintenance module supports the management of the certificate and passport, including the lending, return expiration reminder and overdue reminder of the certificate and passport. The performance file module supports the timely sharing of court staffs’ case handling, enforcement and other performance data through the connection with the business system. The ranking business module supports the reminder and process management of the court staff’s ranking, such as the first award of police rank, promotion, rearrangement, demotion, job retention devoid, replacement and cancellation of police ranks. The cadre appointment and removal module supports the whole-process recording of appointment and removal of the court staff to complete the deployment of court staff within the court. The random selection of jury module supports jury information management, realizes random selection of jury by setting selection conditions and time division registration, and

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supports selection history browsing. The training information management module supports the registration, input and statistics of training course information and court staffs’ training hours. The online selection module of trial experts supports the online selection of national trial experts, realizes the management and monitoring of the selection process, and supports the reminder and query of the selection results. The personnel deployment module supports local courts to classify and fill in the deployment information and supports the input of forms and the statistics of personnel deployment. The team building information system has a business collaboration relationship with many application systems. It connects with the big data management and service platform, sending personnel data to big data management and service platform, receiving case data and case handling performance data generated by big data management and services platform; It connects with the office platform and sends leave and exit application data to the office platform, and receives daily office data, leave and exit approval data and archiving data generated by the office platform; It connects with the attendance machine to receive attendance card reading data; It connects with the education and training network and receives the education and training data of court staffs; It connects with the law eye platform and sends system operation status data. III. Trial Supervision System The trial supervision system is an information platform (as shown in Fig. 4.30) that takes the application of trial supervision business as the main line and carries out intelligent supervision of irregularities in court trials, litigation services and other business activities of courts nationwide, effectively improving the frequency, intensity and coverage of trial supervision work. It comprehensively adopts video intelligent analysis and manual review, automatically discovers and records irregularities in the trial and litigation service activities of courts at all levels nationwide, supports the supervision and urging of courts at all levels to promptly investigate and rectify deep-seated and regular problems, and constantly improves the work style of judicial work. The trial supervision system includes modules such as supervision overview, intelligent supervision, manual supervision, supervision review, supervision task management, offline supervision management, supervision notification and problem feedback, statistical analysis and message reminder. Among them, the supervision overview module supports using charts, graphics and other visual methods to offer a comprehensive display of the statistics data regarding the progress of intelligent supervision tasks, the overall work of intelligent supervision, violations of courts at all levels, different types of violations and different places where the violations happen. The intelligent supervision module supports to draft corresponding violation supervision rules for different video pictures according to intelligent analysis algorithms based on places and videos, set supervision tasks according to requirements, and carry out intelligent supervision according to the set rules and task lists; The manual supervision module supports the manual screening of court hearings and service window videos according to the supervision work arrangement and the

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Fig. 4.30 Structure of trial supervision system

needs of management personnel, and manually registers the types of violations by manually taking screenshots or video clips of violations found; The supervision review module supports manual review of problems found by intelligent supervision, and supports at the same time the browsing and editing of automatically generated supervision documents and supervision data analysis reports; The supervision task management module supports the trial supervision department to issue supervision tasks to the courts under its jurisdiction, and to complete the feedback, tracking, supervision, urging and summary of supervision tasks; The offline supervision management module supports the information acquisition of offline supervision activities, provides page filling, supports the inspectors to fill in the offline supervision report online, and incorporates the online supervision data into the comprehensive analysis and assessment of the supervision work; The supervision notification and problem feedback module supports the notification or problem feedback and reply for the irregular behavior information found in the supervision task and the

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problems found in public opinion; The statistical analysis module includes statistical analysis services such as the analysis of the overall situation of supervision, the release of supervision tasks, and the management of offline supervision; The message reminding module provides message reminding services for urging, online task release, offline task release, feedback, etc. and provides corresponding message content for specific functions. The trial supervision system carries out business collaboration with relevant application systems. It connects with the audio and video comprehensive management and scheduling platform, obtains the trial hearing and window video information of the courts within the jurisdiction, and supports video inspection and analysis. It connects with the judgment documents online network, obtains the information that should be released but not yet released and conducts timely supervision. IV. Archives Management System The court archives management system is an information management platform for scanning, checking, storing, classifying, querying, borrowing and statistics of various paper and electronic archives formed in the process of court case handling and office work (Fig. 4.31). It can effectively solve the deep-seated problems in the traditional archives management mode, such as “easy loss of files, low efficiency of inquiry and statistics, tedious procedures for borrowing and return, poor sharing and use in different places, chaotic archives management process”, ensure the integrity, availability and security of all kinds of archives, improve the utilization rate of archives and the efficiency of archives management, and reduce the workload of archive managers. The archives management system is deployed on the specific court network, consisting of modules such as archive description, archive review, attachment file, review borrowing, archive borrowing, archive shelving, archive delivery, archive warehousing, archive query and statistics modules. Among them, the archive description module connects with the archive system and the trial system, office system, enforcement and case handling system, directly obtains the data of litigation archives and non-litigation archives to be archived, and provides the operation interface of archive description, supporting the direct input of archive information and materials to be archived. The archiving review module supports viewing all cases and file materials in the archive review stage, and supports the archive review operation. The attachment file module supports attachment of the approved materials to be attached to the corresponding file directory. The borrowing review module supports the setting of the borrowing process, the browsing of borrowing applications, and the review and approval of borrowing applications. The archives borrowing module mainly supports the borrowing management of in-court electronic archives, in-court paper archives, cross-court archives and out-of-court archives. The archive shelving module supports the archive storehouse to shelve the archived paper files. It is faster and more convenient to find the storage location of the paper archives included in the shelving management. Only after the shelving operation is completed can the paper archives be lent out. The archive delivery module supports the delivery registration of paper archives after borrowing review and approval and scans the bar code on the

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Fig. 4.31 Structure of archives management system

paper file for matching and confirmation. The archive warehousing module supports the warehousing and shelving confirmation of the return of lent files. The archive inquiry and statistics module provides various statistical services, such as archive inquiry, litigation archive borrowing statistics, attachment files statistics, archive quantity statistics, non-litigation archive statistics, catalog table of stored archive volumes, provincial archive statistics table, courts nationwide archive statistics table and litigation archive statistics table. The archives management system is in business collaboration with various application systems on the specific court network. It connects with the trial system and obtains the trial file data. It connects with the enforcement case handling system, obtains enforcement file data, supports the archive operation and feeds back the archive status. It connects with the office system, obtains non-litigation file data, supports archive operation and feeds back the archive status. It connects with the big data management and service platform of the people’s court, pushes the data

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of litigation archives and non-litigation archives to the big data management and service platform, and supports the collection and management of archive data of courts nationwide. V. People’s Tribunal Information Platform The people’s tribunal information platform of the people’s courts nationwide collects the personnel, cases, item data and main work trends of the dispatched tribunals and supports real-time monitoring, dynamic management and news publicity of the main work of the dispatched tribunals through big data management and visual presentation (Fig. 4.32). The people’s tribunal information platform includes two parts: the people’s tribunal working platform on the specific court network and the people’s tribunal information network on the Internet. The people’s tribunal work platform mainly faces court staff, consisting of three parts: data exchange platform, data collection platform and data display platform. The data exchange platform obtains case data and personnel data from the big data management and service platform, supports the

Fig. 4.32 Structure of people’s tribunal information platform system

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real-time synchronization of personnel data, and establishes the underlying mapping mechanism according to the background rules to realize the mapping of personnel data in different institutions. The data collection platform collects the basic data, personnel data and news data of dispatched tribunals all over the country by sending pictures and reporting texts and realizes the collection of various data such as court basic information, personnel basic information and news release. Through five sections, the data display platform integrates the basic situation, team building, case quality and efficiency of the dispatched tribunals in the form of pictures, tables, data, charts and text and supports the intuitive and panoramic display of the relevant work of the dispatched tribunals. The people’s tribunal information network mainly faces the public and is a publicity platform reflecting the work style of grassroots people’s tribunals, with a national main station and 32 provincial sub-stations. The main station and each sub-station all have home pages, court news, work trends, tribunal information publicity, business guidance, classic cases, court columns and other columns, fully display the news trends, work achievements and measures for the benefits of the people which are distributed all over the country and have the closest ties with the people, so that the public can better understand the work of the grassroots tribunals. The people’s tribunal work platform provides basic data push service for the people’s tribunal information platform so that the people’s tribunal information network can regularly obtain and update relevant dynamic data. The people’s tribunal information platform coordinates with the big data management and service platform on the specific court network. The big data management and service platform pushes the basic data of the case, the entity code of the case, the case identifier, the case number, etc. The people’s tribunal working platform automatically detects the data changes, triggers the data synchronization interface, and supports the real-time synchronization of relevant data to the people’s tribunal working platform. VI. Mobile Office Case Handling System The mobile office case handling system includes the mobile office case handling platform on the specific mobile network and the mobile office platform on the Internet (as shown in Fig. 4.33). On the premise of ensuring terminal security, link security, business application security and data security, the applications on the mobile phone and mobile terminals are closely connected with the office and case handling application systems on the specific court network to support the court staff in handling office and case handling business at any time and anywhere. The mobile office case handling system connects with the office, case handling and instant messaging systems on the specific court network through remote desktop service, domain control and terminal control modules on the specific mobile network and the mobile office management platform. It provides users with case information inquiry, document inquiry, remote case file browsing, remote review and approval, instant messaging and message reminder services through mobile terminals. Case files inquiry service supports one-click inquiry of case information on the case list, and the users can browse information about the recent case progress and the statistics of cases to be overdue or already overdue, which can assist the clerks concerned

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Fig. 4.33 Structure of mobile office and case handling system

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to supervise the trial activities or make decisions. The document inquiry service supports the browsing of different kinds of documents. The remote browsing service supports functions such as case file browsing, case file retrieval, manuscript input, handwriting annotation and comment, and case file comparison. Remote review and approval support users in approving, circulating office or case-handling matters under mobile scenarios. Instant messaging service supports the display of organizations or institutions, contact retrieval, listing, collecting, dialing, and sending short messages through integrated instant message components to facilitate court staff communication with colleagues. Message reminder service supports the notification and reminder of news about office or case-handling matters and helps users avoid missing important messages and handle matters quickly. The mobile office platform connects directly with the office, case-handling and instant messaging systems on the specific court network through security isolation switching, and it can provide users with office services through mobile phones. Compared with mobile office case-handling platforms, mobile office platforms are more convenient and easier to use. The mobile office case-handling system collaborates with relevant application systems on the specific court network. It connects with the office platform to realize synchrony of examination and approval items and case handling outcomes. It connects with the case-handling platform, realizes the synchrony of case list information, examination and approval items, case file materials, and case statistics to the mobile terminal, and synchronizes the operation measures on the mobile terminal back to the specific court network. It connects with the instant messaging system and realizes the synchrony of conversation information between the specific court network and mobile terminals.

4.5 Judicial Open System The judicial transparency system is a networking and informatization system that deeply integrates modern science and technology with judicial transparency and supports the people’s court to build an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient judicial mechanism. It provides the public with information disclosure services such as the basic information of cases that is released in accordance with law, the procedures of trial and enforcement process, trial and enforcement activities, the basis and results of ruling and enforcement. The judicial open system mainly operates on the Internet and obtains public information through the intelligent trial and enforcement system. Figure 4.34 shows the architecture of the open judicial system. The judicial open system should take the four open platforms of China Judicial Process Information Online, China Court Trial Online, China Judgment Online and China Enforcement Information Online as the main body, constantly expand and extend to other types of trial activities, and fully support the whole process of trial and enforcement elements of people’s courts to be open according to law. First, we should emphasize the full conformity to the law, deeply understand the importance

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Fig. 4.34 Architecture of Judicial Openess system

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of judicial transparency in the people’s courts to ensure orderly participation of the people, make the people understand justice, promote fairness through openness, and promote justice through openness and to constantly enhance judicial credibility to ensure that all judicial elements in trial and enforcement activities should be open within the scope of the law to form the basic pattern of disclosure as a principle, non-disclosure as an exception. Second, we should highlight its correctness, fully understand that public information is directly related to the judicial image, authority and credibility of the people’s court, seriously and carefully revise the content of judicial publicity with a high sense of responsibility and mission, pay attention to the use of intelligent assistant means to examine and verify the information to be pushed and released, and correctly and timely revise and improve the disclosure information according to people’s feedback, making judicial transparency an effective way to promote the quality and efficiency of work. Third, we should emphasize the unification of channels, give full play to the advantages of the judicial system with Chinese characteristics, and provide specialized open services to the public through a unified national judicial open platform to fundamentally change the past chaos of different open channels and interfaces that clueless users face. Fourth, we should emphasize convenience and visibility, adhere to the people-centered idea, focus on the growing diversified judicial needs of the public, respond to the operating habits of the users, constantly optimize the platform display and information retrieval interface, improve the visualization level of public disclosure elements, and support the public and the litigants to obtain the most concerned and most desired information conveniently. We should put serving the people and ensuring public participation as the focus of publicity as well. Fifth, we should emphasize data protection, attach great importance to the necessity, urgency and complexity of the protection of judicial open resources while making full disclosures according to law, consciously use and constantly improve multi-link and multi-means technical measures to protect the full amount of judicial open data resources from infringement, and prevent the improper disclosure of all personal privacy information to ensure the sustainable and safe development of judicial open work. I. Open Platform for Trial Process China Judicial Process Information Online is a trial process information disclosure platform (as shown in Fig. 4.35) actively promoted by the Supreme People’s Court covering all kinds of trial cases in courts nationwide. It aims at providing a unified, perfect and convenient information inquiry channel for the public and the litigants involved in the case and further enhancing judicial transparency. China Judicial Process Information Online is structurally divided into two parts: the judicial process information online on the Internet and the judicial process information management platform on the specific court network. The judicial process information online provides services such as case progress inquiry, document signature, case process message reminder and contact with judges for the litigants and agents of open cases so that the litigants and agents can timely learn the progress of cases, communicate with judges, and complete online document signing. It provides the public with channels to view the court’s institutional settings, the list of judges, the

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Fig. 4.35 System structure of judicial process information online platform

information of court announcements, judicial interpretations and cases, guidelines for common issues and feedback communication. On the one hand, the trial process information management platform serves as the mirror system of China’s judicial process information online on the specific court network, ensuring the consistency of open data between internal and external networks and supporting court administrators at all levels to understand and monitor case public information safely and conveniently on the specific court network. Meanwhile, it provides services such as case progress inquiry, visual statistics, contact with judges, data monitoring, advice and suggestions, and system setting for court case handlers. The case progress inquiry service can check the progress of the cases in which the case handlers participate.

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The visual statistics service fully displays the overall situation of the open data of the national trial process and the classified statistics. The data monitoring service provides the trial management personnel of courts nationwide with the overall situation of public data, mainly including quantity, effectiveness, effect, user access, quality and others, provides the court administrators with a data reporting monitoring list, feeds back the data reporting situation in real time, and establishes an abnormal data alarm mechanism to remind the court administrator to intervene in the fault in time. The advice and suggestion service supports browsing the advice and suggestions submitted by the litigants/agents, as well as the corresponding statistics. The system setting service supports the management with regard to personnel authority. China Judicial Process Information Online carries out business collaboration with the relevant application systems on the specific court network and the Internet. The specific court network connects with the big data management and service platform to obtain the court case data and open status; it connects with the national unified service platform and pushes the service information; and it connects with the unified user management platform to realize the unified management of personnel authority. On the Internet, it connects with the short message platform and sends short message reminders to the litigants about the progress of the case. II. Court Trial Livestream Open Platform China Court Trial Online is an open platform for court trial livestream, which was promoted by the Supreme People’s Court covering courts at all levels throughout the country (as shown in Fig. 4.36). It aims to provide the public with a unified and authoritative livestream and recording of court trials to facilitate the public in watching and understanding court trial activities and to fully guarantee the people’s right to know and supervise the work of the people’s courts. Meanwhile, it effectively promotes the standardization of trial work and supports judges in improving their ability to guide court trials and their professional level. China Court Trial Online mainly runs on the Internet, and its overall structure consists of two parts: the website and the audio and video smart cloud platform. The website includes the front end and the management background. The front end of the website is based on the Internet to support the public in browsing livestreams and reviewing trial recordings. Comment, forward and praise functions support users in interacting with the website and fully expressing their opinions. The court navigation function supports users in quickly accessing the homepages of court websites at all levels. The data disclosure function takes the court as the unit to display the cumulative number of livestreams and recordings and the number of courts connected to the Court Trial Online. The court management background provides the courts with special accounts for triallivestream, supports the courts to independently decide livestream cases and manage the process of it. Among them, the case management function is the entrance for the court to release, browse and manage cases; the abnormal case management function is the offline and repair entrance of the court for cases that cannot be played normally; the court information management

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Fig. 4.36 System structure of China Court Trial Online Broadcasting

function is the entrance for the court to manage the information, account and department of the court; the data statistics and analysis function is the entrance to obtain the intelligently generated court trial work report and information statistics; and the access system management function is to open the entrance for the court to access the customized system. The audio and video smart cloud platform carries the function of pushing and distributing video data, pushing video data to the case handling platform, the big data management and service platform and the China Court Trial Online, and supports distribution to external media. Based on the high integration of audio and video information management and distribution technology, the audio and video smart cloud platform distributes court audio and video signal data through the global CDN network and supports global users in watching livestream or on-demand court trials through the China Court Trial Online.

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China Court Trial Online is integrated with court systems such as trial management and scientific and technological courtrooms, realizes the solidification and real-time monitoring of process information such as court trial open content, declaration requirements and approval authority, and supports the automatic generation of data summaries and multi-type data analysis reports. It connects with the China Judgment Online, realizing the integration of court video and judicial documents, and supporting judges to refer to similar cases more conveniently in the trial of cases. It connects with the big data management and service platform, aggregating court video data, social evaluation data, judgment document data, transcript data generated by speech recognition, etc. Based on intelligent video analysis, natural speech processing, in-depth learning and other technologies, various court trial analysis models are constructed, and innovative applications such as smart courts trial inspection, court trial video retrieval, court trial video index playback, and similar cases push are developed. It connects with external Internet media platforms such as Sina Justice, Sina Weibo and Today’s Headlines to realize the open communication pattern of court trials based on Internet multi-channel and all-terminal means. III. Open Platform for Judgment Documents China Judgment Online is a unified platform that was promoted by the Supreme People’s Court relying on the specific court network and the Internet to publicize the judicial documents of courts nationwide (as shown in Fig. 4.37). It aims at publicizing the effective judgment documents of the courts at all levels in a comprehensive, timely and standardized manner through the Internet in accordance with the law to facilitate the public to inquire about the judgment documents quickly and effectively to supervise judicial justice and enhance judicial credibility. China Judgment Online mainly operates on the specific court network and the Internet, providing convenient services on PC and App. terminals. Its main core frontend functions are data display, document retrieval, document information, download, collection, personal center, message suggestion, use assistance, website management, etc. Its back-end functions are data acquisition and analysis, sensitive document identification, document information verification, online processing, document withdrawal, document modification, re-online, data display, online statistics, etc. Among them, the data display function supports the classified display of all kinds of judgment documents; the document retrieval function supports quick retrieval, advanced retrieval, guided retrieval and other services; the document information function supports the display of released data details; the download function provides a document download service; the collection function provides document collection service; the personal center provides the user’s personal data, collection documents, query templates, case packages, messages, suggestions and other information; the message suggestion function provides feedback services such as messages and suggestions; the use assistance function provides system use instructions; the website management function provides management services; the data acquisition and analysis function supports the acquisition and analysis of cases from the court case handling system; the sensitive document identification function supports the automatic identification of

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Fig. 4.37 System structure of china judgements online

sensitive information in the judgment document; the document information verification function supports the extraction and verification service for released information; the release processing function supports the one-click online release of judgment documents; the document withdrawal function provides released data withdrawal service; the document modification function provides the service of modifying the withdrawn data; the reonline function provides the service of releasing the withdrawn data; the data display function provides the released data display management

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services; and the function of online statistics provides statistical analysis services for released information. China Judgment Online is connected with the relevant application systems on the specific court network and the Internet. On the specific court network, China Judgment Online connects with the case handling system of courts at all levels to obtain case data. On the Internet, China Judgment Online is connected with the unified identity authentication system to support the real-name authentication login; it connects with the China judicial big data service network, the Internet portal of the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People’s Court, the process information management system of enforcement cases, the excellent judgment document selection platform and the China Judicial Process Information Online to realize the sharing of judgment documents; it connects with the China Court Trial Online, China Enforcement Information Online and oriental Law platform to obtain court trial information, enforcement information, case interpretation, relevant legal provisions, similar case recommendations, periodical views, legal book information, etc. IV. Enforcement Information Open Platform The China Enforcement Information Online is a platform promoted by the Supreme People’s Court for the unified realization of the court enforcement information disclosure and service (as shown in Fig. 4.38), which involves the dynamic news of enforcement work, laws and regulations, legal interpretations, normative documents, institutional settings, and information related to the enforcement of cases, such as the person subject to enforcement, the defaulters and the progress of the case. Through the unified business process model, China Enforcement Information Online extracts the corresponding business data from the business systems of the court’s Intranet, ferries them to the extranet through the GAP, and provides a variety of information disclosure services and publicity. As a portal website for the disclosure of enforcement information, it provides the litigants and the public with the function of comprehensive inquiry of the information of the person subject to enforcement, and supports one-stop inquiry of all the information of the executee, as well as all his/er relevant information involved in the enforcement case; The case inquiry function supports the litigants to the case to log on to the website in real name to view the process information of the cases they are involved in, including 6 types of case status, such as enforcement initiation, property investigation and control, compulsory measures, property disposal, money and property distribution, and case conclusion management and 24 procedures nodes; The execute single item query function provides a variety of single inquiry for the information regarding defaulters, the extravagant spending restricted people, the information of the person subject to enforcement and the termination of the enforcement case, supports the retrieval of the above public information according to specific conditions, and provides detailed information display; Property disposal function displays to the public the information of appraisal institutions, appraisal outcomes, the latest judicial auction announcement information, and provides judicial appraisal and auction announcement inquiry services; The function of public announcement and inquiry of enforcement case funds

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Fig. 4.38 System structure of china executive information online

provides the litigants with the service of public announcement and inquiry of enforcement case funds, and the information of case funds which the relevant litigants cannot be contacted will be announced. This function also supports the litigants to log in and inquire about the relevant case payment information and handle the payment collection procedures as required. The publicity function of enforcement effectiveness provides services such as enforcement guidelines, laws and regulations, theory and practice, enforcement information, judges’ model, and typical cases to help the public to timely understand the information related to the enforcement laws and regulations and enforcement work. China Enforcement Information Online carries out business collaboration with the relevant application systems on the specific court network and connects with the enforcement procedures management system to obtain the information of the enforcement case procedure node. It connects with the platform of punishment for credit default and obtains the information thereof. V. Open Platform for Bankruptcy Reorganization The National Enterprise Bankruptcy Information Disclosure Platform is actually a working platform for the whole country to support the handling of enterprise bankruptcy reorganization cases (Fig. 4.39). Because the information of enterprise

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Fig. 4.39 System structure of national enterprise bankruptcy information disclosure platform

bankruptcy cases is open to the public, it can attract the attention of investors, attract reasonable investment under appropriate conditions, promote reorganization, and avoid greater losses caused by bankruptcy to enterprise owners and employees. Therefore, as an important part of judicial transparency, the information disclosure

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of bankruptcy reorganization cases better reflects the role of providing strong judicial protection for the healthy development of the economy and society. The national enterprise bankruptcy information disclosure platform consists of three important components: the national enterprise bankruptcy reorganization case information network on the Internet, the bankruptcy case judge working platform on the specific court network and the administrator working platform on the Internet. By providing one-stop online bankruptcy business collaboration services, it effectively assists the trial of bankruptcy cases, which has increased significantly, improves the efficiency of the trial of bankruptcy cases, and plays an important role in handling cases by judges, supervising and managing bankruptcy procedures, and promoting the efficient and collaborative work of administrators. Among them, the National Enterprise Bankruptcy Information Disclosure Platform is an open and information platform running on the Internet. The data come from the working platform of judges and administrators of bankruptcy cases. According to the principle of full disclosure of cases, all kinds of information of bankruptcy cases are classified and released publicly. The working platforms for judges and administrators of bankruptcy cases have become a service platform for the whole process of bankruptcy reorganization to support the standardization and interoperability of judges and administrators in accordance with the business processes of filing cases, collegial panels review and appointment of administrators to provide informatization support for solving zombie enterprises. The national enterprise bankruptcy information disclosure platform serves the public, the litigants to the case, investors, debtors and creditors to realize the functions of information disclosure, news trends, laws and regulations, typical cases and online services. Information disclosure, news trends, laws and regulations, typical cases and other columns are open to the public, and relevant information on bankruptcy cases can be viewed directly on the website without registration. The online service module provides online filing appointments, creditor rights declarations and other online services for different types of users, such as litigants, debtors and creditors. The working platform for bankruptcy judges is a business platform for bankruptcy judges to handle bankruptcy cases and supports the whole process of handling bankruptcy cases, including filing and allocation of cases, case handling, appointment of administrators, ruling and approval, document production and closing. After the case has been examined and approved by the judges, the administrator shall be appointed to take over the case. After the administrator takes over the case, he/she handles the case on the working platform of the bankruptcy administrator, keeps, liquidates, evaluates and disposes of the assets of the bankrupt enterprise. The working platform of the bankruptcy administrator supports the functions of case takeover, creditor’s rights declaration and review, creditor’s meeting, request for approval, member management, information disclosure, investment intention management, communication and exchange and provides support for the administrator to handle cases, manage personnel and case information, and communicate or cooperate with judges. The national enterprise bankruptcy information disclosure platform carries out business collaboration with relevant application systems at the specific court network

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end. It connects with the unified identity authentication system to realize unified identity authentication; it connects with the big data management and service platform to realize basic information inquiry of bankrupt enterprises and the inquiry of related cases; it connects with the enforcement management platform to realize inquiry of cases related to the enforcement of bankrupt enterprises; it connects with the enforcement investigation and control system to realize the property information inquiry of bankrupt enterprises; and it connects with the visual quality and efficiency operation and maintenance management platform to realize the dynamic monitoring of system operation status. In addition, through the downlink bankruptcy case data, local case handling systems can obtain and apply the relevant data on the national enterprise bankruptcy reorganization case information platform locally.

4.6 Other Application Systems Other application systems are information and intelligent systems that deeply integrate modern science and technology with other business in addition to litigation services, trial and enforcement, judicial management and judicial transparency, support the people’s courts to build a comprehensive modern working mechanism, and provide rich and colorful information services for the people and the court judges. These kinds of application systems mainly run on the specific court network and the Internet. In accordance with the goal of “all-service online” smart courts, while focusing on promoting the informatization of main business, people’s courts at all levels should actively use the specific court network to connect all courts and dispatched tribunals, the Internet and mobile Internet to extend to the desktops and hands of all users. In view of the characteristics of other business work, we should develop information application systems that are practical, distinctive and massservice oriented to promote the modernization of the various work of the people’s courts. I. Media Integration Publicity System Following the requirement of “Promoting the shift of the focus of media construction of the people’s court to new online media”, the media integration publicity system is an all-media publicity system (as shown in Fig. 4.40) on the basis of smart courts construction achievements, which integrates with the government affairs website groups of the people’s court, the mobile portal platform of Tianping Transparency China Court, the Tianping Transparency Smart Screen and the Smart Law Media collection, edition and distribution systems. The media integration publicity system mainly operates on the Internet, relying on cross-platform media such as People’s Court Daily, People’s Justice, government website group of people’s court, the mobile portal platform of Tianping Transparency China Court and third-party new media accounts, and integrating with the Intelligent Law Media collection, edition and distribution systems. This realizes integrated and unified planning, personnel scheduling, topic selection, interviews and manuscript

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Fig. 4.40 The Structure of the media convergence publicity system of the people’s court

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dissemination between its various platforms and People’s Court Daily and People’s Justice. The Chinese government affairs website groups of people’s courts take www. ChinaCourt.org, as the application carrier, carries out the overall design and intensive construction, operation and maintenance of the four-level court websites based on unified construction norms and technical standards and mainly has four core functions, namely, judicial publicity, litigation services, judicial transparency and supervision interaction. Among them, the function of judicial publicity supports the release of court news and law popularization education information. The litigation service function supports the litigants to complete the services of filing and fees payment, diversified mediation, court trial cross-examination, etc., and supports the court announcement inquiry. The function of judicial transparency provides information disclosure and inquiry functions such as various court enforcement information, trial livestream, judgment documents, etc. The supervision interaction function sets up columns such as “Message to the Chief Justice” and “court president’s mailbox”, which can respond to the concern of the public in a timely manner. The China court mobile portal platform, also known as the Tianping Transparency Platform, has three major functions: news about rule of law, legal services and vertical social networking is the main news publicity position and litigation service entrance of the people’s court in the era of mobile Internet. The news about rule of law function supports courts, other judicial and public security departments, enterprises, institutions and individuals to release news articles in registered accounts on the “Tianping” platform and distribute them to users through the recommendation algorithm. Legal services cover the functions of judicial transparency, litigation services, announcements, inquiry and payment, supervision and interaction, inquiry of laws and regulations. Among them, the “Tianping College” section is set up to facilitate browsing training video, question and answer competition and online debate. The vertical social networking function supports instant messaging and group chat, short video shooting and sharing, and real-time interaction of the “legal circle”. The Tianping Transparency Smart Screen has four functions: news publicity, judicial transparency, case service and legal consultation. Among them, the news publicity involves People’s Court Daily, People’s Justice, new media matrix, website groups, WeFilm and WeVideo; judicial transparency supports web page browsing of four major open platforms, as well as inquiries of laws, regulations and guidance cases; case service supports case information inquiry; and legal consultation supports online assessment of litigation risks and other functions. The “Smart Law Media” collection, edition and distribution systems have four functions: manuscript collection, processing, release and effect tracking. Among them, the collection function supports journalists and correspondents to directly input manuscripts into the collection and edition system. The processing function supports relevant media editors to trace edit text, pictures, video and audio files in the system. The release function supports the issuance of processed manuscripts to various media platforms, such as newspapers, networks, terminals, and screens. The effect tracking function supports real-time reading volume statistics, articles forwarded and shared, regional popularity and netizen message analysis, and statistics of released articles by journalists and correspondents.

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The media integration publicity system receives user information from courts at all levels, procuratorial and other legal organs, law societies, law schools, law firms, contracted authors, court staff, lawyers and other users, inputs and confirms the release of articles, and outputs content data to the public through the system. At the same time, it connects with the judicial open platform, the supervision and interaction platform of the Supreme People’s Court, such as “message to the judge” and “court president’s mailbox”, and other litigation service platforms such as China mobile WeCourt, people’s court announcement network and court announcement disclose platform, to support users in flexibly clicking to the corresponding platform for business processing. It connects with the retrieval platform of laws and regulations such as Faxin to realize the display and inquiry of information such as laws and regulations, judgment documents, etc. It connects with the case information of 12,368 litigation service platforms to support the case inquiry function. The system also supports cooperation with third-party media platforms such as Learning Power, WeChat, Weibo, Headline and Tik Tok and realizes the two-way push of articles through manual forward push or a data interface. II. Online Library Online libraries are the basic way to make full use of Internet technology and the achievements of smart court construction to realize the effective integration of traditional library and emerging library formats. Court libraries can gather massive digital legal literature resources, integrate a large number of Chinese and foreign legal databases, connect domestic and foreign library collection resources, and provide multi-form and multi-channel legal information resources for judges and the public. The Digital Library of the Supreme People’s Court (Fig. 4.41) is an example. The digital library of the Supreme People’s Court operates on the Internet and the specific court network at the same time, mainly serving the four-level court staff nationwide, legal practitioners and the public, and is divided into two business systems and one business supporting system. The two business systems are the retrieval system and the collection system. The retrieval system mainly provides core services such as legal resource service, case resource service, legal practitioners resource service, Hong Kong and Macao columns, lending service, local branch library, one-stop full-text retrieval and so on. The legal resource service provides domestic and foreign legal and social science books, periodicals, newspapers, conference papers, dissertations, laws and regulations, legal audio and video, Chinese law and other materials, and supports online browsing of pictures & PDF or downloading to the local reading form. The case resource service provides multi-media display methods such as pictures, documents, videos, Chinese and English versions. The legal practitioners resource service provides the basic information and relevant document display of judges, judicial experts, judicial committees and other professional practitioners. The Hong Kong and Macao columns include the Hong Kong column and the Macao column, which display the news, judicial practice and legal cases of Hong Kong and Macao, respectively. The lending service supports users searching for library resources and making online reservations. Local branch libraries mainly

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Fig. 4.41 System structure of the digital library of the supreme people’s court

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display local characteristic contents such as the achievements, news, cases and documents. The one-stop full-text search function supports users searching and locating resources by setting retrieval conditions, resource types and keywords and provides advanced search functions to enable users to locate target resources more accurately and massive resources. The collection system mainly provides functional modules such as legal literature editing, case data editing, external link database management, local branch library management, etc. Each functional module corresponds to the editing, management and reviewing functions of the corresponding types of resource content and supports the operation managers in editing resource data online, arranging recommended content and managing user authority as well as dynamically adjusting the resource display content of the retrieval system. These modules also support users in sending data back to the collection system for statistical analysis, providing reference data for operation and construction. The business support system provides functions such as authority management, menu management, institutional user management, dictionary management, recommended configuration, user activity statistics, and workflow configuration and provides unified configuration or information management services beyond the business functions of the retrieval and collection systems. III. Online Training Platform The Chinese Judicial Training Network is an online training platform with complete functions and rich content that uses the achievements of smart court construction to serve court staff nationwide and supports the management of education and training and the implementation of distance education in courts at all levels. The China Judge Training Network implements the dual network operation of the specific court network and the Internet and supports the synchronization of education and training data (Fig. 4.42). The Supreme People’s Court Cloud Class is fully open to the court staff, supporting them to participate in online learning, and real-time statistics of learning performance rankings; The network learning module supports the court staff in the training to choose their own courses and sign up for special training; The interactive communication module supports online communication and evaluation between teachers, academic staff and court staff in the training; The message module supports the receiving of various new course notifications, training trends, training plan arrangements and other message releases; The learning resource collection module supports the court staff to collect the course data they are interested in and the courseware group of the training class; The user information module supports personal information display and personal training statistics; The network enrollment management module supports the administrator to release teaching information, teaching plans, news announcements, and formulate annual training plans, to realize the network training class enrollment management based on different levels; The network teaching management module supports the automatic management and data collection of teaching work; The network course management module supports courseware editing management and courseware classification management; The teacher and teaching material management module supports recording

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Fig. 4.42 System structure of online training platform

the basic information of teachers and the evaluation of each teacher, and supports querying, adding, modifying and deleting the teaching material information; The learning management module supports the unified management of the academic performance, learning performance and other information of the court staff in the training; The archive management module supports the maintenance and management of the user’s personal basic information and resume information, and supports the input and unified filing of the user’s online learning score, face-to-face learning score, examination score, course completion status and perform unified archiving. The China Judge Training Network collaborates with the relevant application systems on the specific court network, provides an interface to receive the personnel data generated by the unified user management system and realizes the hierarchical management of users.

Chapter 5

Big Data Management and Service

Information is the only way to represent and restore the world. Data are the basic method of information expression in information systems. The 13th Five-Year Plan of National Court Informatization Construction emphasizes the construction of “datacentered” version 3.0 of people’s court informatization, which fully demonstrates the prominence of big data management and services in the project of smart courts systems. First, it is based on a profound understanding of the extreme importance of data resources. The judicial big data in the court information system reflects laws and regulations, judicial rules, judicial activities and judicial results and shares some characteristics with big data, such as huge volume, complex data types and structures, and rapid creation and growth of new data. Judicial big data are not only the fundamental lifeblood of the operation but also the valuable resources of smart courts. We must pay close attention to the construction and application of information systems. Second, it is inevitable with the wide application of court information systems and the rapid development of big data technology. The network application system has been fully applied in various places, which has promoted the courts nationwide to collect and store a huge amount of judicial trial, judicial personnel, judicial government affairs, judicial research, informatization data and external data resources. The popularization and application of big data technology has provided strong technical support for the collection, management and mining of these judicial big data resources. Third, it is urgent to construct smart courts. With the full popularization of court business informatization, various application systems have sprung up quickly, which makes information interaction easier. In the past, the interface mode was complex, and the communication load was large, which is unfavorable to data convergence and will inevitably lead to disorder and overstaffing of the information system. Only by strengthening the role of data centers and big data platforms as information exchange hubs can such problems be effectively solved. Fourth, it contributes to judicial management and government decision-making. Criminal, civil and commercial, administrative and other types of cases not only reflect judicial activities such as trial and enforcement but also imply economic and social development. By gathering case data and fully associating them with personnel, government © People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1_5

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affairs and external data, big data management and services can provide important decision-making references for judicial management and economic and social development. Fifth, there is an urgent need to improve the level of intelligence. Knowledge mapping and machine learning, both based on massive data resources, are important branches of current artificial intelligence. Making full use of machine learning and knowledge mapping technology to achieve an accurate and applicable judicial knowledge system through judicial big data is an important way to develop and apply an integrated judicial artificial intelligence system for a variety of business areas.

5.1 Real-Time Data Convergence More than 3500 courts nationwide and thousands of application systems receive and produce a large amount of judicial data every day. It is the prerequisite for the development of big data management and services to centralize the data resources gathered from court data centers and national court judicial big data platforms in an all-round way. The special court network, which extends to all courts and dispatched tribunals in the whole country, provides a very smooth way to gather data in a timely manner. Figure 5.1 shows the architecture of judicial big data convergence. As seen from the figure, we have to pay attention to the following issues to realize efficient and reliable convergence of court big data resources. First comes the issue of real-time. To improve the accuracy, synergy and linkage of the whole system, all data should be converged in real time as much as possible. As case data are the main content of court judicial big data, it is necessary to do everything possible to converge it in real time; otherwise, it will reduce the value of all data resources. For other types of data, the delay should also be shortened as much as possible, which naturally sets higher requirements for the implementation of the convergence system. Second, all data come from the information systems of courts nationwide. Due to the imbalance between regions, there are great differences in infrastructure support capacity, application system stability, data management quality and user operation mode. Therefore, an appropriate convergence mode should be adopted according to different regional characteristics. The third issue concerns diversity. We should gather all kinds of judicial data from different business systems as comprehensively as possible, which will inevitably require obvious collection methods, interface forms, data types and transmission flows. Therefore, we should adopt diversified measures according to different conditions. Fourth, heterogeneity should be considered. Even for the same business, different courts may adopt different application systems and follow different data standards, resulting in different data definitions, types and structures, so we must use a unified model of high-dimensional data space to widely accommodate, combine and merge data resources from heterogeneous systems. Fifth, volatility. Based on the complexity of the whole system, the data centers of courts in the whole country and even in provinces, districts and municipalities often face fluctuations in channel

5.1 Real-Time Data Convergence

Fig. 5.1 Architecture of national courts judicial big data convergence system

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connection and disconnection, data flow and content correctness, so it is necessary to adopt appropriate fault-tolerant, buffering and flexible mechanisms to ensure the overall stability of the convergence of judicial big data in courts nationwide. I.

Trial Data Convergence

Trial data mainly come from the trial case handling system. Due to the great differences in the types and deployment modes of the trial and case handling systems of courts in different regions, the trial data of courts nationwide are mainly gathered in the following ways. First, the distributed mode. The data of trial cases are gathered from the case handling platform of the grass-roots people’s courts to the case handling platform of the intermediate people’s courts, and then the data within the jurisdiction of the intermediate people’s courts are gathered and sent to the data center of the higher people’s courts. The second mode is the centralized mode by the intermediate people’s courts, in which the data of trial cases are collected directly by the intermediate people’s courts and then the intermediate people’s courts send the data collected to the higher people’s courts. Third, the centralized mode by the higher people’s courts, in which the data of trial cases are directly collected into the data center of the higher people’s courts from the data of the higher people’s court’s case handling platform. Fourth, the mixed mode, under which some courts within the jurisdiction of the higher people’s courts adopt distributed mode, and the trial case data are collected step by step from the grass-roots people’s courts, the intermediate people’s courts to the higher people’s courts, while some courts adopt the centralized mode by the intermediate people’s courts, under which the intermediate people’s courts directly collect data within its jurisdiction. Then, the case handling platform of the higher people’s courts collects the data to the data center of the higher people’s courts. The data centers of the higher people’s courts uniformly convert the trial cases and document data generated incrementally within a certain period of time into XML files and zip format data packets in accordance with the requirements of the technical specification for data management and services of the people’s court and automatically send them to the big data management and service platform of the people’s court for receiving and storing them in real time. The data from the case handling platform of the Supreme People’s Court and a number of national unified trial and case handling platforms, such as the national bankruptcy enterprise information platform and the national judicial assistance system, regularly and directly converge to the big data management and service platform. The convergence process is shown in Fig. 5.2. To ensure the integrity and timeliness of the converged data, the big data management and service platform requires that the incremental data of the day should be submitted no later than 2:00 a.m. of the next day to facilitate the subsequent data applications. The big data management and service platform also gathers open trial data such as trial processes, live trial broadcasts and judgment documents through the China Judicial Process Information Online, China Court Trial Online and China Judgment Online on the Internet. These three types of data are converted, packaged and automatically uploaded to the corresponding FGAP service by the corresponding unified

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Fig. 5.2 Trial data aggregation

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platform. Then, it is automatically sent to the big data management and service platform regularly and classified into the original database. The big data management and service platform supports data re-submission and case data information item updates. If there are quality problems in the data gathered by the trial systems, the data can be packaged and submitted again according to the requirements of the specifications after the data are corrected. Meanwhile, data convergence supports both automatic and manual modes, allowing different convergence modes to be selected on demand for re-submission and updating of case information items to ensure the continuous improvement of the quality of data converged by the big data management and service platform. II.

Enforcement Data Convergence

The enforcement data mainly come from the enforcement case handling system. The enforcement case handling system of local courts is divided into two basic modes: the national enforcement process information management system and the local case handling system linked with the national unified system. The national court enforcement data adopt the following data convergence paths. For the provinces that directly apply the national unified enforcement process information management system, the enforcement data are generated by the unified enforcement process information management system and synchronously converged to the data center of the higher people’s courts in real time. Then, the incremental data are regularly converted and packaged into XML files and zip format data packets in accordance with the requirements of the technical specification for data management and services of the people’s court, and the data are sent to the big data management and service platform of the people’s court and stored in the original database. For the provinces whose court enforcement case handling systems link with the national unified enforcement process information management system, the enforcement data are generated by the local enforcement case handling system and gathered into the data center of the higher people’s court and the national unified enforcement process information management system at the same time, and the subsequent process is the same as that applying the national unified system. Some provinces also adopt the dual-track case handling mode, in which the enforcement data are first generated in the local enforcement case handling system of the local higher people’s court, and then the data are synchronized to the unified enforcement case process information management system in real time to support enforcement case handling. The data are pushed to the unified national enforcement case database in real time, as well as to the local enforcement case handling system of the higher people’s court and then to the data center of the higher people’s court. In addition, the judicial auction data in the enforcement process are converted and packaged by the judicial auction platform deployed on the specific court network and sent to the big data management and service platform every day. The whole convergence process is shown in Fig. 5.3, and its integrity and timeliness requirements are the same as those of the trial data.

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Fig. 5.3 Case execution data aggregation

The big data management and service platform also gathers disclosed data of enforcement information, including data of defaulters and data of extravagant spending restricted people through the Enforcement Process Information Online on the Internet. The data are converted and packaged and are ferried to the specific court network through the interface agent or FGAP of the shared exchange platform and finally stored in the original database of the big data management and service platform.

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File Information Convergence

File information comprehensively reflects the details of trial and enforcement cases, including electronic file information, electronic archives information, electronic case file paper documents and electronic archives paper documents. The big data management and service platform achieves file information convergence through the court case handling system, electronic file system and electronic archives system at all levels deployed on the specific court network (as shown in Fig. 5.4), which fully improves the value of judicial big data convergence. With the implementation of synchronous generation of electronic case files in courts nationwide, all case files enter the court case handling system through direct submission of electronic files or synchronous scanning and uploading when they are filed, while electronic archives are generated by transferring online electronic files into archiving mode or scanning paper file documents offline. All these provide data sources for the collection of file information. We use two modes to converge unstructured electronic files and archival data in local courts: centralized or distributed. Under the centralized mode of the higher people’s courts, the physical document tool of the big data management and service platform calls the interface of the electronic file and archives access system of the higher people’s courts in real time to obtain the physical document data. Under the distributed mode, the physical document tool of the big data management and service platform calls the interface of the electronic case file and archives access the system of the higher people’s courts in real time, and the electronic case file and archives access system of the higher people’s courts call the electronic file and archives management system of local courts under its jurisdiction in real time and obtains the physical documents to feed back to the big data management and service platform. The structured electronic files and archival data of the courts under the jurisdiction of each higher people’s court are unified by the electronic files and archival transfer system of the higher people’s court, converted into XML files and zip format data packets according to the requirements of data convergence standards every day, automatically sent to the sharing and exchange platform of the big data management and service platform, and then stored in the original database. The Supreme People’s Court’s own file information is directly transmitted by the case handling system and file management system to the big data management and service platform. IV.

Personnel Data Convergence

Personnel data play an important role in the development and utilization of judicial big data resources. The trial and enforcement data itself contain rich personnel information, and the personnel information management system provides more comprehensive, timely and authoritative personnel data. Among them, the personnel management system of the jurisdiction of the higher people’s courts collects data under its jurisdiction to the national unified local courts personnel management system, and the personnel management system of the Supreme People’s Court collects the personnel data of its own together with the national unified local courts personnel data, has them converted and packaged in accordance with the agreed format, and

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Fig. 5.4 File information aggregation

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sends them to the big data management and service platform. It is then converged into the original database (as shown in Fig. 5.5) to support subsequent data management and application. V.

External Data Convergence

External data mainly include citizenship information, social organization information, organization code information, marriage registration information, fishing boat information, minimum living allowance information, road traffic accident information and other types of data from relevant state organs, all of which are converted and packaged daily in accordance with the agreed format through the specific external network and ferried to the specific court network through the FGAP. It is sent to the shared exchange platform of the big data management and service platform and stored in the original database. There is also some external data that are converged into the original database after real-time query by calling the information acquisition interface with the counterpart authorities (as shown in Fig. 5.6). VI. Other Data Convergence In addition to the above trial data, enforcement data, file information, personnel data and external data, there are also judicial administration, judicial research, information management and other data, including structured administrative office data, case data and intelligent court construction and operation data as well as some unstructured administrative office data. All the data are converged to the big data management and service platform through the specific court network and the Internet (Fig. 5.7). On the specific court network, the office platform synchronizes the structured administrative office data to the isomorphic database regularly and collects and converges them regularly by the shared exchange platform collection tool of the big data management and service platform. The unstructured office data synchronizes the encrypted files to the FTP server of the big data management and service platform through file sharing and stores the FTP data synchronously. On the Internet side, the judicial case network converts and packs the case data according to the agreed format, ferries it to the specific court network through the FGAP, and sends it to the sharing and exchange platform of the big data management and service platform to complete the convergence of case data. The construction and operation data of intelligent courts come from 22 core application systems, including the China Judicial Process Information Online, China Judgment Online, Joint Credit Default Punishment System, online enforcement investigation and control system, complaint and petition information management system, remote video interview, etc. It involves 75 core information items reflecting the application effect of intelligent courts, such as public information items, visit statistics, inquiry statistics and frozen amounts. The application systems on the specific court network adopt the direct access mode, and the application systems on the Internet adopt the FGAP ferrying access mode. All of the data are integrated into the big data management and service platform to support subsequent data management and utilization.

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Fig. 5.5 Personnel data collection

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Fig. 5.6 External data collection

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5.2 Judicial Data Management

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Fig. 5.7 Other data collection

5.2 Judicial Data Management The vast majority of judicial big data are unstructured data or semi-structured data, which must be managed in a structured way. Therefore, the judicial big data management of the courts nationwide needs to be organized and implemented with iterative and flexible technology for massive data volume and rich and diverse structural forms.

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First, the structured data include predefined data types, data formats and data structures related to various court matters, among which hundreds of judicial statistical reports adopted by courts nationwide can fully reflect the judicial activities of courts and should play a fundamental role in data management. Furthermore, building a database management system based on data relationships for all data resources is the only way to effectively store, manage, correlate and utilize data and should naturally become the backbone of big data management. Second, semi-structured data are text data files with recognition patterns, and the basic information of cases circulated in various case handling systems has been in the form of XML text, which has become the main content of judicial big data in courts at all levels. By correlating and integrating with other kinds of information, we can access the way to the orderly management of judicial big data. Third, quasi-structured data are text data in irregular data formats, such as various word documents drafted and generated by court staff in the course of their work, which reflect the detailed process and business logic of judicial activities of courts at all levels, can be standardized by tools, and should become an important part of judicial big data management. Fourth, unstructured data, including a large number of image files and video files, are the most comprehensive reflection of the court’s acceptance of cases, trial activities and judgment results. Although it is difficult to process conveniently because of the lack of a fixed structure, it is the most direct, vivid and authoritative judicial information, which can also be processed by using technologies such as character and image recognition. We must also attach great importance to this kind of data management. Figure 5.8 shows the overall architecture of data management on the big data management and service platform. In view of the wide distribution and clear hierarchy of courts across the country, it is unnecessary and impossible to fully concentrate all data resources in one place at one time. It is practical and feasible to use a distributed computing environment and large-scale parallel processing architecture to store, manage and back judicial big data. Many provinces, regions and municipalities should also adopt a unified model to implement distributed data management. I.

Trial Data Management

The trial data in the big data management and service platform of the people’s courts take the case as the focus, collecting the data of personnel, materials, related cases and disclosed information. Additionally, it constantly enriches the trial data so that the original single case information can quickly form a three-dimensional time–space structure, which can provide judges with more abundant and comprehensive trial information. The main management system is shown in Fig. 5.9. The information of trial cases comes from the convergence of daily trial and enforcement data, including case acceptance information, case conclusion information, litigation cost information, trial deadline information and other case attribute data. The case information contains the case number of the first-instance trial case, which supports the correlation of the appeal and retrial cases with the first-instance trial case.

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Fig. 5.8 Architecture of judicial big data management and service platform of the people’s court

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Fig. 5.9 Trial data management

Personnel information mainly includes the information of the parties and the participants involved, the information of judges, the information of organizations, etc. The case correlates with the information of the parties and the participants through the substance code. Meanwhile, the information of the parties and the participants involved can be further correlated with the information of lawyers’ law firms, citizenship information and organization code information through the certificate number to enrich the data dimension and ensure the accuracy and usability of the data. Judge information and organization information come from daily trial and enforcement data collection, which correlate with cases through personnel identification and court codes, respectively, and can also be correlated with judicial personnel data as an important basis for building the relationship between people and cases. Judge information correlates with organization information through the court tribunal organization identifier, which supports the establishment of a complete court, tribunal, and person information tree. Material information mainly includes file information and document information. The document information comes from the daily trial and enforcement data collection, which is directly associated with the trial case through the case substance code. The file information is uniquely associated with the trial case through the court and case number, which supports the data management service of file information and document information. In addition to the first-instance trial case information, the relevant case information also includes petition data and enforcement data, both of which correlate with the

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trial information through the case number of the first-instance trial case, supporting the data service of petition data and enforcement data. The open trial information mainly includes the publicity of the trial process, trial live broadcasts and judgment documents, which correlate with the case information through the court and case number to support the corresponding data management services. II.

Enforcement Data Management

The enforcement data in the big data management and service platform of the people’s court are also case-centered, collecting personnel information, material information, related case information, public information and other data. The enforcement case information comes from the daily trial and enforcement data convergence, including case acceptance, enforcement basis, case conclusion, property, online investigation and control, compulsory enforcement, automatic performance, enforcement completion and other case attribute data. The enforcement data correlate with the original trial case through case number. See Fig. 5.10 for the main management system. Enforcer information and material information are managed in the same way as trial data. In addition to the original trial case information, the related case information also includes the trial case data, which correlates with the trial case information through the enforcement basis case number. The open information mainly includes the information of the person subject to enforcement, judicial auction information, defaulter information and the restriction of

Fig. 5.10 Case execution data management

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Fig. 5.11 File information management

extravagant spending information. The information of the person subject to enforcement, the information of the defaulters and the information of restricting extravagant spending correlates with the parties and participants involved through the identification certificate number, and the judicial auction information correlates with the enforcement case information through the court and case number. III.

File Information Management

The file information management system of the people’s court big data management and service platform is shown in Fig. 5.11, which mainly includes electronic file information and electronic archives information, consisting of registration information and physical documents, respectively. Registration information mainly includes basic information, directory information and file information. Basic information mainly refers to case type, case number, acceptance date, case conclusion date, handling judge, total number of pages of files or archives, valid period, security level, etc. Directory information mainly refers to directory number, directory name, whether it belongs to the original volume, serial number and other information, which supports the restoration of the directory structure of the electronic file. Document information mainly refers to document identification, document name, directory number, whether it belongs to the original volume, etc. It is mainly used to record the access address of electronic files and archives and correlates with the directory. According to the user’s demand for access to certain materials, the relevant electronic case files and electronic archive material documents can be captured through the file address recorded in the registration information and land on the big data management and service platform. Due to the high storage space used by material files, those that are not required to be accessed would not land on the platform. The material file correlates with the corresponding registration information through the file identifier. To trace the accesses of electronic files and electronic archives, improve data quality and control access security, the big data management and service platform

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records the user’s access data and conducts access analysis. Access information is recorded in the unit of case and correlates with the electronic file or electronic archive registration information of the corresponding case through the court and case number. Although the file information is managed independently in the big data management and service platform, it is an important part of the trial and enforcement cases information and constitutes an overall view of the cases together with the case structured information, files and documents information. Therefore, the effective management of the whole case information can be achieved through the correlation of the court, case number and other information. Court trial audios and videos will be included in the future to make judicial big data more comprehensive. IV.

Blockchain Storage Management

Smart courts provide evidence storage and verification services for important data through the judicial chain platform, including four main modules functioning as verification and collection, storage, details and statistics, and visualization of the front end (as shown in Fig. 5.12). The verification and collection function obtains and verifies the data that need to be verified through a specific interface. The storage function stores the received data

Fig. 5.12 Blockchain storage certificate management

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in the blockchain and database and provides different levels of blockchain services to ensure the credibility of the data on the chain. Storage management is divided into two categories: stored data uploading and storage verification. The object of storage and verification can be a document, text or captured information. The main functions of the details and statistics module are to provide details links, query details pages and conduct statistics with various dimensions. The visualization platform is the front-end interface of the judicial chain, which verifies the files uploaded by users and displays the multi-dimensional statistical results of the data on the chain. Storage and verification are the two main functions of the judicial chain. The storage is initiated by the user, and through the relevant system, the data are finally deposited in the judicial blockchain platform. The user can be a party, a participant, the public, or a judge. Different users have different permissions and can access different business systems and upload different original files. The deposit verification service is initiated by the user, and through the relevant system, the specific stored file can be verified. The user may be the party concerned, the participant or the public, and carries out storage and verification through the Internet. The verification scope usually does not exceed the storage scope. Judges can carry out storage and verification through the Internet and the specific court network, and the scope of verification is determined according to the need for work. V.

Data Backup Management

To prevent irreparable losses caused by data defects, errors, losses or damage due to equipment failures, software errors, operation errors, safety accidents or natural disasters, data backup management should be carried out to ensure the safety and integrity of data resources. According to the different classification of data resources in different business systems of the court, namely, the core data, important data and regular data, the backup strategy can be implemented in a variety of combinations, such as cold and hot backup, online and offline backup, local and remote backup. Data backup management includes local data backup and verification, remote data backup and practice, data backup control, data backup application and operation and maintenance, etc. (as shown in Fig. 5.13). To complete local data backup and verification of the data of different business systems on the court Intranet, backup tasks are first created, then the tasks are supported by continuous data protection technology, copy data management technology and backup set technology, and directly backed up by corresponding software. The data of different business systems on the Internet can be transmitted to the court Intranet through the one-way FGAP and then backed up by the backup software. After the data backup is completed, the validity of the data is verified. Core business system data should be verified every three months, important business system data should be verified every six months, and regular business system data should be verified every year. When the data backup is verified to be successful, normal control is performed on the backed up data; when the data backup verification fails, the data will be backed up again.

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Fig. 5.13 Data backup management

To complete the remote data backup and practice, the local backup data are copied to the remote backup data center through remote replication technology and stored in the storage medium through data encryption to achieve remote data backup across data centers and prevent potential loss caused by damage to certain data centers. The practice of data backup includes second-level data takeover of core data, minute-level mounting recovery of important data, and hour-level recovery verification of regular data to ensure the safety and availability of certain specific past moment data after any data damage.

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Data backup management and control mainly includes three aspects: centralized backup management and control, visual management and control, and unified policy management and control. Centralized backup management and control monitors the number of devices, capacity statistics, task statistics, alarm statistics and other operational indicators, with real-time monitoring of equipment operation and rapid and accurate positioning of abnormal equipment and risk points. Visual management and control monitors both local data backup and remote data backup. Unified policy control includes management of data backup policy, distribution, implementation and adjustment of data backup policy, data backup log analysis, data backup status analysis, etc. Data backup application is mainly used through built-in virtualization, mounting recovery, backup set recovery and other technologies to achieve emergency takeover of core data, rapid recovery of important data, switching in case of failure, and complete recovery of all data to ensure data security and availability. The data backup operation and maintenance includes the normal operation and maintenance of the backup system, the operation and maintenance management of the backup data, the operation and maintenance of the hardware for the storage of backup data, and the software for the transmission of backup data to ensure the smooth implementation of data backup.

5.3 Data Quality Control The value of data lies in its credible quality. It must be noted that judicial big data comes from thousands of application systems distributed in courts across the country, which concerns tens of thousands of users. It is unrealistic to think that all data will be accurate at the source of input and consistent in transmission, processing, storage and application. In fact, due to various reasons, many contents may be ambiguous at the source, and errors may occur in all subsequent links, resulting in a decline in the overall quality of big data. For judicial big data with a total amount of more than 4 PB, it is not guaranteed that the data are completely accurate, and its overall quality may fluctuate with the change in system status. If the overall credibility is reduced to a certain extent, it will inevitably affect the availability of some or even all data sets. Therefore, the key to establishing a data quality control mechanism is to keep the overall quality under control. Generally, a credibility of 97% is the minimum acceptable indicator that all courts must maintain, and all courts nationwide need to make unremitting efforts to maintain a credibility of more than 99% for a long time. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a multi-dimensional data quality inspection indicator system and use automatic data verification tools to carry out automatic verification of data in different intervals and in different links of data generation, transmission and processing and make all data errors traceable to each case data item to form a closed cycle based on a unified data space. Only in this way can we meet the requirements of the quality control of judicial big data.

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Data Evaluation System

Establishing a scientific and reasonable evaluation indicator system is a prerequisite to ensure the quality of judicial big data. Objective information theory proposes nine types of measurement indicators of information. According to the four indicators of coverage, delay, authenticity and suitability, the coverage rate, timeliness rate, qualification rate and standardization rate of judicial big data are taken as the four basic indicators to evaluate the quality of data, and credibility is taken as the comprehensive evaluation indicator based on these four indicators (Fig. 5.14). Coverage reflects the breadth or completeness of judicial big data, which refers to the ratio of the amount of data collected in the national platform database to the amount of data contained in the local database of local courts. Specific indicators include the following: 1. 2.

3. 4.

Case coverage: the ratio of the amount of case data aggregated by the platform to the amount of data in the local case database; Coverage rate of case conclusion documents: the ratio of the number of judgment documents collected by the platform to the number of judgment documents in the local database; Coverage of electronic files: the ratio of the number of electronic files aggregated by the platform to the number of electronic files in the local database; Personnel data coverage: the ratio of the amount of personnel data aggregated by the platform to the amount of data in the unified judicial personnel system of the Supreme People’s Court.

The timeliness rate reflects the delay or update timeliness of judicial big data, which is the ratio of the amount of data collected in time by the national platform database within the planned time to the amount of data contained in the local database of local courts. Specific indicators include the following: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Timeliness rate of case submission: the ratio of the time difference between the daily incremental aggregation of cases on the platform and the change of case information items; Timeliness rate of case conclusion document submission: the ratio of the time difference between the daily incremental aggregation of case conclusion documents on the platform and the generation time of case conclusion documents; Timeliness rate of electronic file submission: the ratio of the time difference between the daily incremental convergence of electronic files on the platform and the archiving time after the case is concluded in accordance with the specifications; Timeliness rate of personnel data submission: the ratio of the time difference between the daily incremental aggregation of personnel data on the platform and the update of unified judicial personnel data.

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Fig. 5.14 Data evaluation system

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The qualification rate reflects the accuracy or correctness of judicial big data, which refers to the ratio of qualified data to total data in the collected data of the national platform database. Specific indicators include the following: 1.

2.

3.

Case qualification rate: the ratio of the number of qualified cases collected by the platform according to the case quality inspection rules to the total number of cases on the platform; Qualification rate of the registration information of the electronic file archive: the ratio of the qualified data volume of the electronic file archive gathered by the platform according to the quality inspection rules of the electronic files to the total registration information of electronic files on the platform; Qualification rate of personnel data: the ratio of the qualified data amount of the personnel data gathered by the platform according to the personnel quality inspection rules to the total amount of personnel data.

The standardization rate reflects the adaptability of judicial big data to meet the application requirements and is the ratio of the amount of data that meet the requirements to the total amount of data collected by the national platform database. Specific indicators include the following: 1.

2.

Standardization rate of case conclusion documents: the ratio of qualified case conclusion document data inspected according to standardized quality inspection rules to the total amount of case conclusion document data; Standardization rate of electronic file archives: the ratio of qualified electronic file archives data amount according to the standardized quality inspection rules to the total amount of electronic file archives on the platform.

The credibility level reflects the comprehensive credibility of the data, which is obtained by multiplying the coverage rate, timeliness rate, qualification rate and standardization rate of the data by the weight factor. The calculation formula is: Cl(x, y, z, q) =m × Cr(x, y, z) + n × Pr(x, y, z) + o × Qr(x, y, z) + p × Nr(x, y, z) where the weighting factor m + n + o + p = 1ecific sub-credibility indicators include the following: 1.

2.

3.

The credibility of case data: calculated by multiplying the coverage rate, timeliness rate and qualification rate of case data by the weight factors and then adding them all; The credibility level of case conclusion document data: calculated by multiplying the coverage rate, timeliness rate and standardization rate of the case data by the weight factor and then adding them all; The credibility level of the electronic file archive data: calculated by multiplying the coverage rate, timeliness rate, qualification rate and standardization rate of the electronic file archive data by the weight factor and then adding them all;

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4.

The credibility of personnel data is calculated by multiplying the coverage rate, timeliness rate and qualification rate of personnel data by the weight factors and then adding them all.

II.

Data Quality Inspection Rule

Based on the quality evaluation indicator system of judicial big data, specific quality inspection rules are established for accuracy and standardization, and automatic quality inspection tools are developed, which can realize all-factor quality inspection and visual display of judicial big data such as case data, document data, electronic file archive data and personnel data (as shown in Fig. 5.15). The complete process of data quality inspection is mainly as follows. Every morning, the big data management and service platform of the people’s court carries out incremental quality inspection on the collected cases, documents, electronic files and personnel data based on 218 quality inspection rules according to the time arrangement of each quality inspection task and calculates the credibility of the corresponding data according to various indicator rules in the quality evaluation system to form the quality evaluation results. There are 154 rules for case quality inspection. According to the general rules, court standards and case logic rules, the inspection mainly checks whether the case information items are in compliance and checks whether the cases are gathered in time and cover all cases of all courts from the aspects of timeliness and coverage. There are 40 rules for document quality inspection, which check whether the document specifications and format specifications of the judgment documents are in compliance with the general format specifications of the judgment documents. There are 8 quality inspection rules for electronic file archives. According to the management measures for electronic files, the quality of electronic file archives is checked according to the format and catalog specifications of electronic files, and the availability of electronic file archives is checked at the same time. There are 16 personnel data quality inspection rules. According to the court personnel standards and the actual needs of the platform, whether the personnel data meet the relevant requirements will be checked. After the completion of each quality inspection task, statistical analysis is carried out based on the quality inspection result data, and various data quality reports are generated and displayed visually on the page so that data managers of courts nationwide can view the quality inspection results. The Supreme People’s Court also regularly forms a special report on the data quality based on the data quality situation, which is sent back to the higher people’s courts in the form of documents to urge the improvement of data quality. Based on the quality inspection results, data operators of local courts can analyze and investigate data quality problems and causes, identify software problems or manual filling-in problems, fix relevant problems and re-submit them to the big data management and service platform of the people’s court through the data center of the higher people’s court. After further incremental quality inspection, the data feedback will be iterated into new data quality reports.

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Fig. 5.15 Data quality inspection rules

III.

Comparison and Verification of Two Databases

The comparison and verification mechanism between the two databases is the first step in the whole process of quality control for case data (as shown in Fig. 5.16). The core objective of this verification mechanism is to ensure the consistency of source and destination data, compare the source case data of the data center of each higher people’s court with the destination case data of the big data management and service

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Fig. 5.16 Comparison and verification of two libraries

platform of the people’s court, and visualize the comparison results. The process is mainly as follows. The big data management and service platform of the people’s court defines the Web service interface specification and completes the collection of the source data of the national jurisdiction through the collection data interface. Each higher people’s court is responsible for the collection of source data of all courts within its jurisdiction and realizes four real-time source data capture service interfaces of newly accepted, pending, concluded and not yet concluded cases according to the interface specifications defined by the Supreme People’s Court while opening the access rights of the interface and ensuring the stable operation of the interface. The content of the interface collection is the list of newly accepted, pending, concluded and not yet concluded cases in the statistical period, and the period is dynamically designated by the big data management and service platform of the people’s court, usually referring to the current year. The information items of the case list mainly include case identification, case type, case number, handling court, date of case

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acceptance, date of non-registration, date of non-acceptance ruling, registration and filing date, and case conclusion date. According to the comparison rules defined by the platform, we extract the corresponding information items of the courts under the jurisdiction of the higher people’s court that have converged to the big data management and service platform and prepare the data for comparison with the source data of the higher people’s court. On the basis of the above, the comparison and verification tool first extracts the monthly balance data by month, then extracts the monthly receipt and balance data of each province, and finally compares the data from the two sources at the case level to calculate the difference between data of the monthly balance of each province. Based on the results of the comparison and verification of the two databases, the big data management and service platform of the people’s court visually displays the comparison report of the two databases. Additionally, it supports the data quality analysis and correction of local courts. IV.

Database Table Comparison and Verification

To ensure the accuracy of judicial statistical results, there are strict requirements for the data checking relationship within the same judicial statistical report and between different judicial statistical reports. If a small number of case data have quality problems concerning core data, it will have a greater impact on the results of judicial statistics. The case data that do not meet the quality requirements will be excluded from the judicial statistics service, will not be included in the scope of judicial statistics for the time being, and will be included in the corresponding statistics after the data are corrected and meet the quality requirements. To intuitively show the impact of such problems on judicial statistical service and urge courts at all levels to solve relevant quality problems in a timely manner, a database and table comparison and verification mechanism has been established. The database and table comparison and verification mechanism are the second step of the whole process of quality control for case data (as shown in Fig. 5.17). The core objectives of this verification mechanism are to ensure the consistency of data and judicial statistical reports, compare the case data of the big data management and service platform of the people’s court with the statistical results of judicial statistical service, and visualize the comparison results. The process is mainly as follows. The big data management and service platform of the people’s court regularly extracts the balance data based on the collected full amount of data every day, and the data here are a complete reflection of the case situation in the database. At the same time, of extracting the balance data of the platform, the data of the judicial statistics service generated by the big data management and service platform of the people’s court are extracted into the verification service database. The case data that do not meet the quality requirements will be excluded here, so the extracted results will be different from that of the full number of cases in the database. Based on the comparison of the data in the verification service database, the differences in data between the platform case database and the platform judicial statistics report are identified and visually displayed so that the judicial statisticians

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Fig. 5.17 Comparison and verification between the library and the table

and data managers of local courts can view the verification results and analyze and fix the problems. V.

Comparison and Verification of Two Tables

The comparison and verification mechanism of the two tables is the third step of the whole process of quality control for case data (as shown in Fig. 5.18). The core objectives of this verification mechanism are to ensure the consistency of source statistics and destination statistics, compare the statistical results of the judicial statistics service (source statistics) of each higher people’s court with the statistical results of the judicial statistics service (destination statistics) of the big data management and service platform of the people’s court, and visualize the comparison results. The process is mainly as follows. Each higher people’s court is responsible for the submission of judicial statistical reports in its jurisdiction, which are compiled into XML files and ZIP format data

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Fig. 5.18 Comparison and verification between the two tables

packets according to the requirements of data collection technical specifications and are collected into the big data management and service platform of the people’s court through the data transmission and exchange system of the people’s court provided by the sharing and exchange platform. The collection scope of judicial statistical reports includes the Basic Report of Judicial Statistics issued by the Research Office of the Supreme People’s Court and the Statistical Table of Receipt and Balance of Various Cases issued by the Information Center of the Supreme People’s Court. The monitoring program monitors the submission and import of the judicial statistical reports of the higher people’s court and generates real-time calculation program tasks in time. The real-time calculation program extracts and calculates the data of the judicial statistical reports submitted by the higher people’s court and stores the calculation results in the corresponding result tables of the verification service database. The balance data of the judicial statistical service generated by the big data management and service platform of the people’s court will be extracted to the verification service database on a daily basis.

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The data in the verification service database are compared regularly monthly to identify the data differences between the judicial statistical reports of the higher people’s court and the judicial statistical reports of the platform and to provide a visual display page so that the judicial statisticians and data managers can view the verification results, analyze and investigate them, and solve the problems.

5.4 Judicial Big Data Services The vigorous development of data science not only enables people to effectively cope with the increasing data aggregation capacity and the increasing data growth rate but also provides various possibilities for the in-depth analysis of massive heterogeneous data. Useful information can be extracted from the data, which provides more possibilities for changes in industry, commerce, government, science and technology and people’s daily lives. Taking advantage of the system and mechanism, Chinese courts have gathered the largest amount of case information, judicial document information and judicial data files in the world, which undoubtedly has great judicial and social value and needs to be fully exploited and utilized to serve the public. Figure 5.19 shows the main levels, products, objects and application methods of judicial big data services. As seen from the figure, the first level of the court’s judicial big data service is intuitive statistical display, which directly uses all kinds of data to support statistical analysis, in which a large number of structured data can reflect the characteristics of many judicial activities through statistical processing such as summation, average and variance calculation, and characteristics information can also be extracted from unstructured data through specific processing. After carrying out comprehensive statistics and converting them into intuitive and visual forms of expression, all users can understand the statistical results easily. The second level is the internal correlation analysis, which can improve the accuracy and scientificity of the prediction of the interaction between judicial departments and that among different tribunals. Moreover, it offers a reference for managers in decision-making by establishing the correlation between the internal parts of judicial big data, studying and analyzing the impact of data samples on each other, and forming visual analysis results such as tables and graphics. The third level is the knowledge generation service, which can generate and construct the corresponding knowledge system by means of automatic annotation, machine learning and knowledge mapping for specific data resources. Although the results do not directly serve various users, they can support the judicial artificial intelligence system to indirectly serve various needs inside and outside the court. The fourth level is external correlation analysis, which studies the relationship between judicial big data and economic and social development data, studies and analyses the role and effect of the two types of data samples in specific regions and periods, and displays them in a visual form, which can reflect the mutual drive between judicial activities and economic and social development, improving the timeliness, richness and comprehensiveness of social governance research. The fifth

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Fig. 5.19 Judicial big data service

level is the in-depth analysis. By using rich professional knowledge in the field and conducting in-depth studies of the deep-seated development logic and problems behind judicial big data samples, such as politics, economy, culture, society and ecology, to form a conclusive, trend and regularity analysis report, we can integrate judicial big data into economic and social development to effectively serve judicial management and social governance. I.

Automated Justice Statistics

With the explosive growth of judicial trial data and the deepening of informatization construction of people’s courts, the traditional static statistics using manual mode have been unable to fully ensure the objectivity and authenticity of data and cannot meet the requirements of the development of the situation. The massive data of the

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big data management and service platform of the people’s court has great advantages of real-time and one datum corresponding to one case, which provides the strongest support for supporting the automated generation of national judicial statistical reports and better serving judicial management. Automated judicial statistics are divided into five stages: case data convergence, legal standard transformation, provincial data listing statistics, provincial data entering into the national database and service display (Fig. 5.20). The big data management and service platform gathers case data of the courts under the jurisdiction of the higher people’s courts to form the legal standard data and then forms the judicial statistics list of each province through distributed calculation. The final result data are collected into the national judicial statistics database to provide data services for the judicial statistics of the courts nationwide. The main process is divided into three basic stages, namely, the acceptance of judicial statistical case packages in zip format, the storage of judicial statistical case packages and the archiving of judicial statistical cases. The specific process is shown in Fig. 5.21. The judicial statistics service mainly includes four parts: local table, platform table, account and stand-alone report. Among them, the local table is the basic report of provincial judicial statistics generated locally by the higher people’s courts, which is mainly used to compare the data with the platform generated table, verify the consistency of the data, and provide the basis for the accuracy evaluation of the data generated by the platform. The platform table is the basic report of judicial statistics of all courts in the country, which is automatically calculated and generated by the big data management and service platform of the people’s court based on the collected case data. Each figure in the report corresponds to a specific case list, and case details can be viewed for each case in the case list. The account is a customized account calculation and display function based on the statistical data of the basic report of judicial statistics according to the business needs of judicial statistics. It mainly includes statistical tables of various cases, statistical tables of compulsory medical cases, statistical tables of judicial statistical bulletins of people’s courts, etc. The judicial statistics service also provides a self-defined account function, which allows users to manually set the report style on demand and automatically generate the corresponding statistical account based on the statistical data of the basic report of judicial statistics. The stand-alone version of the report facilitates the judicial statistics staff viewing past reports and transferring the stand-alone version of the judicial statistics data from 2002 to 2016 into the platform with report display. The automated judicial statistics service enables the judicial statistics staff of the courts nationwide to obtain the latest national judicial statistics within one day, and each figure corresponds to the detailed case information, which comprehensively improves the efficiency and data accuracy of judicial statistics. More than 5.7 million judicial statistical reports were automatically generated throughout the year, involving 2.09 billion core information items, and a three-level correlation verification mechanism for courts, reports and cases was formed.

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Fig. 5.20 Automated judicial statistics

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Fig. 5.21 Business procedure chart

II.

Analysis of Trial Situation

The trial situation is important for court leaders at all levels and different tribunals to understand the trial and enforcement of cases in local courts and courts under their jurisdiction. It is also an important basis for courts at all levels to improve their management. The trial situation analysis is realized based on the data correlation library (as shown in Fig. 5.22). It is a database independent of the original database and the service layer. It calculates the data of the legal standard database, document database, personnel database and electronic archives database and correlates them with different types of data to form a data warehouse with relatively complete information. The data service is based on the complete correlation database for calculation, analysis and statistics. According to the business needs, the trial situation analysis service is based on the collection and balance data covering the core dimensions of time, court, case type and cause of lawsuit and constitutes six modules, including regional analysis, trend analysis, most common cause of lawsuit, cause of lawsuit analysis, court comparison and combination analysis. The regional analysis takes time, court and case type as the analysis dimensions, takes court as the display dimension, and compares and displays the acceptance and conclusion situation of various cases in courts all over the country through the combination of maps and lists. The case acceptance and conclusion data support the display and sorting of four indicators: quantity, year-on-year, month-on-month, and proportion.

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Fig. 5.22 Statistical model of trial situation

The trend analysis takes time, court and case type as the analysis dimension, takes time as the display dimension, and displays the acceptance and conclusion situation of various cases in each year and each month through the combination of trend chart and list. The case acceptance and conclusion data support the display and sorting of three indicators: quantity, year-on-year and month-on-month. With time, court, case type and cause of lawsuit as the analysis dimensions and cause of lawsuit as the display dimension, the most common causes of lawsuit module identifies the largest/smallest number of cases received and concluded, the fastest/slowest year-on-year growth and the fastest/slowest month-on-month growth in each jurisdiction or court within the statistical time. The cause of lawsuit analysis takes time, court, case type and cause of lawsuit as the analysis dimensions, takes cause of lawsuit and time as the display dimensions, and displays the proportion and annual change trend of various causes of lawsuit through the proportion chart, line chart and combined list. The case acceptance

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and conclusion data support the display and sorting of four indicators: quantity, year-on-year, month-on-month, and proportion. Court comparison takes time, court, case type and cause of lawsuit as the analysis dimensions, takes court and time as the display dimensions, and displays the monthly change trend of the number of cases accepted and concluded by the selected comparison courts through the display panel and trend chart. The combination analysis takes the combination of time, court, case type and cause of lawsuit as the analysis dimensions and takes time, court and cause of lawsuit as the display dimensions. Through the map, histogram, proportion chart and trend chart, the distribution of accepted and concluded cases, the trend of quantity change and the proportion of each cause of lawsuit of the selected combination of causes of lawsuit are displayed. III.

Analysis of Economic and Social Development

Judicial big data contains rich internal relationship information between judicial cases, judicial activities and economic and social development. Using a variety of judicial data sets combined with political, economic, social, cultural, ecological and other data samples for in-depth analysis, the basic situation of economic and social development from the judicial point of view can be quantitatively described and finely reflected and compared. It provides a useful decision-making reference for Party committees and governments at all levels. The number of cases accepted reflects the distribution and change in social problems. Cases always arise when the disputes between the plaintiff and the defendant are difficult to reconcile. The increase in the number of cases accepted by the court shows the increase in disputes. However, many factors, such as the enhancement of people’s awareness of the rule of law, the improvement of judicial credibility, the reform of registration systems and the increasing role of courts in diversified dispute resolution, will also enhance people’s willingness to resort to courts to resolve disputes, which increases the number of cases accepted by courts. Specifically, the changes in the number of civil and commercial cases can reflect many details of economic development and social progress; marriage and family cases reflect the stability of family and social structure; neighborhood disputes cases reflect the cultivation level of moral customs to a certain extent, and business contract cases are strongly related to the revitalization of the economy. Enterprise bankruptcy cases inevitably reflect the development trend of economic operations. In addition, intellectual property cases are closely related to the driving role of innovation and the awareness of intellectual property rights protection. Environmental resources cases are closely related to people’s great attention to environmental protection and ecological development. Financial cases reflect the economic security situation from a very important aspect, and Internet cases reflect the development and application of emerging industries from the perspective of technology operation carriers. Changes in the number of criminal cases can reflect the overall situation of illegal crimes: the number of crimes such as theft, robbery, assault, injury, fraud, and abduction can reflect the situation of social security; the number of crimes such as embezzlement, taking bribes, offering

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bribes, and seeking personal gains can reflect the transparency level of a government; and the numbers of production accidents, traffic accidents, environmental damage and other crimes can reflect safety management. Therefore, the main way to use judicial big data to analyze economic and social development is based on the nearly full amount of case data resources gathered by the people’s court’s big data management and service platform, taking the cause of the case as the main entry point, taking the number of cases as the main parameter, and analyzing the changing trend of related cases from the time dimension. From the regional distribution, we can analyze the regional characteristics of urban and rural areas, eastern and western regions, and large, medium and small cities. From the population distribution, we can analyze the individual characteristics of parties, such as age, gender, educational level, and work occupation. From the distribution of institutions involved, we can analyze the industry attributes of enterprises, institutions or government departments. By further combining the economic development situation, social development statistics and annual financial reports of specific regions, we can show the relationship between judicial cases and various economic and social data in the form of tables, curves and graphs, and on this basis, we can study and analyze the specific effects, causes and consequences, and development trend of various policies and measures in national and social governance to support Party committees and governments at all levels to master the situation more comprehensively and implement policies and optimize governance accordingly (as shown in Fig. 5.23). IV.

Judicial Index Research and Exploration

An index is a basic method of using specific variables to characterize the degree of evolution of a state in some fields. Usually, after mastering the rich and comprehensive data resources in a field and conducting in-depth big data research, a more mature index system can be formed, and an important index reflecting the evolution characteristics of relevant fields can be further formulated, which can provide a concise quantitative basis for evaluation, decision-making and improvement. In the process of using judicial big data resources to conduct in-depth research and analysis of trial situation and economic and social development, it is also found that some characteristic variables can characterize and reflect the status of local court trial system and trial capacity building, and some characteristic variables can characterize and reflect the status of regional governance system and governance capacity building. Therefore, the judicial comprehensive index system was formed as shown in Fig. 5.24, including two indexes of trial & enforcement and social governance, the former corresponding to the court and the latter the whole society. The trial and enforcement index aims to reflect the basic situation of the trial and enforcement work of courts at all levels through the objective acquisition and reasonable statistics of the main business data of courts. Under the first-level index of the judicial index of trial and enforcement, four second-level indexes are set up, namely, the trial justice index, trial efficiency index, trial effect index and judicial management index. There are three third-level indexes under the trial justice index,

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Fig. 5.23 Analytic index of economic and social development

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Fig. 5.24 Judicial composite index

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namely, the index of judgment documents publicity, the index of live trial broadcasting publicity and the index of trial results stability. Four third-level indexes are set up under the trial efficiency index, namely, the trial efficiency index, the enforcement efficiency index, the index of simple procedure application in first instance cases, and the long-term overdue case index. Four third-level indexes are set up under the trial effect index, namely, the index of accepting judgment in first instance cases, the index of concluding cases in enforcement cases, the index of concluding cases by mediation and the index of cases applying people’s jurors. Under the judicial management index, there are seven third-level indexes, namely, the workload change index of the presiding judge, the workload change index of the enforcers, the imbalance index of case allocation, the risk index of court staff’s integrity, the equality index of monthly case conclusion, the equality index of concluding cases on working days, and the alarm index of pending cases exceeding the trial time limit. The social governance index aims to reflect some characteristics of social governance by combining the data of specific types of cases heard by courts with local economic and social data. Under the first-level index of the social governance judicial index, six second-level indexes are set up, namely, rule of law government judicial index, economic and social development judicial index, integrity society judicial index, safe society judicial index, harmonious life judicial index and ecological civilization judicial index. Under the rule of law government and judicial index, four third-level indexes are set up, namely, the risk index of administrative dispute prevention and control, the risk index of administrative violation, the risk index of administrative compensation, and the index of administrative lawsuit abuse prevention and control. Under the economic and social development judicial index, four third-level indexes are set up, namely, the risk index of civil private lending control, the risk index of rural land dispute prevention and control, the risk index of commercial housing transactions, and the risk index of financial fraud crime prevention and control. Five third-level indexes are set up under the integrity society judicial index, namely, the risk index of intellectual property protection, the risk index of illegal fund-raising crime control, the risk index of food and drug safety, the risk index of labor disputes and the risk index of labor remuneration default prevention and control. Eight third-level indexes are set up under the safe society judicial index, namely, risk index of personal safety, risk index of road traffic safety control, risk index of public safety, risk index of personal property safety, risk index of minors’ rights and interests infringement, risk index of women’s and children’s abduction and trafficking, risk index of porn, gambling and drug control, and risk index of prevention and control of crimes against justice. Under the harmonious life judicial index, four third-level indexes are set up, namely, the family dispute risk index, neighborhood dispute risk index, medical dispute risk index and tourism dispute risk index. Under the ecological civilization judicial index, two third-level indexes are set up, namely, the risk index of environmental protection law enforcement and the risk index of ecological environment protection prevention and control. It should be particularly emphasized that the use of big judicial data for index research and analysis on trial and enforcement and social governance is still a very preliminary exploratory work. Considering the levels of the comprehensiveness and

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accuracy of judicial data and social data, or the rationality and scientificity of the index system, it is difficult for them to accurately and authoritatively reflect the corresponding work. Therefore, the preliminary exploration in this area can provide some reference based on the judicial perspective for some managers to study and make decisions yet is far from reaching the stage of maturity of rationality, science and authority.

Chapter 6

Information Infrastructure

Information systems are the main carrier of information utility in the information age. Unlike many application systems, a large number of information infrastructures do not directly provide users with information content to meet their specific needs. However, its supporting capacity is closely related to the measurement level of information provided by the system. In smart courts, the broadness of real-time aggregation of case information can be defined as the scope of courts accepting cases. To make it widely applied across the whole country requires the private network for the court to cover courts and dispatched tribunals of all levels. The fineness of court video information can be defined as the definition of the image. To achieve the highdefinition level, it is necessary for the acquisition equipment, transmission channel and player terminal to meet the requirements of high-definition video. The sustainability of case information can be defined as the sampling rate of its relevant content. Video information obviously has a higher sustainability than picture information. Therefore, preserving all of the relevant videos is an effective way to maintain the sustainability of case information, which inevitably requires the court information system to have a larger storage capacity. The richness of case information can be defined as the number of data types contained in the information system. On the basis of structured data, semi-structured, quasi-structured and unstructured data are added to improve the richness of case information, and new requirements are put forward for the input and output of information and management facilities. The volume of case information can be defined as the number of bits occupied, and its change and development must be directly related to the throughput capacity and storage capacity of the information infrastructure. The delay of execution of information investigation and control can be defined as the time delay from the input of a request by a court staff to the receipt of a reply. An important factor affecting the delay of execution of information investigation and control from a remote court to the Supreme People’s Court and back to the remote court is the communication bandwidth of the private network for court at all levels along the way. The information coverage of China Judgments Online can be defined as the geographical space range of global visitors, and an important prerequisite for the website to be accessible around the whole world © People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1_6

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is the global coverage of internet communication base stations. The authenticity of case information in the archives management system of courts in the whole nation can be defined as the consistency of all electronic files with the original materials, and its consistency level is obviously closely related to the performance of file scanning equipment used in courts all over the country. The suitability of information provided by the court to a staff or the public can be defined as the weighted average of the broadness, fineness, delay and authenticity of the information, which varies from user to user and from occasion to occasion, and this is obviously closely related to the communication link between the user and the court and the performance of the terminal used by the user. Therefore, information infrastructure will eventually influence the specific measurement of users’ access to information, playing an important role in the construction of smart courts, and it has become the main content of the New Infrastructure of courts at all levels.

6.1 Special Infrastructure The information infrastructure specially used for smart courts, or special infrastructure for short, refers to a series of new judicial facilities equipped with highinformation systems and equipment and a series of new judicial facilities equipped with high-information systems and equipment, which can provide digital, visual, integrated, automated and smart information services for all kinds of users. With the deepening of the construction of smart courts, the informatization level of special infrastructure has been continuously improved and has become an increasingly important window for service users and a central hub for operation and control. We must deeply understand the important connotation that there is no modernization without informatization and further take the construction of information infrastructure special used for court as a powerful gripper to promote the modernization of court work. First, we should focus on the characteristics of the court, closely integrate the business needs of the people’s court as a national judicial organ, and scientifically and rationally plan and promote the construction of special infrastructure according to the different working characteristics, such as different litigation service objects, the circulation of case trial files, the efficient coordination of execution and the overall control of judicial management. Second, we should focus on innovation and development, always paying close attention to the development of information technology and actively exploring the application of advanced display, interaction, processing, control and smart technology to support the construction of special infrastructure with the high enthusiasm of solving the difficulties of court business through scientific and technological innovation. Third, we should focus on integrated management and control, fully understanding the important role of data aggregation, situation generation, comprehensive research and judgment, and closed-loop management and control in promoting all kinds of business work in the information age, and we should pay attention to taking advantage of the favorable conditions for key construction of special infrastructure and focus on building a

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number of business hubs that can support the guidance and coordination of courts at all levels. Fourth, we should highlight connectivity and sharing, making use of the wide-area Internet and the private network for courts across the nation to connect all kinds of special facilities to various application systems of the court as far as possible and realize information sharing on demand to create conditions for supporting crossnetwork, cross-business, cross-level and cross-departmental collaboration. Fifth, we should give prominence to convenience and practicality. In view of the difficulties of wide user sources, high frequency of use and difficulty in training, we should try to use the operation interface and application methods familiar to the public, simplify unnecessary operation processes, and establish the necessary mechanism of online and offline connection, ensuring that the special infrastructure can become the guide for the large number of users to become familiar with court informatization. Sixth, we should build special infrastructure of which the site settings, spatial layout and technical specifications are fully in line with the actual situation of courts at all levels according to the characteristics of regional, hierarchical and information development of courts at all levels. Especially for the vast number of middle- and basic-level people’s courts, we should advocate one hall for multiple purposes and one specialty for multiple abilities to ensure the pragmatic, efficient and sustainable development of smart courts. I. Sciencific and Technological Courtrooms According to the relevant standards and norms issued by the state and the Supreme People’s Court, the scientific and technological courtroom system meets the requirements of openness, fairness, high efficiency, authenticity and transparency of the trial process, breaks the restrictions of time and space factors on trial activities, maximizes the standardization of trial activities, improves the efficiency of trials, provides convenient services for judges, parties and the masses, and ensures open and efficient trial activities. (I) System composition The scienctific and technological courtroom system is mainly composed of audio and video acquisition, electronic proofs, court management, court displays, sound reinforcement, announcements, remote audio and video, internet live broadcasting and other units. It is connected with the case information management system to obtain case information. In addition, according to the specific needs and application scenarios, the science and technology court system can also expand the court inspection, simultaneous interpretation and other units. The composition of the sciencific and technological courtroom system is shown in Fig. 6.1. The audio and video acquisition unit is mainly used for acquiring the audio and video information of the whole court trial process and transmitting the acquired audio and video information to the court hearing management unit through the court hearing camera, microphones and other acquisition devices to realize the convergence management of audio and video in the court trial process. The Electronic Proof Unit is mainly used for collecting the audio-visual evidence, physical evidence and electronic evidence submitted by the plaintiff and the defendant

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Fig. 6.1 Science and technology court system

(or the prosecution and the defense), witnesses and defendants in criminal cases during the trial, and transmitting the collected audio and video information to the trial management, display and sound amplification units to realize the evidence display and record storage during the trial. The court hearings management unit is mainly used for the interactive control of all units of the whole scientific and technological courtroom system, and it transmits audio and video signals to the supporting service platform deployed on the court’s proprietary cloud, as well as the court display unit for court hearings, the court sound amplification unit for court hearings, the court trial storage unit, etc. It realizes the functions of court audio and video signal switching control, evidence display, court

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audio and video storage, comprehensive application of court information, voice transcription and proofreading. The voice recognition host is mainly used for recognizing the voice signals collected during the trial and converting the voice signals into text for clerks to have a quick review and correction. The support of the voice recognition unit can improve the court session efficiency and save the court session time. The court display unit for court hearings is responsible for the display of various images in the court and realizes the display function of court trial pictures and evidence pictures by receiving the video signals dispatched and distributed by the court hearings management unit. The court sound amplification unit for court hearings is used for the sound amplification of various sound sources in the court, receiving and amplifying the audio signals processed by the court hearings management unit to ensure that the participants in the court trial can clearly hear the sound on the spot. The announcement unit for the court hearing unit obtains data from the court hearing management unit and the supporting application systems through the network to realize the display and announcement of court trial information, status and case information. The remote audio and video unit carries out audio and video interaction through the network to realize the remote participation of the parties in court proceedings. The remote audio and video unit is mainly used to support remote circuit trials, remote trials of commutation and parole cases, and remote arraignment of criminal cases. The Internet Live broadcast Unit is mainly used for encoding the court trial video in the court court hearings management unit and then transmitting the video signal in the intranet environment to the internet by using the inter-network switching technology to realize the live and on-demand broadcast of the court trial process in the Internet environment. (II) Main functions Relying on high-definition court trial equipment, the whole process of a court trial can be traced. The scientific and technological courtroom system records the whole process of trial work through a high-definition audio and video acquisition system and reproduces the trial process through audio and video storage, live broadcasting, on-demand and centralized recording, which not only improves the transparency of trials but also provides a strong judicial basis for trial access, observation, review and judicial supervision. The system focuses on the support of cross-examination of evidence to ensure substantive trial. Through the multimedia evidence display system, the science and technology court system provides high-definition and intelligent display channels for the material evidence, documentary evidence and audio-visual materials provided by the parties, and it assists in the cross-examination of the trial through touch marks, annotations and other interactive ways to leave traces of authentication and greatly enhance the participation of the parties in the trial. In addition, the science and technology court system has the functions of remote cross-examination and online

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cross-examination, which solves objective problems such as the difficulty of proof by the parties and the difficulty of testimony by witnesses. Starting from supporting the live broadcast of court trials, we should promote judicial openness according to the law. The court of science and technology system supports the public live broadcast on the private network of the people’s court and the China Court Trial Online by means of information announcement and open live broadcast of court trial, making the trial process more standardized, and the trial process more open and transparent. At the same time, the science and technology court system can control the live broadcast and can protect the privacy involved in the trial process according to law. With the assistance of the remote court mode, the burden of people’s litigation can be alleviated. Through the remote court function based on the court’s private network, the science and technology court system has solved the problems of remote circuit trials of higher and lower courts, remote trials of commutation and parole cases and remote arraignment of criminal cases. The internet remote trial also provides convenient conditions for the parties in different places to participate in the trial, greatly reducing the travel of litigants and the litigation cost and improving the quality of the trial. The application of artificial intelligence is taken as the driving force to help the construction of smart courts. Through the application of advanced technologies such as speech recognition, image recognition and big data, the scientific and technological court system has realized many functions, such as synchronous voice transcription, identity verification and authentication of the parties in the trial, and intelligent access to files, providing more accurate and smart services for the participants in the trial. (III) Application mode Judges can consult, annotate and share relevant materials in real time during the trial to assist in the trial of cases, including real-time transcripts of clerks, file materials and substantive evidence submitted on the spot. Clerks can import the transcript template by themselves, and the system automatically analyzes the case information to push the transcript outline that belongs to the case type for the clerks, reducing the amount of text input and shortening the time for transcript production. Based on speech recognition technology, court clerks transcribe the voices of court participants into written transcripts, which improves the integrity and timeliness of court transcripts and effectively solves the problems of incomplete transcripts and repeated confirmation after a court. In the process of cross-examination of evidence, the parties are provided with multimedia evidence presentation methods to support the presentation of evidence in court and the cross-examination of evidence in the files. In the course of the court session, the parties can consult the contents of the clerk’s transcript in real time, and if they find that the transcript is wrong, they can promptly remind the clerk to correct it. At the end of the trial, the parties can confirm the transcript by means of electronic signatures to avoid repeated signatures and stamping. An electronic signature has a tamper-proof function to ensure the authenticity of electronic evidence.

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The public can access live networks for court hearings in the Internet environment, view live trials or on-demand trials, and understand the trial process and details of the case, further promoting judicial openness and justice through live and on-demand trial processes. II. Digital Judicial Committee The digital judicial committee system is an information system that improves the efficiency and standardization of the work of the judicial committee by means of information technology based on the rules and procedures of the judicial committee meeting. (I) Main composition The digital judicial committee system is mainly composed of judicial committee acquisition, remote judicial committee access, conference audio and video processing, display, sound reinforcement, recording and other units, and it relies on the core software system of the digital judicial committee application system to obtain data and information generated by other business application systems of the smart court. The composition of the judicial committee system is shown in Fig. 6.2. The judicial committee acquisition unit is mainly used for collecting the sound and picture of the review committee and transmitting them to the conference audio and video processing unit to realize the convergence of audio and video signals such as committee members’ speeches, scene pictures and desktop terminals. The remote judicial committee (circuit court) access unit is mainly responsible for the video conference and audio and video signal sharing between the judicial committee and the circuit court judicial committee and realizes the network transmission of audio and video signals through audio and video coding and decoding technology. The conference audio and video processing unit is mainly responsible for the convergence management and distribution control of all audio and video signals of the judicial committee, and it is the core of the whole system. It gathers the audio and video signals of the acquisition unit and the judicial committee system (circuit court) and transmits them to the display and sound amplification units after completing the processing and switching of video and audio. The conference display unit is mainly responsible for the final presentation of the video signals of the judicial committee site and realizes the display of different pictures by receiving the video signals distributed and dispatched by the conference audio and video processing unit. The desktop touch collaboration unit is mainly responsible for the paperless office collaboration at the desktop of each participant. It can access the audio and video data in the system in real time and support the sharing and pushing of pictures. It is the core interactive carrier of the application system of the judicial committee. The sound amplification unit of the judicial committee system is mainly responsible for the sound amplification in the meeting room to make the discussion and speech of the meeting clear and legible.

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Fig. 6.2 Digital judicial committee system

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The high-definition audio and video transmission network access unit is mainly responsible for the interconnection between the judicial committee system and other special infrastructure of the court, realizing the interactive transmission of audio and video signals in various places by means of network, optical fiber and other media. The high-definition recording unit of the judicial committee system is mainly responsible for recording the real-time and efficient audio and video signals of the judicial committee. Through obtaining the audio and video signals distributed by the conference audio and video unit, it records the audio signals at the same time when it records the video and can replay them as needed. The smart control unit of the audit committee is mainly responsible for centralized operation and control of decentralized system equipment and calls the control commands of relevant units through the touch panel of the control unit to realize the functions of equipment startup and shutdown, signal switching, etc. The judicial committee system is deployed in the private network of the court. With the help of the judicial committee acquisition unit, audio and video processing, desktop touch collaboration unit, display and other unit equipment, it provides convenient and efficient applications for issue application, issue approval, meeting arrangement and other work and records the whole discussion process of the judicial committee in a complete and detailed way in the form of audio and video. (II) Main functions The Digital Judicial Committee System has the functions of meeting sign-in, centralized display of information, case data annotation, data synchronization and access sharing, smart voice generation of meeting records, marking throughout the whole process, smart control and so on, which can not only manage meeting information comprehensively but also facilitate cross-examination after the meeting and is conducive to improving meeting efficiency. The conference sign-in function supports each committee member signing in through the interactive terminal, and the sign-in result can be pushed to the large screen for display through the audio and video processing unit. The centralized information display function can display the preceding case files and related information through the large display screen. The case reporter can also display the case materials, court transcripts, trial reports and other information introduced into the court information system before the meeting on the display screens and high-definition screens of the members. The case data annotation function enables the undertaking officer to bookmark and record the opinions on the document in the process of reading the document before the meeting and quickly jump to the designated data location through the bookmark in the meeting, and the recorded opinions can be shared with the participants through the share button. The data synchronization, access and sharing function can realize the synchronous display and push of data, the sharing of access results and the desktop collaboration and sharing of committee members’ opinions in the committee meeting room through the audio and video processing and scheduling unit of the committee.

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The smart voice generation function of meeting records can call the smart voice recognition function of the court voice recognition cloud platform through a smart speech recognition host deployed in the meeting room to assist the secretary of the judicial committee in recording the meeting process. The whole process tracing function realizes the audio and video recording of the whole process of the judicial committee meeting through the high-definition recording unit, and these records can be saved with the case number as the file name and can be archived. The smart operation and control function can switch the relevant equipment in the conference room with one key, can switch the input and output signals of the high-definition matrix at will, can adjust the sound amplification of the conference room with one key, and can also support the control of environmental equipment such as equipment power supply, lighting and electric curtains. (III) Application The digital judicial committee system provides paperless application of case files. Each seat is equipped with a terminal, through which participants can access the case, evidence, court video and other electronic information at any time. There is a speaking microphone in front of each committee member and reporter, which can be used as pressed, to realize the function of speaking and discussing in a simple and easy-to-operate meeting. During the meeting, the secretary can record the transcript and control the meeting place online through the secretary client. During the whole meeting, participants do not need to carry any paper materials, and they can easily understand the details of the case and discuss it immediately through the terminal in front of their seats. The digital judicial committee system provides convenient online meetings for the judicial committee. There is custom development of the digital judicial committee system based on the business process of the court judicial committee, which meets the actual business needs of the court. From the application and approval of issues before the meeting to the discussion and voting during the meeting to the signature and filing of transcripts after the meeting, the whole process can be realized online, which further improves the informatization, efficiency and standardization of the work of the court judicial committee. The digital judicial committee system provides the application of visual resources and auxiliary adjudication. The visual resources and auxiliary decisions of the digital judicial committee support the discussion and decision-making processes of the judicial committee. After the case undertaker submits the case to the meeting for discussion, the basic information, documents, substantive materials, court video, court transcripts, collegial panel transcripts and electronic files of the case can be automatically presented in the system to facilitate members to consult in advance and fully understand the case. The whole process of marking standardizes the application of the judicial committee in fulfilling its duties. The digital judicial committee system supports the audio and video recording of the whole meeting process, and the relevant information is managed in strict accordance with the regulations and can only be consulted

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after strict approval procedures. After the meeting begins, the interactive system of the judicial committee will start the video recording of the whole process. In the meeting, the special marking function is used to mark the speaker. After the meeting, the materials can be accessed according to the name of the speaker. III. Information Management Center The information management center system is supported by various information resources of the smart court information system and assisted by technologies such as image processing and audio and video exchange. It is an information operation and maintenance support center integrating data resource collection, operation status monitoring, operation quality and efficiency display, maintenance and support scheduling. (I) Main composition The information management center system is mainly composed of local acquisition equipment, security monitoring units, remote command and dispatch units, seat scheduling units, audio and sound amplification units, displays and other units. The system composition of the information management center is shown in Fig. 6.3. The local acquisition equipment unit is mainly used for the centralized access and acquisition of local audio and video signals in the center and realizes the acquisition and recording of sound and pictures in the center through cameras, microphones and other equipment. The access of computers, playing facilities and projection equipment ensures the flexible acquisition of signals and data information of relevant business systems. The remote command and dispatch unit is mainly used for the command and dispatch of the information management center and remote sites and realizes the audio and video interaction between the management center and remote sites by accessing the audio and video acquisition of remote sites and transmitting audio and video signals to the seat dispatch and audio system of the information management center through the network. The smart system for the environment controlling unit is mainly used for centralized control of lighting, machinery, display and video and audio and realizes environmental control (air conditioning temperature control, curtain control), camera and projector control, projection screen and hanger lifting control, audio and video switching control, volume adjustment and other functions by docking the control signals of each piece of controlled equipment. The display system unit is mainly used for the presentation of the content and data aggregated in the information management center and realizes the centralized display of various data, business systems, monitoring pictures, and so on through the large screen with ultra-high resolution. The seat scheduling unit is mainly used for the comprehensive dispatch of the audio and video signals of the information management center and realizes the arbitrary dispatch of different operating systems, different resolutions and different interface signals by setting agent input nodes, agent output nodes, network switches, user hosts, displays, and a set of mouse and keyboard.

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Fig. 6.3 Information management center system

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The audio processing and sound amplification unit is mainly used for the convergence processing and comprehensive scheduling of audio signals in the information management center and realizes the adjustment of treble and bass, effect compensation control, volume adjustment, recording and playback through the mixed amplification, switching, filtering and feedback suppression of multi-channel audio signals. The audio and video storage unit is mainly responsible for recording and storing important audio and video data. Audio and video signals in the seat dispatch unit and audio system are connected to the audio and video storage unit through the network and audio/video cables to record and store any video and audio signals in the system. The HD audio and video transmission network access unit is mainly used for the signal interaction between the audio and video signals of the information management center and the HD audio and video integrated dispatching platform and realizes the interconnection and intercommunication with other special facilities of the court through the transmission of two-way audio and visual signals. The access unit of the higher, middle and basic-level courts mainly realizes the video conference and dispatching command functions between the information management center and the higher, middle and basic-level courts by encoding and decoding the local audio and video signals of the basic-level courts. The unit of commutation and parole, remote arraignment and administrative litigation mainly realizes the real-time observation and command of remote video applications such as commutation and parole, remote arraignment and administrative litigation by the information management center through the encoding and decoding of audio and video signals in remote places and access to the network to view the scene in real time. (II) Main functions The information management center system mainly provides business functions such as trial work display, centralized data management, trial supervision, command and dispatch, and security prevention and control. The trial work display function can fully support the public display of judicial trial data, the display of trial dynamic process, the display of trial activities, video interrogation, letters and visits, video conferencing, training exchanges and other activities. The function of centralized data management can display all kinds of data resources of the courts in the jurisdiction through columns and pie charts, realize data comparison and analysis, and provide assistance in decision-making. The function of trial supervision supports the real-time work checking of litigation service windows, court hearings, security checks, letters and visits through the control center and supports the comprehensive monitoring of the use of police vehicles in the courts under the jurisdiction through the control center. The command and dispatch function can show the overall situation of the business work of the courts in the jurisdiction, support the display of specific work processes, control the field work, and strengthen the supervision, command and dispatch of business work.

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The security prevention and control unit monitors the security system and fire control system of the court in the jurisdiction in real time and the security inspection and the movement of visitors. At the same time, it can assume that the function of the emergency command center for major emergencies appeared in the court in the jurisdiction according to the work needs. (III) Application It serves the heads of various departments of the court. With the system, the businessrelated information can be accurately and timely obtained, realizing the capture and analysis of information such as on court trial observation, video call, execution command, data summary and operation and maintenance support, and providing assistance in the decision-making analysis of leaders. It serves relevant business personnel working in the court. Through the background support system, relevant business personnel can analyze the information from the business system horizontally and vertically, which is conducive to better promotion and research of the business system. It serves the public. Through the information management center, the public can quickly understand the court business system and information construction in a relatively short time. Serve the operation and maintenance personnel. It provides a unified monitoring platform for the stable and normal operation of the smart court information system, and the operation and maintenance personnel can monitor the operation status of each business system in real time and solve the system problems in a timely and effective manner. IV. Executive Command Center System The executive command center system is an information-based linkage platform that integrates the functions of executive information aggregation, display, monitoring, consultation and command to achieve the goal of effectively solving the difficulties in execution, further play the role of supervision, coordination and command of the executive command centers of people’s courts at all levels, and aggregate all kinds of executive information system resources. It helps to support courts at all levels to exercise their executive power effectively according to law, deepen the linkage mechanism of execution, innovate social management and promote the construction of the social credit system. (I) Main composition The construction of the executive command center mainly involves the command hall, control room and supporting computer room, including the construction of information systems such as audio and video acquisition, terminal business management, executive and command, video consultation, display, sound amplification and intelligent control. The composition of the executive command center system is shown in Fig. 6.4. The acquisition unit of the executive center is divided into audio acquisition and video acquisition, and the flexible recording of on-site sound and images is realized

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Fig. 6.4 Executive command center system

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through the microphone, camera and other equipment deployed in the executive center. The terminal management unit of the executive command center system serves the daily work of different staff according to the functional requirements and business requirements, mainly including the paperless conference terminal of the conference and command area, the business terminal of the operation area, the business terminal of the control area and the management terminal of the control area. The executive command unit is mainly used for the connection between the executive command center in the court and the single-soldier execution and vehiclemounted system. The single-soldier execution and vehicle-mounted command terminal collect audio and video and transmit them back to the executive management unit through a 4G or 5G wireless transmission network to realize the real-time return of remote execution images, the issuance of command orders, and the execution of emergency response. The video consultation unit (E1) of the executive command center is mainly used for remote video consultation. The command centers at all levels conduct audio and video interaction through the video consultation system under the environment of the court private network and E1 private network to realize the multi-party video conference between courts at all levels and places. The Internet emergency command unit is mainly used for integrating the executive duty, GPS visual management system and intelligent individual soldier system and transmitting the video signals collected through the Internet video terminals of the executive command centers at all levels to the executive management unit through the connection of internal and external network data. It realizes the functions of real-time on-duty, holding emergency dispatching meetings at any time, contacting outgoing executing judges at any time, and cutting into the scene of execution at any time. The executive management unit mainly includes audio and video scheduling, recording, splicing control, speech recognition, visual presentation and other modules and is responsible for the convergence management, intelligent application and visual integrated presentation of audio and video in the executive and command center. The executive business display unit mainly includes large screen display equipment and auxiliary display equipment. The auxiliary display equipment can be configured with a mobile display screen and a conference teleprompter to assist the comprehensive display and monitoring of the large screen display system. By accessing the video signal of the execution management unit, the centralized display of all kinds of video information and execution application systems in the execution command center is realized. The sound amplification unit mainly comprises a power amplifier and a sound box device, and the audio signal of the executive management unit is accessed and amplified to realize on-site audio sound amplification. The smart control unit is mainly used for the centralized management and control of the audio and video systems, lighting, curtains and other environmental systems and power supply systems of the command center. By using the control input mode of combining a wireless touch screen and a wired touch screen, the requirements of

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flexible use and comprehensive operation information are met, which is convenient for the field personnel of the command center to operate. The HD audio and video transmission access unit is mainly used for providing transmission links for the interconnection and intercommunication of audio and video in several private network facilities and can realize the interaction and sharing of audio and video signals among local private facilities through corresponding video terminals and codecs. (II) Main functions The system provides visualization of the execution situation. With large screen display and visual support equipment, all kinds of execution business system information can be aggregated and shared in the system, realizing the comprehensive display and monitoring of dynamic data and execution nodes, intelligently assisting in the decision analysis of execution work, and strengthening the effective management of execution cases, which not only standardizes the execution work mode but also improves the execution work. It also provides data support for the scientific decision-making of implementation work. The system provides unified dispatching of video signals. Through the video dispatching platform, video signals from the executive command hall, science and technology court, conference room, press conference hall, executive investigation and control room, single-soldier execution and security monitoring are collected to realize the centralized management and unified dispatch of video signals in the important areas of the courts under the jurisdiction, to build a standardized and scientific executive command system and to assist the normal coordination of various cross-regional execution matters. The system provides four levels of court video consultation. Relying on the fourlevel court video consultation network, the court private network and the Internet, the convening of the national court execution video conference can be supported, meeting the needs of the execution command linkage and cross-domain consultation, and the voice dispatch function provides a convenient and effective way for the national four-level court execution command video conference. The system provides a remote executive command. With the audio and video system of the command hall, the single-soldier execution system and the vehiclemounted execution command system, the remote command, monitoring and dispatching of major execution activities are realized, and the system has the functions of on-site evidence collection, remote coordination, joint execution and crossexecution and supports the construction of an integrated, coordinated and rapid execution mechanism. (III) Application It is applied in visualization. It mainly serves the daily office work of the executive management personnel, the analysis of executive business data, the supervision and management of executive cases and the auxiliary decision-making of executive work. Through the panoramic display of executive work data and the terminal distributed display of executive business, it realizes the situation analysis and thematic analysis

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of execution work, determining the difficulties of execution work and providing guidance on the execution work. It is applied in the video consultation. It is mainly used to strengthen the supervision and management of the execution work of the four-level courts. It is mainly divided into three categories: the main venue, the sub-venue and the report topic. The main venue needs to meet the picture access and display of all sub-venues, and the sub-venue needs to realize the video preview of the main venue and the report topic. It is applied in the remote command. It mainly assists executive commanders in command, monitoring and dispatching the execution of major cases. Through the video acquisition, transmission and comprehensive display of single-soldier and vehicle-mounted execution, the command center can control the execution dynamics in real time and guide the on-site execution. It is applied in operation and maintenance management. It mainly serves the technical support of executive command and ensures the smooth development of executive work in real time through the visual monitoring of the network nodes of the executive command center, of the working environment of the computer room and of the operation status of the equipment. It is applied in normal work. It mainly includes the reporting mode, speech mode, public opinion monitoring mode, ordinary meeting mode, meeting monitoring mode, video roll call mode of the court in the jurisdiction, etc. It can switch different picture display modes and lighting modes according to different business types, assisting in the execution of police normalization. V. Litigation Service Guidance Center System The litigation service guidance center system is a special information infrastructure set up to scientifically coordinate the diversified dispute resolution and litigation services of courts at all levels, and it is the main carrier of the information platform of the litigation service guidance center. It is mainly used to collect business information such as pre-litigation mediation, litigation services, docking of litigation and mediation, separate adjustment trials, complaints and petitions through letters and visits, and to grasp the situation of multivariate dispute resolution and litigation services, guiding the litigation service of the courts in the jurisdiction and better practicing the concept of justice for the people. (I) Main composition The construction of the litigation service guidance center system mainly involves the guidance center hall, control room and supporting computer room, and the system is composed of an audio and video acquisition unit, terminal business management unit, remote dispatching unit, video consultation unit, litigation service center management unit, litigation service business display unit, sound amplification unit and intelligent control unit. The composition of the litigation service guidance center system is shown in Fig. 6.5. The audio and video acquisition unit mainly comprises an audio acquisition module and a video acquisition module. The video acquisition module mainly

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Fig. 6.5 Litigation service guidance center system

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includes fixed cameras and mobile recording and broadcasting cameras in the hall of the litigation service guidance center, which are responsible for the video signal acquisition of on-site video picture shooting, conference recording, concurrent ondemand and live broadcasting. The audio acquisition module is responsible for audio acquisition in the service guidance center area and transmits the acquired audio and video signals to the management unit through the audio and video line to realize audio convergence. The local litigation service access unit mainly includes the audio and video signal convergence equipment in the litigation service hall, 12,368 hotline platform and petition area and realizes intensive management, real-time supervision and guidance through interconnection with the litigation service guidance center. The remote access unit mainly includes the convergence and intercommunication of business audio and video signals in five aspects, including multivariate dispute resolution, separate adjustment trial, case filing service, trial assistance, and litigation petition. Through transmission links such as the court private network and the Internet, the audio and video signals of each remote access unit are shared and docked with the central management unit. The management unit mainly includes the scheduling, recording, splicing control, speech recognition, and visualization equipment of audio and video, and it is responsible for the aggregation, processing and scheduling management of all audio and video signals and service data in the litigation service center. The display unit of the litigation service business is divided into the main display screen, auxiliary display screen and desktop display equipment based on the use scenario and space planning, and it is mainly responsible for displaying the video signals from the litigation service command center, local litigation service area and remote litigation service accessed by the management unit. The sound amplification unit mainly consists of an audio power amplifier and speaker, which is responsible for audio signal restoration and on-site sound amplification. The video consultation unit supports the video conference through the court private network, video conference private network, Internet and other channels, and it meets the video conference requirements between the court litigation service guidance centers through the interaction of multi-party audio and video signals. The HD audio and video transmission network access unit mainly includes transmission equipment such as optical transceivers and encoding and decoding equipment, which are responsible for the interconnection and intercommunication of audio and video signals between the litigation service guidance center and other special facilities. The smart control unit is mainly used for the centralized management and control of the audio and video system, lighting system and power supply system of the litigation service guidance center system through the use of a combination of wireless touch screen and wired touch screen control input mode, as well as the integration of IR infrared control, RS232/RS485/RS422 serial port control, network control and other control structures. It realizes the scenario-based intelligent switching of various

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business, speech and reports, internal meetings, business learning and observation, teaching and non-working applications. (II) Main functions It can display the overall situation of litigation services. With the large screen display and visual equipment, the large data integration and visual management of litigation services of courts at all levels can be realized vertically, and multiple dispute resolution information such as litigation, mediation, arbitration and administrative adjudication can be run horizontally, which can fully display the overall situation of litigation services of people’s courts at all levels. It can provide the supervision and management of litigation services. In accordance with the policy and normative requirements of one-stop diversified dispute resolution and litigation services, it supports the unified management, monitoring and supervision of the filing, petition, mediation, service and preservation of the courts in the jurisdiction, and it can automatically assess the quality and effectiveness of the work of the courts in the jurisdiction, intelligently capturing early warning information and supervising and reporting violation cases. It can support the unified scheduling of litigation service videos. Through the video scheduling platform, the unified video scheduling of key places such as the litigation service hall, business window, security channel and mediation room of the courts in the jurisdiction can be realized, the actual situation of litigation service can be acquired and controlled in real time, and the matters related to litigation service of the courts in the jurisdiction can be supervised and managed. It can support the video consultation of courts at all levels. With the video and voice scheduling functions of the four-level court video consultation private network, court network and Internet, it supports the convening of national court litigation service video consultation, meets the needs of up-down linkage and cross-domain coordination of litigation service, and provides a convenient way for remote consultation of court litigation service throughout the country. (III) Application In terms of visualization application, it mainly provides the litigation service staff with a visual display of service work in the litigation service hall, litigation service website, China Mobile Micro Court, 12,368 litigation service hotline and other litigation service platforms, and it guides and promotes the people’s courts at all levels to build a modern intensive and efficient litigation service system with multivariate dispute resolution, convenience for the people, wisdom and precision, open interaction, integration and sharing. Video consultation applications are mainly used to strengthen the supervision and management of the litigation service work of the four-level courts. It is divided into three areas: the main venue, the branch venue and the report topic section. The main venue needs to access all frames and display all branch venues, and the branch venue needs to support the video preview of the main venue and the content of the reporting topic section.

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In terms of video schedule application, it mainly serves the daily office work and supervision and management of litigation service administrative staff and realizes the monitoring, supervision and management of litigation service work of courts in the jurisdiction by taking surveillance videos of important areas such as litigation service halls, business windows, courts and mediation rooms of people’s courts in the jurisdiction, regulating the working behavior of court litigation service personnel. In terms of operation and maintenance management application, it mainly serves the technical personnel of the litigation guidance center. Through the visual monitoring of the network nodes, the working environment of the computer room and the operation status of the equipment in the guidance center, the working status of the information system can be seen in real time, and the smooth development of the litigation service business can be ensured in real time. The special operating mode application mainly includes the reporting mode, speech mode, ordinary meeting mode, and meeting monitoring mode. It can switch different picture display modes and lighting modes according to different types of business and assist enforcement staffs in carrying out various special affairs related to diversified dispute resolution and litigation services. VI. Digital Library Based on the actual needs of the court’s internal business for knowledge services, such as system, real-time, and communication of knowledge, the digital library system combines the development trend of new technologies such as e-books, digital publishing and knowledge services, relying on the court’s private network and the Internet and integrating the digital library of the Supreme People’s Court and the digital resources of social and academic libraries. It provides an integrated smart court-specific information infrastructure with functions of electronic document reading, borrowing, consultation, training, service and interaction for court staffs, judges, visitors and lawyers. (I) Main composition The smart court digital library system is composed of subsystems such as the welcome display unit, electronic document for reference unit, electronic image data access unit, discussion and presentation unit, service management unit and intelligent environment control unit. Its structure is shown in Fig. 6.6. The welcome display unit is the portal system of the digital library system, which realizes the visual display of the six major sections and eighteen special areas of the digital library through the access and data acquisition of the management terminal of the service management unit, and at the same time, it provides the functions of digital announcement, resource display and data visualization display in each functional area of the Digital Library. The electronic document for the reference unit is deployed in an independent electronic document for the reference area, and it is mainly composed of an electronic reading terminal deployed in the court private network. The internal electronic document consultation is realized through the access and data acquisition of the electronic reading terminal to the service management unit.

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Fig. 6.6 Digital library system

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The electronic audio-visual data access unit is deployed in the audio and video data reading area and mainly consists of a video and audio reading terminal, and the video and audio data can be consulted through the access and data acquisition of the service management unit by the video and audio reading terminal. The audiovisual reading terminal supports the arbitrary push of legal resources to the shared display screen, thus assisting readers and visitors in sharing audio-visual knowledge efficiently. The seminar unit is mainly composed of a display screen, sound amplifying, video conference equipment and other equipment. Through the control of display screens, sound amplification and video conference equipment, the function of small conference rooms is realized, which can provide salon communication, academic presentations and training and sharing services for court staffs, judges, visitors and lawyers. The smart environment unit is connected with the intelligent control system of the service management unit, realizing the centralized control of sound, light, electricity and other equipment. Users can use any device, such as a button control panel, computer display, touch screen and wireless remote control, to control all devices, including the projector, display screen, DVD player, audio processor, microphone, computer, electric screen, electric curtain and light. The service management unit is mainly composed of an information management system, an intelligent control system, a management terminal and a digital library scheduling platform deployed in the cloud. It provides multimedia control, management and scheduling for the display, sharing, announcement and propaganda scenarios of each district. It uses the scheduling platform based on the network distributed architecture to meet the high-quality restoration of images. Cooperative library communication mainly uses network switching technology and video conferencing equipment to achieve two-way audio and video interaction with cooperative libraries, and remote libraries can access and obtain library documents in the court’s private network to access internal electronic documents and audio-visual materials. (II) Main functions The main functions of the digital library of the smart court are divided into welcome area, service management area, electronic document for reference area, electronic audiovisual data access area, audio and video appreciation area and seminar area. In the welcome area, visitors are provided with the introduction of the overall functions of the library, the guide to the use of the digital library, the introduction of important information on the day and the inquiry of related books so that visitors can have a clear and intuitive impression of the digital library. At the same time, for librarians, it provides the statistical function of library visitors, which is convenient for librarians to grasp the real-time situation of people in the library. The service management area is a working area for librarians, where the management interface and permission system of various information systems are centrally deployed, and it assumes the unified management responsibility of the entire digital library information system. In addition to the control of information systems, it can

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also have the centralized control of environmental facilities such as lighting, air conditioning and curtains in digital libraries. The electronic document for the reference area provides quick access to electronic archives and electronic law books for court staffs, judges, visitors and lawyers, and access to electronic archives and electronic law books requires authorization and permission. The electronic audiovisual data access area provides the function of inquiry and reading of electronic audio-visual data for court staffs, judges, visitors and lawyers. It adopts the space design concept similar to the electronic document for reference area, highlights the experience effect of audio and video data, and realizes the multiple functions of audio-visual data for reference and audio-visual relaxation for leisure and entertainment. The audio and video appreciation area is a functional area focusing on the display and appreciation of all kinds of audio and videos in the digital library. It has the function of providing audio and video appreciation audition for court staffs, judges, visitors and lawyers. In addition, it can be properly configured with a dedicated space with a sound insulation function to expand the reading and appreciation functions. The seminar area provides local and remote communication services for all kinds of people, such as court staffs, judges, visitors and lawyers, organizing salon exchanges, academic lectures, training and sharing. (III) Application The digital library uses advanced technologies such as video displays and multimedia interactions to provide readers with a variety of easy and convenient knowledge services. It provides knowledge browsing. Through using the wide and clear interactive desktop display screen, readers can browse news, current affairs, classical knowledge, common sense of life and so on at will alone or in the process of sitting and chatting, which provides a relaxing way of learning for court staffs after their busy work. It provides access to the collection. By using special devices such as large-screen retrieval, fixed and portable terminals and mobile readers, readers can easily access all kinds of professional books in the digital library and read them in depth, which provides a more focused learning environment for court staffs than in the office. It provides remote access. Through connecting to the more abundant book resources of the National Library, the People’s Court Publishing House and other cooperating organizations using digital and video means, readers can break the boundaries of departments and regions and access more widely professional books in various disciplines in the court library. It provides communication and interaction. Through using the multimedia communication and interaction conditions in the seminar area, it is very convenient to organize collective observation of library resources or other judicial trial resources on the court’s private network and the Internet and to carry out targeted discussions and discussions, which provides an ideal environment for court staffs and law colleagues to share information and discuss.

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VII. All-Medeia Press Conference Hall System The all-medeia press conference hall system is an all-media integrated release platform based on multimedia production and broadcasting, multiscreen displays, cloud services and other technologies, which is the main window for courts at all levels to release information in the future. (I) Main composition The all-medeia press conference hall system is composed of an on-site sound and picture acquisition unit, video processing unit, audio processing unit, data visualization unit, acquisition unit for press room, monitoring and sound amplification unit, equipment and environmental control unit, lighting unit, recording and storage unit. The system requires not only the private internet of the court but also the full coverage of the Internet for all-media release, supporting reporters to broadcast live. The system composition of the all-medeia press conference hall system is shown in Fig. 6.7. The acquisition unit for the press room mainly includes audio and video acquisition equipment and signal access equipment, which is responsible for acquiring high-definition audio and video signals and reproducing real-time images and sounds of the conference site. The video processing unit mainly includes switch tables, matrices, synchronization equipment, monitors and other equipment, which are responsible for processing the images collected at the news release site into images for use by local camera reporters and network reporters, and it also has the function of video switching and scheduling. The audio processing unit mainly comprises a digital audio processor, an encryption and decryption device and other devices, and it is responsible for adjusting and distributing the relevant parameters of the audio signal in real time, striving for simple and flexible operation. The data visualization unit mainly includes a large-screen packaging module, comment interaction module and visual broadcast control module, which are responsible for the background display, data visualization display and on-site interaction of the press conference. The briefing hall display unit mainly includes an LED screen display module, an interactive display module, other auxiliary display modules and a splicing processing module, which is responsible for the centralized overall display of the theme display, document release and relevant legal case information of the all-media press conference. The monitoring and sound amplification unit mainly includes a power amplifier, monitoring sound speaker, loudspeaker and other equipment, which is responsible for clear reproduction of voice and playing of multimedia audio. The lighting unit mainly includes lighting equipment, lighting control equipment, motor hoists and other equipment to provide lighting control to meet the needs of news publishers and related background scenes.

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Fig. 6.7 All-medeia press conference hall system

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The recording and storage unit is used for real-time and efficient recording and flexible copying of audio signals. The transmission unit for HD audio and video can realize the interconnection between the release hall and other special facilities of the court, such as the litigation service guidance center, the execution intelligence center and the information management center. The equipment and environment control unit mainly includes the control host, tablet computer and other equipment, which is responsible for controlling the operation of various equipment based on demand through wired or wireless means. The integrated information aggregation and management system deployed on the court private network can provide integrated aggregation management of data information resources and real-time program signals based on pictures, text, audio, video and other forms. It realizes the unified process management of all-media material collection, video format transcoding, information arrangement, editing and auditing, archiving and storage, cataloging and retrieval, and publishing and presentation. (II) Main functions According to different areas, the all-medeia press conference hall system has seven functions, including on-site release, interactive questioning, interactive browsing, media production, director control, network release and journalist service, providing corresponding service support for news publishers, reporters and technicians to meet their various needs. The on-site release function is mainly concentrated in the on-site release area, which is the core function of the all-media press release hall system. It supports the main speaker of the press release and can be supplemented by audio and video output of relevant multimedia. The interactive questioning function is mainly concentrated in the interactive questioning area, which is the largest activity area in the press release hall, providing the necessary space and facilities for guests and journalists attending the press conference to sit and ask interactive questions. The interactive browsing function is mainly concentrated in the interactive browsing area, which is composed of the interactive comment area and the interactive browsing area, providing visitors with interactive experience conditions of multiple scenes appearing at the same time. The media production function is mainly concentrated in the media shooting area, which is used for the camera reporters to place the shooting and recording equipment on the spot to facilitate various activities, such as panoramic shooting, news release, interactive questioning and interactive browsing. The director control function is mainly concentrated in the director control area, which is the background area for the management and application of various systems in the all-media press release hall and supports the centralized control of the corresponding systems by press release management and technical personnel. The network release function is concentrated in the network release area, which enables on-site reporters to release the live situation of the press release hall to the outside world in the form of video and graphics through the Internet.

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Journalist service supports the check-in of participating journalists, facilitates the distribution of text and audio and video materials before the meeting, and can synchronously push the content of news release during the meeting. (III) Application The participants of the all-medeia press conference hall system mainly included press release personnel (including hosts and speakers), reporters (including text reporters, camera reporters and other media reporters), press conference organizers, operation and maintenance personnel and other foreign visitors for exchange. The perfect operation service system of the release hall can provide corresponding services for different users to meet their various needs. At the same time, according to the actual needs of different themes, the all-media press release hall has different audio-visual modes that can be switched freely to achieve a better information dissemination effect. According to the subdivision of application scenarios, the application modes of the all-media press release hall mainly include traditional press conference release, all-media press release, interactive interview release and exhibition and visit release. Traditional press conferences are the basic application mode of the all-media press release hall. As an exclusive place for court press conferences, journalists, media leaders, heads of industry departments, representatives of various cooperative units and personnel of government departments to attend can be invited there to attend the conference, achieving time, personnel and media concentration. Through newspapers, television, radio, websites and other means of mass communication, the focus news of the court is released centrally. The all-media press conference collects, analyzes, processes and extracts allmedia information, including court system platform data, manuscript data, video data, network materials and interactive data, through information integration tools, pushing these data to display devices according to the needs of the press conference, presenting more in-depth and extensive broadcast information, and releasing it to the public through traditional media, network media and other new media. The interactive interview release focuses on the recording of interview and commentary content, which is a small-scale information release method, and it can support the detailed interpretation of relevant policy documents in a specific range, such as the all-media live interview activities around some key work of the people’s court, showing the highlights and achievements of the work of the people’s court to society in an all-round, three-dimensional and in-depth way. Exhibition and visit release are important means complementing multimedia applications of all-media press halls. As the main display window of the people’s court’s multimedia information release, through the all-media press release hall, the work situations of local courts in real time, online and multiview can be displayed at the same time. It provides a very convenient way for all news media to visit, familiarize themselves with and grasp the latest and most complete court information. VIII. Smart Court Laboratory System The Smart Court Laboratory system is a comprehensive test environment that combines the three functions of high-tech display, interactive experience and open

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test and supports the research and development of advanced technology, system integration and testing of smart courts. (I) Main composition The smart court laboratory system is mainly composed of six systems, including a laboratory sink unit, distributed processing unit, data visualization platform, display unit, audio processing and sound amplification unit in the hall, equipment and environmental control unit. The composition of the smart court laboratory system is shown in Fig. 6.8. The laboratory sink unit is composed of computers, microphones, audio and video transmission networks and video conference terminals connected to the court private network and the Internet to meet the needs of research and experiments and of visits and interpretation. The distributed processing unit is composed of equipment such as video network switch cluster, LED processing node, providing video signal push and control services. Through the convergence and visualization of pictures, text, video, data, realtime signals and other contents, the data visualization platform creates a good test experience atmosphere, better displaying the scientific and technological innovation achievements of courts around the country and contributing to improving the research and exploration interest of participants and visitors. The display unit is composed of an LED screen, display, projection fusion display and other modules to meet the needs of scientific and technological innovation achievement displays, technical tests and system tests in smart courts. The audio processing and sound amplification unit adopts the public address processing system and cooperates with the omnidirectional ceiling speaker to ensure that the laboratory voice is clear and bright and that the sound field is uniform. The equipment and environment control unit supports the secondary programming of the system and the control of various access signals, including RS232, RS485, TCP, UDP, Delay and infrared interfaces. As the integrated control center of the laboratory, it can realize the unified management of the platform, such as signal switching, volume adjustment, and lighting control. (II) Regional layout The Smart Court Laboratory is constructed according to the layout of four districts and one center, which are the multifunctional think tank center, smart service area, smart trial area, smart execution area and smart management area. The multifunctional think tank center integrates and demonstrates the comprehensive effect of scientific and technological innovation of smart courts, as well as the construction and application of a judicial open information system, allowing discussions and exchanges of scientific researchers and visitors. The smart service area focuses on the architecture, information flow, working mechanism and key technologies of the one-stop multivariate dispute resolution and litigation service information system of courts around the country. At the same time,

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Fig. 6.8 Smart court laboratory system

there are many test points, such as multivariate dispute resolution, litigation service, synchronous generation of electronic files with cases and mobile microcourts. The smart trial area shows the architecture, information flow, working mechanism and key technologies of the trial case handling information system with the electronic file circulation application as the main line and the intelligent assistant application as the key point. At the same time, there are many test points, such as science and technology courts, smart assistant case handling test points and Internet courts.

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The smart execution area shows the architecture, information process, working mechanism and key technologies of the execution information system with the execution and command system as the center, the execution process information management system and the execution information disclosure system as the two sides, and the execution investigation and control, punishment for dishonesty and judicial auction systems as the extension. At the same time, there are several seat-type execution test points. The smart management area shows the architecture, information process, working mechanism and key technologies of the big data management and service, quality and efficiency information operation and maintenance service information system of courts around the country, and at the same time, it has built a number of management test points with desktop display interaction. (III) Application A smart court laboratory can support single-point tests, multiple uses in one area, multiarea linkages and remote joint tests and meet the needs of different technical tests and integrated evaluations of court scientific and technological innovation. With the single point test method, many test points in the smart service, smart trial, smart execution and smart management test area can be used to carry out the test of a certain single key technology in the construction of smart courts based on the standardized test data and input and output interfaces accumulated in the laboratory. A series of key technologies in a certain field of smart service, smart trial, smart execution, smart management and judicial openness are supported by a multi-use mode in one area, and multi-technology cross-integration tests are carried out under the conditions of multi-point test, system interoperability and comprehensive display in the area. With the multi-area linkage mode, the key technologies in the fields of smart service, smart trial, smart execution, smart management and judicial openness can be used to carry out cross-domain integrated linkage experiments, taking advantage of centralized scheduling, resource sharing and professional compounding of the whole laboratory. The remote joint test mode makes use of the advantages of the connection between the smart court laboratory, the national courts and various information systems and data resources, conducting multi-site joint tests with the smart court laboratories located in Beijing and other places to meet the test requirements of some key technologies for remote communication conditions.

6.2 Communication Network Facilities The communication network is the link of the whole information system. As interconnection is a prerequisite for informatization, communication network facilities have always been the key focus of the construction of smart courts. Thanks to the accumulation of nearly 20 years of construction, a network communication system

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has been formed with the court private network and the Internet as the backbone, the secret-related network as the supplement, and the external private network and the mobile private network as the extension, which ensures the vigorous development of smart courts throughout the country. The main features of the network include wide area network coverage, multi-network parallel development, network security and connection, network mobile interconnection and appropriate flexibility for network development. First, in terms of wide area network coverage, courts at all levels have always regarded network coverage, especially the coverage of court private networks, as the top priority of information infrastructure construction, promoting the connection between court private networks and all courts and dispatched tribunals throughout the country, supporting the work, case handling, learning and communication of the court staff throughout the country, and greatly shortening the communication distance between them. All key information application systems can serve the court staff throughout the country, and its significance is not only limited to communication itself but also lies in the general improvement of the information awareness and quality of the court staff throughout the country. Second, in terms of multi-network parallel development, with the vigorous development of the construction of the court’s private network, the important supporting role of the Internet for judicial openness, litigation services and judicial publicity should be given attention. In addition, the national government network can be used to continuously strengthen the construction of secret-related networks, promoting the orderly and benign development of various network systems and avoiding the phenomenon of attending to one thing and losing another. It ensures the information application of the courts at all levels and meets the requirements of the long-term development of national egovernment. Third, in terms of network security and connection, while ensuring the compliance and security isolation of major networks, network security and connection mechanisms should be actively explored and applied to effectively support the necessary cross-network information sharing, meeting the growing demand for information applications. Fourth, in terms of mobile network interconnection, with the rapid development of mobile communication technology, based on the requirements of the court staff and the people, mobile private networks that meet the requirements of information security should be built, supporting the extension of office, case handling, meetings, court trials and other businesses from the court private network to the mobile private network, which will certainly be a leap for the development of smart courts. Fifth, in terms of appropriate flexibility for network development, in response to the basic trend of rapid development of information construction and application, communication network facilities have sufficient flexibility in terms of technical system, transmission capacity and quality should be ensured to meet the increasingly higher requirements of information system application for networks, avoiding that communication capacity lags behind because of poor network facilities. I. Private Network for Court Data The private network for court data is the main part of the court private network, which mainly supports important business applications based on data transmission.

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(I) Basic structure The court data private network is composed of the park office LAN, data center network, metropolitan area transmission network and backbone transmission network, as shown in Fig. 6.9. The park office LAN is mainly deployed in each office area. Each park office LAN adopts a flat tree-shaped two-layer architecture, namely, “core layer plus access layer”, which simplifies the network structure and improves the manageability and maintainability of the network. The core layer adopts two core switches and cluster deployment to realize redundant backup and load sharing. The access layer adopts the aggregation switch and the access switch, which are stacked and deployed to realize

Fig. 6.9 Structure of court data private network

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the self-healing capability of the network and improve the reliability and network utilization of the access layer. Through vertical virtualization technology between the core layer and the access layer, a group of different types of network devices are virtualized into a logical device to simplify network management. The data center network is mainly deployed in each data center computer room and the data center in the office area. The internal network of each data center adopts a flat Spine-Leaf two-layer architecture, namely, “Spine core layer plus Leaf access layer”, and follows the design concept of “partition plus layering plus plane plus security” to improve the security, scalability and manageability of the data center network. The core layer uses two data center Spine switches, which are interconnected through 40 GE/10 GE ports, and M-LAG technology horizontally is used to achieve crossdevice link aggregation and load balancing. The access layer uses multiple pairs of data center leaf switches, which are interconnected through 40GE/10GE ports, and M-LAG technology is deployed horizontally. The core layer and the access layer are interconnected through 40 GE ports, and the OSPF routing protocol is used to realize the interconnection and intercommunication of the basic network. The M-LAG technology is deployed vertically to improve the bandwidth utilization of the uplink of the access layer and ensure the non-blocking data exchange between servers. The metropolitan area transmission network uses OTN wavelength division equipment with branch line separation for networking to realize the transmission ring network in the metropolitan area. The OTN wavelength division equipment networking is designed according to the 40-wave system, with a single-wave rate of 10 g and a maximum bandwidth of 400 G, to realize the physical isolation of interconnection between any networks, and the network switching time does not exceed 50 ms. The wide-area backbone network is connected with the national four-level courts through high-end core routers and high-speed interconnection links. The flat topology structure is used to reduce the number of levels and hops, and dual equipment and dual links are used to achieve redundant backup of nodes and links. The wide-area backbone network is divided into a first-level network and a second-level network. The first-level network adopts a flat two-layer architecture, and intra-domain routing protocols OSPF or ISIS are deployed to realize interconnection and intercommunication. POS/GE/10GE links are used for direct connection between the core nodes of the first-level network and between the core nodes of the first-layer network and the core nodes in the first-layer network within the jurisdiction. The secondary network adopts a flat two-layer architecture or three-layer architecture, and intra-domain routing protocols OSPF or ISIS are deployed to realize interconnection and intercommunication. POS/GE/10GE links are used for direct connection between high court nodes and intermediate court nodes and between high court nodes or intermediate court nodes and basic court nodes. The first-level network high-level node and the second-level network high-level node are directly connected back-to-back through the GE link, and the inter-domain BGP routing protocol is deployed.

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(II) Scope of connectivity The core switch of the office network in the park is connected to the backbone node of the wide area network so that the users of the office LAN in the park can efficiently access the court’s proprietary cloud services. The core layer of each park office LAN in the metropolitan area is interconnected at a high speed through the metropolitan area transmission network to realize the efficient exchange between the park office LANs in the metropolitan area. The data center bearer network forms a data center bearer ring network between each office park based on the metropolitan area transmission network to realize ring network protection. The metro transmission network covers the office areas and data centers in the metro and provides high-speed and reliable metro optical transmission channels for the interconnection of office LANs, data centers, external private networks, mobile private networks and office internetworks. The first-level network consists of 4 core nodes and 38 access nodes, which cover the Supreme People’s Court and its circuit courts, higher people’s courts and corps courts through the long-distance links of the first-level network. The second-level network is constructed and maintained by the high courts and the corps courts. Generally, the core node covering the high courts, multiple access nodes covering the intermediate courts and multiple access nodes covering the basiclevel courts cover the local high courts, intermediate courts and basic-level courts through the second-level network long-distance links. (III) Application The park office LAN is used to carry all kinds of IP data services and IP multimedia service application traffic. Through QoS technology, users and their services are identified in detail, audio, video, data and other services are distinguished, and flexible scheduling is carried out according to priority. The data center network is used to host the court’s proprietary cloud business system. With VxLAN and SDN technology, the resource pooling of IT infrastructure (including computing, storage and network) can be supported, and the network scalability and reliability can be improved. Data security is ensured through the data backup system across data centers. The metro transmission network provides various service interfaces, and services such as park networks, data center networks and the Internet can be linked to the transmission network through the core switching equipment, realizing interconnections and intercommunications among the regional networks. The wide area backbone network carries the interconnection business of the twolevel proprietary cloud data centers of the Supreme People’s Court and the higher people’s courts, converging and accessing the four-level courts nationwide, and it comprehensively carries the internal users of the courts to access all kinds of digital business applications, as well as all kinds of IP data business and IP multimedia business application traffic between the four-level courts. QoS technology is deployed

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to provide differentiated services for different services and different users and to control the rate of services according to needs. II. Court Video Private Network The court video private network is another important part of the court private network, which is mainly used to support high-definition video conference, high-definition audio and video integrated scheduling management, as well as related audio and video business applications such as science and technology courts, execution and command, video surveillance, remote trial, remote access and so on. (I) Basic structure The court video private network is mainly composed of the E1 video private network and the IP video private network, as shown in Fig. 6.10. The E1 video private network provides the functions of HD audio and video integrated scheduling management and remote HD video conference. According to the characteristics of related services and the requirements for the network, the E1 video private network is composed of a metro optical fiber scheduling network and an E1 remote dedicated network. Among them, the metro optical fiber scheduling network is used to build a high-speed audio and video transmission network covering the audio and video data center rooms in each office area, as well as the information centralized control center, the executive command center, the national trial resource management center and other functional places through the bare optical fiber private network. The optical fiber transmission equipment includes matrix optical fiber boards and audio and video optical transceivers, achieving signal access in the metro area. Through the construction of a high-definition audio and video integrated scheduling management system, the distributed high-definition image processing system is used to send national high-definition audio and video signals to the large screen so that the signal of the resource management center is pushed to the convergence and scheduling system through the optical transmission system, realizing the distribution and transmission of audio and video signals to the courts around the country. Through the communication operator’s SDH network, the E1 remote dedicated line connects the video conference MP multipoint processing unit and the video communication terminals of 6 circuit courts of the Supreme People’s Court, 31 high courts and corps courts nationwide, and supports multiple sets of H.320 HD video conference systems, such as one set of HD conferences, two sets of HD conferences and judicial committees. In the video conference MP communication room, multi-channel image synthesis equipment is also used to preprocess the conference video stream to reduce the pressure of multi-channel video streams on the backbone network and display processing system. The IP video private network relies on the digital private network of the court to realize the mixed transmission of audio and video signals and data signals through channel isolation and QoS guarantee technology, providing support for IP-based video conferencing, science and technology courts, remote trial, remote access and other related services. At the same time, the IP video private network realizes the

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management and scheduling of the video surveillance system and realizes the transmission and processing of audio and video streams in smart security applications such as video surveillance and face recognition through the surveillance private network. (II) Scope of connectivity On the one hand, the E1 video private network realizes the high-definition audio and video scheduling network covering all office areas, information centralized control centers, executive command centers, national trial resource management centers and other functional places through 72-core bare optical fibers, meeting the needs of large-scale, high-quality and low-delay high-definition audio and video scheduling and management. On the other hand, it adopts the form of renting E1 special line and connects 6 circuit courts of the Supreme People’s Court, 31 high courts and corps courts through the operator’s SDH network to support the application of H.320 high-definition video conferencing. The IP video private network relies on the physical architecture of the court data private network and realizes the private network coverage of audio and video services based on the IP network through channel isolation and QoS guarantee technology. (III) Application The E1 video private network provides functions related to HD audio and video scheduling management and video conferences, and it is used to provide services such as national HD video conferences, office area HD video conferences and various information demonstrations. The IP video private network is used to support IP-based video conferences, video monitoring, remote court sessions, remote arraignment, remote interviews and other related services. III. Internet The Internet is the main network channel with which smart courts provide service for people. The overall architecture of the Internet in the court includes two parts: the Internet for office and the Internet for government affairs. (I) Main composition The Internet for office has a two-layer structure, namely, the core layer and the access layer. High-end switches are deployed in the core layer cluster to provide backup redundancy, and stacking technology is used in the access layer to simplify management. The Internet access layer switches in each office area converge to the Internet core layer through the metro transmission network, unifying Internet exports, and the Internet private network services of the two operators are used to ensure the reliability of the network link. Static routing is used to realize intercommunication between office areas, and plug-in AC is used to realize the unified management of Internet wireless access in each office area.

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The Internet for government affairs relies on the court’s open cloud architecture to realize various Internet application services, realizes data exchange with the court’s private network through the open cloud sharing exchange system, and supports the expansion of private network bandwidth and DMZ area on demand. (II) Application On the premise of ensuring the safety and reliability of data and the security and confidentiality of data exchange, it supports remote case handling, execution, office, meeting, on-site court video recording, document production, remote electronic signature, outgoing execution and electronic service. Streaming media services and media resource management services are built in the data private network and video private network to support the circulation and management of court audio and video, while live broadcasting and distribution services are built on the Internet to support the live broadcasting of court audio and video. It supports the judge to preside over the trial in the trial court connected to the Internet. The parties can participate in the trial activities through the PC terminal, PAD terminal or mobile phone terminal and realize the interaction of case and file information, trial video, transcripts, evidence and other related trial information and data with the court private network through the security isolation exchange system to realize the remote trial. Relying on open clouds, it provides five types of Internet applications, including public applications such as China Judgments Online, China Execution Information Online, China Judicial Process Information Online, and 12,368 smart litigation platform hotlines; trial process applications such as trial process supervision systems, integrated security supervision platforms, judicial big data, legal eye platforms and other trial auxiliary applications; business management applications such as mail systems and digital libraries; and human resource-related applications such as retired personnel management, judge training networks and other human security applications. IV. Outside Private Network Outside private networks is an important network channel for information sharing and business collaboration between the courts around the country and their relevant departments. (I) Main form Outside private networks, composed of platform access networks, security isolation networks and service private networks, can help realize unified accessed data management through multiple docking modes. The platform access network provides routing access security, boundary protection and other related functions and realizes the isolation between the external private network and the business private network through the security isolation network. At the same time, it realizes linkage with the isolation equipment through services such as identity authentication and format

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inspection and carries out data and file interaction. The business private network supports the relevant business applications based on the external private network and realizes the connection with the court private network. The outside private network is interconnected with relevant departments through various access modes, such as a data private network of operators, an e-government extranet and the Internet, to realize the docking of outsourcing units. MSTP technology is used for networking, and MSTP equipment is deployed at both ends of the outsourcing unit and the court to achieve data line docking. The MSTP network can realize point-to-point and point-to-multipoint transparent transmission, and it has high service reliability and self-healing protection and recovery capability. According to the relevant technical standards and specifications, the docking mode of the egovernment external network is realized through the security isolation exchange system and the court private network. The Internet docking mode collects data and information through the Internet and then connects with the court’s private network through the security isolation exchange system. (II) Department connecting The connection with outsourcing units consists of two ways: “point-to-point” and “total-to-total”. The “point-to-point” mode is that local courts and external cooperation units independently build their respective private network or systems to realize data interaction, execution of investigation and control and other related applications. The “total-to-total” mode is coordinated by the Supreme People’s Court, together with relevant external cooperation units and competent departments, forming an efficient, unified and safe inquiry and collaboration platform. The Supreme People’s Court has established point-to-point connections with the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Public Security and other units through the external private network, and it established a “total-to-total” connection with dozens of banking and financial institutions, aviation, railway and other departments. According to their own business needs, local courts around the country have established point-to-point or total-to-total connections with external cooperation units by using external private networks or local government networks. (III) Application Through the private network for outside, business collaboration applications such as information submission, information sharing, investigation and control of execution, and credit punishment can be realized. V. Mobile Private Network The mobile private network is an extension channel of the court private network to the mobile end, which is mainly used to support the needs of the court staff officers going out to work.

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(I) Main form The court private network extends to the mobile end through the VPDN private network. VPDN uses tunneling technology to encapsulate and encrypt communication data between the court private network and the mobile Internet to prevent malicious acts such as eavesdropping, theft and tampering. The wireless data private network platform is mainly composed of a core switching and forwarding area, a user access area and an access management platform. The core switching forwarding area is used to provide data routing forwarding between the GPRS/WCDMA core packet network and the wireless data private network platform. The user access area provides private network access for users and can support E1, FE, GE, POS and other interface types. The access management platform is used to provide trusteeship authentication service and management service. The VPDN implements a dedicated tunnel connection by establishing an L2TP tunnel between the client LNS and the operator GGSN. A special AAA can also be set at the court end so that the authentication request is authenticated for the second time by the AAA at the court end. (II) Security isolation strategy Multiple authentications and encrypted transmission of data are required in the access process of the wireless terminal. Operators provide various security strategies for the mobile private network, such as WCDMA air interface two-way authentication, radio access network (RAN) data encryption transmission, GTP/L2TP tunneling technology, firewall, access platform AAA authentication, and user AAA authentication, ensuring that all kinds of wireless terminals can access the mobile private network safely. The mobile private network is physically isolated from the court private network, and the data exchange between nonsecret networks is realized through the data sharing and exchange center. (III) Application Through the mobile private network, the existing office platform, petition system and court intranet website of the court private network can be systematically docked and transformed to meet the needs of the court staff mobile office. It can also support case handling platforms, on-site evidence collection, mobile trials and other functions to meet the needs of mobile case handling. It can also support wireless data transmission functions to meet the data transmission needs of various mobile terminals and individual soldier equipment.

6.3 Cloud Computing Facilities There is increasingly greater demand for computing and storage resources in smart courts, which creates difficulties for courts at all levels in independently supporting the resource needs of rapid expansion and strong uncertainty, whether in terms of

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funding or technology. For the problem, the rising cloud computing can provide solutions. which is being solved by. Cloud computing infrastructure is a new type of information infrastructure that integrates widely distributed computing and storage resources into a unified system based on an efficient and smooth communication network, and it supports virtual computing, distributed computing, parallel computing, network storage, load balancing and redundant backup services. The core of cloud computing is to further realize the socialization of computing and storage services on the basis of the socialization of communication services. Using socialized cloud computing services, courts at all levels do not need to build too many computer rooms and equip themselves with too many servers, databases and other equipment. They can obtain powerful computing and storage services with the help of social resources, which can not only save the court’s own investment in information infrastructure but can also give full play to the advantages of national and social resources to meet the requirements of dynamic changes and load balancing of various applications. Under the condition that most application systems of smart courts are deployed in a unified way throughout the country or in provinces, districts and municipalities, distributed cloud computing can reasonably allocate computing and storage resources in different regions according to the specific needs of the regional distribution and application load of courts and give full play to the advantages of nearby support and on-demand services, which can not only greatly reduce unnecessary investment in communication infrastructure but can also efficiently support the special needs of key courts and applications. Compared with the previous technology of independent development, the application system and data management based on advanced cloud computing have a more standardized configuration mode, which is more convenient for modular development, system expansion, reorganization and migration, more in line with the development trend of software technology, and is conducive to the system integration and integration of smart courts. At the same time, the information system based on advanced cloud computing can adopt more systematic, timely and targeted security protection measures to effectively deal with the increasingly severe information security risks and improve the network security level of smart courts. The premise of using social cloud computing is to ensure that the court application system and data resources are in a safe and controllable state. Measures such as regional monitoring, permission setting, access control, data encryption and security audits should be taken to continuously strengthen the security protection of court cloud resources to realize the benign integration of fair justice and advanced technology. I. Proprietary Cloud Services As a resource platform for computing, storage and networking within the court’s private network, the people’s court’s private cloud is an important infrastructure providing service support for the people, trial execution and judicial management.

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(I) Architecture The architecture of the People’s Court’s proprietary cloud is shown in Fig. 6.11, including four main components: the infrastructure layer, resource pool layer, cloud service layer and cloud management layer. The infrastructure layer mainly includes the server, storage and network equipment of the data center, which forms an integrated equipment resource layer at the data center level through network interconnection to provide standardized computing, storage, network and other basic resource services. The resource pool layer mainly includes the IaaS resource pool and the PaaS resource pool. The IaaS resource pool manages the physical devices that can be logically managed through the cloud management platform, and the logicalized resource pool can be divided into various resource pools, such as the virtualization resource

Fig. 6.11 People’s court proprietary cloud architecture

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pool, physical equipment resource pool, network resource pool and storage resource pool. Through the cloud management platform, the PaaS resource pool logically integrates the basic application software and the IaaS resource pool into a resource pool integrating software and hardware, such as the MySql resource pool, Tomcat resource pool and Radis resource pool. The cloud service layer integrates the physical facility layer and the resource pool layer to provide unified and standardized cloud services for the upper application system, specifically including IaaS services, PaaS services and management services. The management layer mainly includes proprietary cloud management platform services that support vertical multi-level collaboration in the industry. That is, at the level of the Supreme People’s Court, in addition to meeting the needs of the headquarters and the circuit courts, it also provides unified integrated monitoring, log, patrol and other service support for the proprietary cloud of each higher people’s court. (II) Service capability The People’s Court’s proprietary cloud mainly provides the following services. It provides computing services, including cloud hosts, bare metals, clusters, containers and other services. The smart court application system can obtain the computing service capabilities required by various business applications through cloud computing services. The modules of the application system that do not require high computing power can meet their computing needs through containers, such as web modules, database modules for testing, message middleware modules, and workflow middleware. The cloud host can meet the computing needs of modules with high computing power requirements in the application system, such as the general relational database module and the cache module. When the application system requires high computing power but is limited by the software development architecture, its computing needs can be met by bare metal, such as a high-performance relational database module, distributed database module, ETL module in a big data scenario, search engine, computing engine, etc. The modules of the application system that require high computing power and security can meet their computing needs through clusters, such as big data computing engines and core business databases. In addition, the mirror service can realize the automatic perfusion of the operating system in the process of computing resource distribution and meet the requirements of the application system. The elastic scaling service can automatically scale the front-end business modules of periodic concurrent applications according to business pressure and improve the utilization efficiency of cloud resources. It provides storage services, including distributed cloud storage, block storage, file storage and other types of storage services. The smart court application system can obtain the storage service capabilities required by each business module through the cloud storage service. The modules of the application system that do not require high IOPS and throughput of storage can meet their storage needs through distributed cloud storage, such as the web module, database module for testing, message middleware module, and workflow middleware module. The modules of the application system that require high IOPS and throughput of storage can meet their storage

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requirements through block storage, such as relational database modules and cache modules. The application system has storage file system requirements, and modules with high storage space requirements can meet their storage needs through file storage, such as electronic files and court video in big data scenarios. For modules with high storage IOPS and throughput requirements of application systems, SSD hard disks in block storage can meet their storage needs, such as big data computing engines and core business databases. It provides network services, including virtual private network elastic IP, virtual load balancing and other network services. The smart court application system can obtain relevant service capabilities through network services to support the network transmission of business systems. The VPC virtual private network service provides the application development team with a virtual network environment that is isolated according to the organizational structure and configured and managed by the user independently, improves the security of resources in the relevant organizations, and simplifies the network deployment of the user. The elastic IP service enables the cloud server in the VPC private network to provide services through a fixed external service IP address and helps the cloud host achieve the goal of using the IP address immediately and returning it when it is used up. By automatically distributing the access traffic to multiple cloud hosts, the virtual load balancing service expands the external service capability of the application system in the private cloud and achieves a higher level of fault-tolerant performance of the application system. The security group service is used to implement access control between VPC private networks, strengthen the security protection of cloud hosts between groups, implement VPC internal network isolation, and ensure that data flow between different application systems can be monitored and managed. The virtual firewall service supports virtualizing the software firewalls in the private cloud into multiple logically independent firewalls, providing firewall security services for different application systems, and protecting the security of the application systems on the private cloud. Virtual private network services can provide dedicated data channels for specific network sources and destination addresses and provide secure and encrypted network protection for data transmission between application systems and external cooperation agencies or enterprises. It provides PaaS services, including RDS relational database, Radis cache, middleware and other services, and the relational database, cache database and middleware platform are provided by the proprietary cloud platform in the form of services for application development, avoiding the complex work of business vendors in deploying, debugging and tuning databases or middleware, and constraining the database and middleware versions in the proprietary cloud to enhance compliance, which improves the online efficiency of the application system. Smart services provide more convenient and intelligent business assistance capabilities for the application system. These services can be used to achieve real-time transcription of court voice, rapid distribution of live court broadcast, unified domain name management of business access, and unified backup of business data, etc., improving the work efficiency and management level of the smart court.

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It provides managing services, including K8S orchestration, vApp orchestration, service catalogs and other service contents. Among them, the K8S orchestration service provides automated business registration, service publishing, container orchestration, test and development environment for application systems based on microservice architecture, helps development teams complete software life cycle management through collaboration and communication of automated tools, and supports faster, more frequent and more stable software upgrades. The vApp orchestration service can help users realize the reuse of software and hardware resources and capabilities, support the rapid deployment of specific application systems through graphical template orchestration and one-stop deployment capabilities, enable development teams to focus more on core business and innovation, speed up product development, shorten launching time, and improve application flexibility and availability. The service directory service can provide the capabilities of centralized management, on-demand allocation, rapid use and rapid deployment for proprietary cloud services and can support the management of service resources allocated to the development team for independent use by importing customized resource templates, services and customized portfolio management of configuration information. (III) Operating mode The operation of the smart court’s proprietary cloud possesses standardized procedures, including cloud preparation, cloud testing, cloud operation and cloud optimization. During the cloud preparation period, the application system is required to specify its deployment mode, whether centralized or distributed, and the system business types include OLTP, OLAP, content management, audio and video interaction, big data analysis, etc., and the system modules include web, application, cache, and database, etc. The cloud migration operation should be advanced according to the principle of matching the service capabilities provided by the proprietary cloud with the application modules. The proprietary cloud provides a business test area with physical or logical isolation, providing a verification test environment for the application system to enter the cloud. Although the verification test area is small in scale, it needs to have the same cloud service capability as the normal operation mode. Before the application system enters the cloud, it needs to carry out relevant functions and pressure tests in the business test area. After meeting the requirements of security, stability and availability, it can be formally deployed into the proprietary cloud. The proprietary cloud for smart courts has a standardized cloud usage process, which enables application systems and their developers to easily use the cloud services provided by the proprietary cloud. The use of cloud services includes five main procedures: service application, service approval, service acquisition, service change and service recovery, which cover the whole process of the application system from entering the cloud to leaving the cloud. Detailed forms are designed for each procedure to facilitate application system vendors in completing the use of cloud services step by step.

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The proprietary cloud for smart courts has perfect cloud optimization rules for the cloud application system, including the threshold of the highest and lowest resource utilization rates. The monitoring system will generate resource usage reports of various application systems and their sub-modules on a monthly basis. If the resource usage exceeds or falls below the set threshold, the relevant resources will be optimized and adjusted according to the cloud optimization process. (IV) Application According to the requirements of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the use mode of information resources in smart courts has changed from the original mode of purely physical machines, supplemented by virtualization of some resources, to the mode of cloud computing, which not only meets the rapid growth demand of court business applications but also expands and enriches the types and quantities of cloud services. It effectively supports the resource requirements of four major application systems, namely, smart service, smart trial, smart execution and smart management. Taking the Supreme People’s Court as an example, as of October 2019, the proprietary cloud platform has supported 122 application systems, such as execution informatization, big data management, smart trial, judicial openness, petition business, judicial management, judicial assistance system, open trial process system, and execution command platform, taking advantage of the intensive and flexible scheduling of the proprietary cloud platform. Tens of thousands of business requests and concurrences are completed every month, which smoothly and efficiently guarantees the demand for information infrastructure resources for the rapid development of smart court business applications. II. Open Cloud Services Open clouds are a kind of shared computing, storage and communication infrastructure built on the Internet based on technologies such as virtualization, grid computing, distributed computing, distributed storage, SOA and so on, providing people with various business application systems. (I) Architecture The hierarchical structure of the open cloud platform for smart courts is shown in Fig. 6.12, including the physical layer, virtualization layer, service layer, cloud security protection system, operation and monitoring system, and maintenance management system, which provides technical support, including big data service for smart courts, live video broadcasting of court trials, open judgment documents and anticrawlers, trusted inter-network exchange, and disaster recovery in different places. It realizes data sharing, internal and external network exchange and business collaboration of the court system and supports unified user management, mobile applications, Internet courts and other smart court business applications. The topology of the smart court open cloud is shown in Fig. 6.13. The computing resource pool adopts a flexible and elastic resource adjustment mode, which can dynamically adjust to meet the most appropriate resource allocation according to the

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Fig. 6.12 People’s court open cloud system

resource usage monitoring and adapt to the periodic and sudden access characteristics of the court business. The storage resource pool adopts flexible storage methods to meet the needs of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data, supporting centralized and distributed storage, and meeting the storage and processing needs of big data such as judgment documents. In terms of management, the boundary protection requirements of various application systems in the cloud are guaranteed through the inherent VPC isolation means of cloud deployment, and data sharing can be supported in accordance with security policies while being relatively isolated to prevent application systems from becoming independent. There is a centralized

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Fig. 6.13 Topological architecture of the open cloud network of the people’s court

and unified internetwork security access channel on the basis of meeting the requirements of security policy, which can realize data interaction with the internal system of the court’s private network and support remote OA, teleconferencing and other applications.

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(II) Service capability The service system provided by the open cloud platform is shown in Fig. 6.14. Court users at all levels can obtain diversified cloud services according to the characteristics and needs of their own business application systems, mainly including basic services, extended services and basic security services; specifically, the services include computing, storage, network, basic security, basic software, cloud migration, and disaster recovery and backup. At the same time, according to the individual needs and business characteristics of court users, it can also provide multiple personalized services, such as court big data service, court video live broadcasting, unified data exchange, and system anti-climbing. (III) Operating mode To ensure the rapid deployment of application systems on the open cloud platform, a series of standards and specifications have been established to restrict and guide the whole process of design and development, integration testing, deployment and operation and maintenance improvement of various application systems to improve the standardization level of application system construction, improve the operation efficiency of the cloud platform, and reduce the cost of information construction and operation and maintenance. For the application system to be put into the cloud, the architecture design, interaction between systems and application of interface technology should be implemented in accordance with the requirements of the specification in the development stage. In view of the traditional application system, it is necessary to optimize the structure according to the requirements of open clouds. The open cloud adopts an intelligent operation and maintenance platform architecture to realize deep visual monitoring of various resources and ensure overall operation and maintenance and performance optimization. (IV) Application As the basic supporting platform for Internet services of smart courts, Open Cloud provides safe, stable, reliable and convenient services and support for various types of application systems, such as judicial openness, litigation services, judicial publicity, credit punishment and incorruptness judicature. Taking China Judgments Online as an example, as the largest open website of judicial documents in the world, the total number of open documents on its website has exceeded 100 million, with an average daily increase of 50,000 documents and an average daily visit of more than 40 million times. Thanks to the open cloud platform, through the optimization of application architecture, the flexible allocation of basic resources, comprehensive cloud security protection and other measures and services, the safe and reliable operation of the system is guaranteed. III. “Cloud and Network Integration” Service Cloud services bring efficiency and convenience to the smart court information system. At the same time, with the deepening and expansion of information system construction, the demand for diversity, convenience and application experience of

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Fig. 6.14 Open cloud service architecture of people’s court

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cloud services is increasing, which also puts forward higher requirements for the information network system supporting cloud platforms. In the past, the network system construction and cloud platform construction of courts at all levels in the country were independent of each other, lacking overall design and management. Taking the court private network as an example, its initial star-shaped network architecture centered on Beijing is insufficient in terms of network bandwidth, reliability and security to support the application systems deployed and running on the proprietary cloud platform of Beijing Data Center and to provide unified access services for courts all over the country. At the same time, the network system and the proprietary cloud platform are built separately, which is not convenient for unified maintenance and management and cannot meet the rapid expansion of business needs. For these problems, the construction idea of “cloud and network integration” based on a software-defined network and cloud computing technology is proposed, which transforms the first-level network of the court’s private network into the ring network architecture and achieves higher reliability through the ring network composed of four backbone nodes in all directions, including the east, south, west and north. The four backbone nodes also become four distributed proprietary cloud data centers, and all of the high courts access the first-level network nearby, which makes the court private network and the proprietary cloud platform architecture echo and coordinate and brings convenience for providing integrated cloud network services that run through the upper and lower levels of the industry. (I) Architecture The construction of “cloud and network integration” of smart courts is divided into two stages: in the first stage, the integration of cloud and network is the focus, and the network goes ahead. Starting with the transformation of the ring structure of the court’s private network, we should focus on filling in the shortcomings of network access to create conditions for the subsequent distributed deployment, unified operation and maintenance of the propriety cloud. In the second stage, end-to-end collaboration and smart cloud networks are the focus. Cloud services based on backbone nodes need to be completed, and proprietary cloud smart services are enriched and promoted. In addition, the integration and collaboration of 5G networks and fixed-line networks, ubiquitous access services, edge computing and edge cloud services are included in this stage. Taking the Supreme People’s Court as an example, relying on the proprietary cloud and the first-level network of the court’s private network, the first phase of the construction of cloud network integration has been basically completed, and some smart cloud network services have been tried to provide (Fig. 6.15). As seen from the above figure, the 1 plus 3 architecture design of the Supreme People’s Court’s proprietary cloud has been completed relying on the deployment of the first-level network of the court’s private network. Among them, the central cloud node is Beijing, and there are sub-center cloud nodes in Nanjing, Guangzhou and Lanzhou, which are in eastern, southern and western China, respectively. The central node is connected with each sub-node of the cloud platform through the mode of downward connection, which enables the cloud to provide “localized” services of access nearby and access along with the extension of the court’s private network.

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Fig. 6.15 Cloud and network integrated architecture of the Supreme People’s Court

Each high people’s court also unifies the construction of one or more cloud data centers within its jurisdiction and connects to one of the four cloud data centers of the Supreme People’s Court through the first-level network to support the “one cloud” infrastructure of the national courts. (II) Service capability The cloud and network integration system can provide the following service capabilities. First, it can provide cross-node resource service capability. As a unified operation and management interface, the central node can provide proprietary cloud services

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for any node in the cloud and network integrated architecture, mainly including resource services, network services, and PaaS services, meeting the requirements of centralized deployment, distributed deployment of application systems and the provision of general service capabilities nearby. The second is the ability of crossnode cache service. The application system can store a copy of the original centrally deployed business data in each sub-node so that remote users can obtain relevant data services only by accessing the nearest sub-node without accessing the central node, which greatly improves the user’s operation experience and office efficiency. Third, it can provide cross-node disaster recovery service capability. The application system can realize cross-node disaster recovery based on the business, data and storage level. When a certain court application breaks down at a sub-node, other subnodes can take over the broken-down application through the network domain name service, routing service, and SDN, ensuring that the business application system is not interrupted. Fourth, it provides cross-node operation and maintenance monitoring services. Based on the operation, maintenance and monitoring module of each subnode, all information data on operation, maintenance and monitoring can be collected and transmitted to the central node in a unified way, and the unified operation and maintenance management platform can be used to support the unified processing and presentation of the whole cloud network data, as well as the unified analysis and regulation of the operation status. (III) Operating mode Through the ring network composed of four nodes distributed across the country, the unified operation management platform, monitoring platform and operation and maintenance platform are deployed in the central node, and in the three sub-nodes, only the monitoring platform and operation and maintenance platform are deployed. Through the mode of central cascade sub-centers, the unified management of the nodes across the country is realized (Fig. 6.16). Network management has the capabilities of traffic monitoring, domain name resolution, SDN and routing services, forming a cloud and network integrated architecture based on the integration of court private network space and the integration of distributed private cloud platforms. Based on this architecture, some business application systems can be optimized and improved in terms of distributed business deployment, distributed smart voice service, distributed big data platform and edge computing, and they can obtain more detailed, rich and elastic smart services with the further development of business applications. When performance problems occur in the cloud and network integrated architecture, the overall performance of the cloud and network can be optimized through network QoS and cloud platform elastic scheduling to meet the expanding needs of business applications for infrastructure support capabilities. IV. Smart Voice Cloud Service The smart voice cloud platform of the People’s Court is planned by the Supreme People’s Court in a unified way, relying on the construction of a court proprietary cloud and open cloud, providing unified smart voice cloud services for the four levels of courts in the country.

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Fig. 6.16 Logic diagram of unified operation and maintenance management of the cloud network of the Supreme People’s Court

(I) System architecture The architecture of the smart voice cloud platform (as shown in Fig. 6.17) realizes the vertical integration between multi-level courts and the horizontal integration between internal and external networks. Vertical integration is embodied in the proprietary cloud. Through the construction of two or three levels of platforms distributed on demand in the Supreme People’s Court, the High People’s Court and the Intermediate People’s Court, all levels of platforms provide unified services for the courts at their own level and jurisdiction, and data aggregation and transmission is realized one level to the next to run through the industry of the four levels of courts, providing comprehensive smart voice application support for the courts at all levels. Horizontal integration is reflected in the cross-cloud and cross-network collaboration of the proprietary cloud and open cloud, relying on the mature Internet open cloud and proprietary cloud platform through multiple distributed and flat Internet cloud platform nodes, providing unified and convenient smart voice services for the four levels of courts, as well as the national public and parties. Data are exchanged between the proprietary cloud and the open cloud through the security isolation system. The

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Fig. 6.17 Smart voice cloud platform architecture of the People’s Court

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proprietary cloud is used as the data aggregation center for data processing, labeling and model training, and then the model is updated and shared to all nodes of the proprietary cloud and all platform nodes of the open cloud in a unified manner, which supports the smart update and learning evolution of the whole platform and completes the unified quality and efficiency analysis and display. The smart voice cloud platform is composed of four sub-platforms: capability, learning and training, model management and operation management. Each subplatform is independent and cooperates with each other to provide unified voice service support for business applications of courts at all levels. Among them, the capability platform mainly provides AI capability support for business applications and realizes the empowerment of smart voice technology to business applications. The learning and training platform is responsible for all effect optimization work, including data annotation and model training, and provides the generated model resources to the model management platform for network-wide updating and scheduling. The model management platform updates and schedules the model resources of the whole network of the Supreme People’s Court, the High People’s Court and the Intermediate People’s Court through the transmission of multi-level platforms and automatically uploads the model resources to the capability platform. The operation management platform collects the application data of each platform to complete the application information aggregation of the entire voice cloud platform and supports the application quality and efficiency analysis to help users control the application of the entire smart voice cloud platform in real time. (II) Service capability The smart voice cloud platform mainly provides the following services. It provides smart voice interaction service. The capability platform can provide stable and reliable smart voice capability services for multi-scenario smart voice applications such as court trials (including Internet terminals), conferences, command and dispatch, and document writing, including speech recognition and synthesis, translation, and natural language understanding. The capability platforms at all levels can provide disaster recovery support for the capability platforms at the lower level. When the capability platform of the lower-level court breaks down, it actively establishes a connection with the higher-level platform, and the higher-level platform allocates corresponding resources after receiving the emergency access call request from the lower platform to realize the emergency disaster recovery for the lower-level platform. It provides corpus intensive learning and training based on AI. The learning platform fully responds to the business needs of courts at all levels. Through centralized annotation and learning training of application data, it provides comprehensive optimization services of speech recognition in four dimensions, including standard Mandarin Chinese, dialect, accent and individual, for business applications and effectively solves the problems of a large amount of funds invested in optimization and poor model training effect in courts at all levels. It provides model scheduling and sharing based on a learning and training platform. It can provide full optimization model updating and scheduling services for

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courts at all levels, improve the application effect of speech recognition in Mandarin Chinese, dialect, individual, accent and other scenarios of courts at all levels, and then continuously improve the effect of smart speech application in various places. It provides operation data management analysis and decision support based on scenario application. The platform can provide operation and maintenance data support services to meet the needs of statistical analysis and judgment of operation data of courts at all levels. Courts at all levels can view the operation data of internal and external network applications of courts at the same level and lower levels based on the operation and maintenance platform to provide support services for management, analysis, decision-making and optimization. (III) Operating mode The operating mode of the smart voice cloud platform mainly includes the following aspects. With regard to the access process and mode, the smart voice cloud platform on the proprietary cloud is constructed in a hierarchical deployment mode, consisting of the backbone platform and the lower court platform. Among them, the backbone platform is constructed in the four backbone nodes of the first-level network of the court’s private network, providing smart voice service support for the Supreme People’s Court organs and circuit courts and providing voice support for emergency scenarios for the higher people’s courts when the platform of the high court is out of order. The smart voice cloud platform is constructed on the open cloud of the Supreme People’s Court and adopts the centralized deployment mode for construction. Internet applications of courts at all levels can obtain smart voice service support based on the open cloud network. The construction of the smart voice cloud platform is divided into two modes: the unified construction mode of the high court and the multilevel construction mode of the high court and the intermediate court. The unified construction mode of high courts is the construction platform of high courts. The applications of intermediate courts and basic-level people’s courts are connected to the platform of high courts through the proprietary cloud network. The multi-level construction mode of the high court and the intermediate court is to build platforms in the high court and the intermediate court, respectively, and the application of the basic-level people’s court is connected to the intermediate court platform through the proprietary cloud network. Local courts can choose the appropriate construction mode according to the specific network performance. With regard to the application supporting mode, the smart voice cloud platform provides support for various application scenarios, such as court trials, various conferences, executive and command, and material writing, to improve its efficiency. Taking the court trial scenario of courts at all levels as an example, for the pre-court broadcast scenario, courts at all levels can directly use the speech synthesis capability of the smart voice cloud platform to realize the self-service broadcast of court trial matters needing attention. For court transcripts involving multiple dialects, the smart voice cloud platform can provide full dialect coverage for courts around the country. For the scene of foreign affairs trial transcript translation, the smart voice cloud platform can provide foreign language translation support. For the scenario of transcripts

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recording for the second trial or retrials, the smart voice cloud platform supports the sharing and reuse of the case model of the original trial court for the trial transcript of the second instance or retrial case. Aiming at the scene of cross-examination in court, the smart voice cloud platform can automatically and quickly access the corresponding evidence materials or relevant legal provisions based on the understanding of the content of the statement, and at the same time, based on the understanding of the evidence materials, it can assist the judges in quickly verifying the accuracy of the content of the statement. For the post-court model optimization scenario, the corpus is collected into the learning platform through corpus collection, and the model is optimized regularly to continuously improve the effect of court speech recognition. The post-court data analysis scenario enables the basic-level people’s court to view the operation and maintenance data of the court at the same level and the intermediate people’s court, the high people’s court and the Supreme People’s Court to view the operation and maintenance data of the courts under their jurisdiction. Through the statistical analysis of the operation data, the platform driven by service data is improved.

6.4 Terminal Equipment Terminal equipment provides zero-distance service for every user, which directly affects the user’s perception and experience, and of course, it should be given great concern in the construction of information systems. However, since it is scattered on the desktop of many users, it is difficult to uniformly use the terminal equipment, and the details are difficult to detect, making it often a blind spot and pain point in the planning and construction of information systems. Many users have shelved important information applications for a long time because of an incompatible configuration or an unconnected interface, which is a pity for the successful development of specific applications with considerable manpower, funds and time costs. The lessons in this regard need to be fully learned from the construction of information infrastructure and avoided by strengthening the construction and management of terminal equipment. The terminal equipment involved in the construction of smart courts mainly includes desktop, mobile and handheld information equipment used by court staffs and the corresponding basic software supporting its operation. It is an important prerequisite and guarantee for the construction of smart courts to equip court staffs with suitable and useful terminal equipment. First, we should adhere to the peopleoriented principle. In view of the objective reality that the terminal equipment in the operation of smart courts is far from being an auxiliary means that can be used or not, but a working tool without which the majority of the court staff cannot carry out their work at any time, we should follow the essential principle that the terminal equipment should be user friendly and satisfying to the majority of the court staff,

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equipping them with all kinds of necessary terminal equipment, which is in accordance with the basic rule that we must first sharpen our tools if we want to do a good job. Second, we should adhere to scientific allocation, carefully analyze the specific needs of all kinds of court staffs’ daily business for the application of smart courts, correctly understand the differences between the requirements of the relevant national systems for the computer equipment of general public servants and the requirements of court staffs as essential tools, and formulate reasonable and compliant standards for the allocation and management of the court staff terminal equipment to prevent unrealistic and greedy results. It is also necessary to avoid affecting the work due to inadequate allocation of terminal equipment. Third, we should adhere to the principle of simplicity and ease of use, fully consider the actual situation that all kinds of the court staff have different familiarities with the application of information technology and different operational abilities, and pay special attention to the plug-and-play and WYSIWYG of terminal equipment to provide the greatest convenience for policemen to grasp and use it quickly. Fourth, we should adhere to the principle of robustness and durability. In view of the high frequency of use and complex working environment of the court staff, we should take reliability and durability as an important basis for the selection and evaluation of terminal equipment and effectively prevent the quality problems of terminal equipment from seriously affecting the work of the court staff through the mechanism of pre-evaluation, in-process monitoring and post-analysis. I. PC terminal A PC terminal usually refers to a fixed computer terminal installed on the office desk of the court staff, so it is the core office tool to support the daily work of the court staff. For many core business application systems of the smart court, the court staff uses the system application through the PC terminal. At the same time, the PC terminal is also an important data input and output node in the business process of the smart court. The relevant information acquisition peripherals and the document printing and output in the workflow are connected through the PC terminal so that it can be integrated into the information system of the smart court and support the formation of a closed-loop business. In view of this, the selection and use of PC terminals is of great significance to the effectiveness of the application of smart courts, which requires scientific deployment and management in accordance with certain rules. The Supreme People’s Court has specially formulated the “Measures for the Configuration of Desktop Computer Terminals for Court Staffs”. (I) Classification of PC terminals According to the classification of connection network systems, PC terminals can be divided into court private network terminals, Internet terminals and secret-related network terminals. According to the network security management regulations, these three types of terminals must not be mixed. In general, each court staff should be equipped with a PC terminal of the court’s private network, some court staffs can be equipped with an Internet PC terminal after approval according to their work needs, and the secret-related staff approved by the security department also need to be equipped with a PC terminal of the secret-related network.

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(II) Configuration and selection Different court staffs play different roles in the court business process and have different business needs and usage scenarios, so the demand for PC terminal equipment should be differentiated according to the level of technological development. With the continuous expansion of the goal of smart courts’ full-service online management, the court staff’s work increasingly relies on PC terminals. Court staffs who mainly rely on PC terminals to handle cases should be equipped with configure large-screen PC terminals as much as possible. For example, the Supreme People’s Court stipulates that judges and trial assistants should be equipped with PC terminals of 27 inches and above and that other personnel should be equipped with PC terminals with widescreen monitors of 24 inches, which can minimize the sense of fatigue for users in information applications. At the same time, the selection of PC terminals should be determined according to the number and type of peripherals to be accessed, the network bandwidth required by the business, and the processing performance required by the business work content, taking into account the network access capability, peripheral expansion capability, operation performance and other requirements of the terminal. (III) Multiterminal management When court staffs use multiple PC terminals at the same time, the monitor, mouse and keyboard should be reused as much as possible. By configuring a multiterminal KVM switch, multiple hosts can share one monitor, mouse and keyboard, which can not only save unnecessary working space but also provide the greatest convenience for court staffs to switch terminals (as shown in Fig. 6.18).

Fig. 6.18 PC terminal management structure of court staffs

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II. Mobile Terminal A mobile terminal is an effective extension of a smart court information system to a wide space and an important means to facilitate court staffs going out to work and handle cases, which enables court staffs carrying out office work, case handling, transaction processing and execution processing under mobile conditions. Mobile terminals mainly include laptops, tablet PCs, individual soldier systems and mobile phones. (I) Laptops Laptops enable court staffs to handle cases under mobile conditions within the courts around the country. However, courts at all levels should refer to the management regulations of PC terminals for the management of laptops, that is, strictly fixing the type of network access and the type of installed software and strictly prohibiting all kinds of laptops from being mixed and used in court private networks, Internet and even secret-related networks to prevent major potential dangers in network security. (II) Tablet PC Tablet PCs are dedicated mobile terminals connected to various information systems of smart courts through the court’s private network, and they enable the court staff to deal with the document flow and approval process required for daily office work and case handling during non-working hours or when they are out of the office. The most important factor influencing the selection and application of tablet PCs is security, which should strictly comply with the requirements of information security level protection. Data exchange between tablet PCs and business application systems should be realized by means of network security isolation and exchange. At the same time, business data should be kept strictly inside the private internet to ensure that sensitive data will not be leaked after the device is turned off. (III) Specific portable terminal system The specific portable terminal system is an important part of the execution of business in the courts at all levels, which mainly realizes the functions of satellite positioning, video recording and information storage independent of the execution vehicle terminal, connects with the executive command center through the mobile network, and supports the centralized monitoring, voice communication and onsite command between the command center and the execution site through the exchange of law enforcement audio and video. The research and development of the specific portable terminal system should focus on the key network stability, emergency storage capacity and audio-visual clarity according to the characteristics of the execution business, ensuring that the system can meet the various business requirements of outgoing execution. (IV) Mobile phones With the improvement of mobile network performance and the extensive expansion of mobile phone applications, courts around the country have explored the application of

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mobile apps, WeChat applets and other ways to directly support the case handling of court staffs, of which the prerequisite is to strictly follow the management regulations of classified protection and hierarchical protection of information security and smart court network security, ensuring network security while fully facilitating court staffs’ work. III. Other Terminal Equipment The construction and application of smart court information systems are also closely related to many other general or dedicated terminal equipment, which requires close attention and serious consideration from the information technology department. It mainly includes a large screen, scanner, printer and so on. (I) Large screen The large screen here is mainly different from the display and control screen of personal computers, which is used for multi-person browsing or interactive applications. With the deepening of the construction of smart courts, an increasing number of large screens are distributed throughout the courts, which are used to display the needed content to multiple users at the same time and support advertisements, conferences and seminars. In addition, some also support user touch interaction to enhance the application experience. Generally, large screens are needed in court litigation service centers, science and technology courts, conference rooms, information management centers, execution command centers, litigation service guidance centers and other places. At present, the main types of large screens are LCD and LED displays. The former is suitable for relatively small occasions, while the latter is not limited to small occasions and has various performance configurations. In research, development and construction of smart courts, the shape, size, definition, heat dissipation conditions, access network system and display and control mode of the large screen must be carefully selected and determined according to the business scenario, site space, application requirements and installation conditions, and the appropriate selection and scientific construction should be carried out based on the principle of no luxury and extravagance and of application meeting. (II) Scanner A scanner is a type of special equipment that converts graphic or image information into digital signals by means of photoelectric and digital processing technology. At present, the synchronous generation of electronic files with cases is an important and basic project for the construction of smart courts and a prerequisite for highquality, efficient, smart and paperless applications. It is the first link of the whole business process to scan and upload a large number of paper documents to the business system through scanners. Therefore, the scanner is an important terminal for the informatization of courts at all levels. In the construction of smart courts, the deep application of electronic files is promoted in an all-round way, and OCR technology is used to identify and extract scanned image files in order to achieve documentation, structuralization and digitalization of the paper documents, which has high requirements for the definition of scanned images, and at the same time, the

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scale of documents that need to be filed in different places is also very different, so it is necessary to select the appropriate scanner according to the function and performance requirements such as paper feeding mode, scanning paper specification, output file format, and double-sided support possessed by different scenarios. Generally, the scanning center for centralized document scanning should be equipped with highperformance scanners, while the filing window and the judge’s office dealing with daily scattered document scanning can be equipped with relatively low-performance scanners. (III) Printer The printer is an important output device of the computer. In addition to daily office work, standard legal documents, judgment documents, service mail and other contents need to be printed and output in the court business. In addition to black and white printing, printing in red and black is needed in many scenarios, and some evidence materials also need to be printed in color. Therefore, it is necessary to select appropriate printers to support office work based on business needs and the principles of practicality and economy. IV. Basic Software Basic software is the bridge connecting hardware resources and business application systems, and the gear supporting the operation of a smart court information system, which is closely related to the stability, reliability, security and controllability of the system, needs to draw great attention in the information construction. The basic software involved in the terminal mainly includes the operating system, browser, and office software, which should be reasonably selected and combined according to relevant technical standards and management requirements. (I) Operating system The operating system is a computer program that manages and controls the computer hardware and software resources. It is the interactive interface between the user and the computer system, as well as the interface between the computer hardware and other software. It is mainly responsible for process management, memory management, file systems, network communication, security mechanisms, user interfaces, drivers and other work of terminal equipment. Through the operating system of the terminal, the court staff can operate the computer hardware, software and peripheral equipment and then access various business application systems of the smart court. In the construction of smart courts, for the selection of terminal operating systems, first, we should implement and adhere to the requirements of genuine license; that is, the courts are required to purchase computer terminals with pre-installed genuine operating systems or purchase genuine licenses for operating systems through government procurement to achieve full coverage of all computer terminals with genuine operating system licenses. Second, it is necessary to take into account the compatibility and adaptation of various business application systems and various

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peripheral devices, and the consistency of operating system versions should be maintained as much as possible to facilitate the unified management of patch upgrades, admittance control, and policy configuration. (II) Browser The browser is the key to accessing various business application systems through the terminal, especially a large number of business application systems based on B/S architecture. The browser is directly related to the user experience and intuitive evaluation of the construction of smart courts. Because of the different technical routes and kernel architectures of various browsers, there are differences in the browser use experience. In the construction of smart courts, the compatibility of browsers with terminal hardware configuration and operating system should be first considered in the selection of terminal browsers, avoiding the problems of limited functions and typesetting errors caused by incompatibility. Second, it is necessary to consider the browser’s support for various controls required by the core application system, such as the OA office system and case handling system, which require good support for various plug-in controls from the browser to ensure good use experience of various business application systems accessed through the browser. Finally, the starting speed, interface layout, function configuration and other elements of the browser should be considered as a whole to ensure that the browser works with the business application system to provide the best user experience and use effect for judges and policemen. (III) Office software Office software is a special software for word processing, table-form making, slide making, graphics and image processing relying on computer terminals. Office software is an essential basic software in the construction of court informatization, and support from office software is needed in the daily production of judgment documents, court records, collegial records and other scenarios. In the construction of smart courts, for the selection of office software, first, we should implement and adhere to the requirement of genuine edition; that is, the court is required to purchase the license of the genuine operating system through government procurement to achieve full coverage of the license of genuine office software for all computer terminals. Second, according to the requirements of various control plugins, such as word processing and table processing in OA offices, case handling and other business systems, it is necessary to be compatible with the brand and version of the genuine office software installed on the terminal, ensuring the use experience of OA and other business systems in word processing.

Chapter 7

Network Security

Network security and informatization complement each other. Smart courts utilize advanced information technology to promote justice for the people and fair justice, but at the same time, they are bound to face network security risks and challenges brought by technological development. Network security is not limited to the scope of communication networks but broadly covers the overall security of cyberspace composed of information infrastructure, application systems and data resources. The higher the degree of informatization is, the more severe the challenge of network security, and there is more required to consider network security throughout the whole process of smart court construction and operation. Technology is the basic means and fundamental guarantee to strengthen the network security of smart courts. Advanced technologies on aspects such as host security, identity authentication, access control, password encryption, firewalls, security audits and security management should be used to ensure that all kinds of information systems still provide effective services when they are attacked, improving their availability. These technologies can also prevent all kinds of work information or personal privacy from being inadvertently or intentionally disclosed to unauthorized persons or entities and improve confidentiality. These technologies can avoid improper modification, tampering, pollution and destruction of various system resources and judicial information and improve integrity. In addition, these technologies can ensure that the whole process of registration, login, access, modification and other operations can be traced and improve the controllability. Maintaining network security in accordance with the law is an important principle for the construction of smart courts. The Network Security Law of the People’s Republic of China is the fundamental law on national network security, and the Basic Requirements for Information Security Technology Network Security Classified Protection and the Measures for the Management of Information System Hierarchical Protection Involving State Secrets stipulate the specific requirements for network security of various information systems. It should set a good example of governing the network according to law and of maintaining security.

© People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1_7

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The management experience of network security work of smart courts can be summarized with the principle of “30% of technology and 70% of management”. In view of the basic pattern of national integration, the network security management of smart courts must rely on the establishment and improvement of network security management systems by courts at all levels throughout the country, especially to raise the network security awareness of all court staffs who are more likely to abide by network security regulations and operational requirements with a high sense of responsibility. Thus, closed-loop network security can be formed, proceeding from the source, habits and details. to ensure synchronous development and mutual promotion of network security and information construction.

7.1 Security Infrastructure Security infrastructure is the main factor in determining the overall technical level of network security because it determines the basic architecture, important support, key links and the interaction mechanism. In terms of security infrastructure design, the balance between security and complexity needs to be especially considered. “Too much of a good thing” is the basic designing principle, since the more complex security system is, the easier it is to be destroyed and the more difficult it is to maintain, which will reduce the security of the system. In the network architecture of “five networks and three clouds” of the smart court, a security infrastructure with the security protection of the court’s private network is established as the main body, the security protection of the classified network as the key point, the security protection of the Internet, external private network and mobile private network as a supplement, and the security isolation exchange based on the court’s private network as the connection. The court private network connects the courts at all levels in the country and carries almost all the court business applications, making it an interconnected network entity with the smoothest connection between the upper and lower levels in the operation of the smart court system and the most frequent information exchange, possessing the deepest influence on the application systems within the private network. It naturally becomes the main focus of smart court network security, with all measures of network isolation, regional division, permission settings and so on. Cryptographic infrastructure is based on the court private network; data security protection is particularly important, and comprehensive security supervision and security operation and maintenance management are concentrated to support the security of the entire system. The classified cloud network involves state secrets that need to be strictly protected through means as much advanced as possible. The Internet and the open cloud carry the important business involving transparent justice called sunshine justice, which protects the information of a large number of litigants from being improperly disclosed and directly prevents the information attack as frontline. The Internet and the open cloud need to be protected through effective monitoring, early warning and attack defense means.

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Since the external private network is connected to the external cooperative organization of the court, internal security management and baseline inspection should be strengthened to ensure the maintenance of stable security and mutual trust while effectively isolating external security risks. The mobile private network carries part of the court’s core businesses through radio-frequency signals, which may involve internal work secrets and sensitive information. Information encryption and control must be based on a secure access platform, and since mobile terminals are easy to carry and lose, they must be based on a reliable information distribution strategy to ensure that the sensitive information is safe. Internetwork security isolation exchange is a bridge to realize the necessary information exchange between application systems of different network systems. Physical isolation requires one-way isolation exchange. The security isolation exchange with other network systems based on the court private network can fully reduce the security risks caused by improper connection, and at the same time, it can improve the comprehensive supervision ability of the whole system. The purpose of the information security system of a smart court is to solve the security problems faced by the court in its informatization process, with the goals of systematic security protection, normalized business operation, integrated security supervision and standardized security management. The logical structure of the system is shown in Fig. 7.1. According to the basic architecture of “five networks and three clouds” of smart court information infrastructure, the proprietary cloud security protection covers public key cryptography infrastructure, trust service system, court private network security protection, external private network security protection and mobile private network security protection. Aiming at the main security risks faced by the computer room, communication link, isolation exchange system, judicial information resource database, big data management and service platform, cloud platform, business application, basic operation and maintenance management system and host equipment, security protection measures for the network, host, application and data layer have been taken to prevent these security risks in the court private network. At the same time, these measures also involve cloud security protection, audio and video business security protection, and big data management and service platform security protection. Aiming at the security risks distributed in the network boundary, host equipment and data exchange, security protection measures for the network, host and data layer are mainly taken to prevent security risks in the external private network, which focus on the access security of external units and the secure data exchange between them. Aiming at the security risks distributed in mobile terminals, communication links, business applications and data exchange in the mobile private network, security protection measures for network, host, application and data layers are taken to prevent the risks, focusing on mobile terminal security, terminal access security, link security, terminal security management, business application security and data security, and forming an integrated security protection system for mobile applications.

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Fig. 7.1 Logical structure of information security system of the people’s court

Open cloud security protection mainly aims at the risks faced by the Internet entrance boundary, cloud computing environment, host equipment, application system and data. It requires cloud service providers to offer comprehensive security for these aspects, including Internet boundaries, cloud infrastructure and cloud resources. Courts at all levels should also take measures to improve the security of various applications deployed on the open cloud from the aspects of WEB boundary

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security and monitoring and early warning to improve the security protection capability of the application system itself. The security protection measures of classified cloud networks should be strictly implemented in accordance with the relevant provisions of the state on the classified protection for national networks. II.

Division of Security Area

Dividing securitsy areas and taking corresponding protection measures are important measures to implement information security responsibilities, use network border protection means, limit the scope of attack, and reduce information security risks. The security domain system of the courts at all levels is vertically divided into four systems, including the Supreme People’s Court system, the High People’s Court system, the Intermediate People’s Court system and the Basic People’s Court system, covering five network systems horizontally, including the court’s private network, the Internet, the classified intranet, the mobile private network and the external private network. For the vertical aspect, the cross-level data security sharing among courts at all levels is the main concern. Horizontally, the security isolation and exchange of internal information resources of courts at all levels is the focus. Therefore, the basic security areas of smart courts can be preliminarily determined, as shown in Fig. 7.2. The security domain of the Supreme People’s Court covers five major networks, namely, the court private network, the external private network, the mobile private network and the Internet and the classified network. The court private network is divided into the public key cryptographic infrastructure area, trust service area, security exchange area, classified security exchange area and so on. The external private network is divided into the access area of the Party and government offices, the access area of executive units, the security management area and other security areas. The mobile private network is divided into security zones, including mobile access zones, service application zones, preservice zones and security exchange zones. The Internet is divided into open cloud management areas, Internet access areas, security exchange areas and so on. The security domain of the High People’s Court also covers five major network systems, namely, the court private network, the external private network, the mobile private network and the Internet and the classified intranet. The security zones of the court private network, external private network and mobile private network are basically the same as those of the Supreme People’s Court, but some differences exist in the Internet security zone between the two courts. The security domain of the intermediate people’s court mainly covers the court’s private network, the Internet and the classified intranet. The security zone of the court’s private network does not involve the public key infrastructure and trust the service security zone. Other security zones and the Internet security zone are consistent with those of the High People’s Court. The security domain of the Basic People’s Court covers the court private network, the Internet and the classified intranet. The court private network security area is divided into the core exchange area, the security management area, the terminal area

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Fig. 7.2 Secure area division of the people’s court

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and the network access area, and the Internet security area is divided into the user area, core exchange area, Internet access area and security management area. III.

Network Security Infrastructure

To ensure that the basic security protection capabilities of host equipment, application systems and data resources in the smart court information system reach the same level, courts at all levels have built a series of security infrastructures to provide unified and basic network security guarantees and services for all kinds of information systems. It includes a key management infrastructure and unified user identity management system, unified operation, maintenance management and control platform, integrated security supervision platform, and security isolation and information exchange platform (as shown in Fig. 7.3). The key management infrastructure provides the full life cycle management of digital certificates, including the application, issuance, release, update, freezing, unfreezing, recovery and archiving of digital certificates for the court business system. It issues the only trusted network “identity card” for the court entity users at all levels, supporting the identification of the authenticity and validity of the court user identity, and provides the full life cycle management of asymmetric keys required by digital certificates issuance. To realize the unified management of user information and one-click login of application systems in courts throughout the country, the Supreme People’s Court has built a unified user identity management system for courts throughout the country. The system is used to collect user information of the whole network of courts, realizing the interconnection, mutual trust and mutual recognition of existing single sign-on systems in courts at all levels. After the local users of the whole network are authenticated, they can directly access all kinds of application systems and platforms deployed by the Supreme People’s Court without repeating login authentication. The unified operation and maintenance management and control platform effectively supervises the whole process of information system operation and maintenance and provides safe and controllable operation and maintenance management channels for servers, network equipment, security products, application systems, databases and so on. The platform realizes centralized management of operations and maintenance accounts, high-intensity identity authentication, standardized examination and approval of account applications, centralized account authorization management and control, audit of the operation and maintenance and timely warning of abnormal operations. It ensures the utmost security and standardization of operation and maintenance operations, effectively reduces the security risks caused by account leakage and fraudulent use, and ensures the security of information system operation and maintenance processes to achieve the security objectives of event tracing, responsibility defining, use control and maintenance auditing. The integrated security monitoring platform takes the “five major network systems” of the smart court as the basic object, realizes the monitoring and early warning of the information system security situation through the collection and correlation analysis of the security data of each network system, and provides technical support for information security supervision. The whole platform is composed of

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Fig. 7.3 Information security infrastructure

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a system display layer, a data analysis and processing layer and a data collection and feedback agent layer. It carries out centralized and unified supervision on the subsystems of network management, network security, terminal security protection, application management, computer room management, audit management, monitoring and early warning, APT and threat intelligence analysis in the five network systems of the court. The security isolation and exchange platform built with the court private network as the center realizes the information exchange with mobile private network, external private network, Internet and classified intranet under the premise of ensuring security through horizontal security connectivity, unified exchange mode, unified role approval and other mechanisms. The platform provides sufficient security guarantees for data sharing and exchange across various application systems of smart courts.

7.2 System Boundary Security System boundary security is an important protection capability to effectively defend against hackers, viruses and attacks from outside the network or application system. For the smart court information system that covers the whole country, boundary security is of great significance. Protecting the boundary security of classified networks can prevent state secrets from being easily disclosed to non-classified cyberspace. It can avoid external interference in the main network space of the courts at all levels and prevent work secrets and sensitive information from spreading easily to the social network. Protection can also prevent any local risk from spreading to global risk. Therefore, business application boundary security can prevent core business systems from undue exposure to users who do not have access permission. Strengthening system boundary security is a prior strategy for the Supreme People’s Court, the high people’s courts and the intermediate people’s courts to promote the network security of the courts under their jurisdiction. With the increasing coverage and complexity of information systems, network security is far from being achieved by a certain court or some professionals. The security of the court private network depends on all the courts in the country. The security of the judicial big data of the people’s court is closely related to the court staff of the courts in the country, and the security of most case handling systems involves all the operating users in a province, all of which require the complex system be decomposed into as simplified and independent as possible according to the level and division, which needs to depend on system boundary security. Strengthening boundary security is also the basis for the targeted adoption of network security technology. Physical isolation, firewall, access control, terminal protection and data encryption are all important technical means to achieve boundary security. Only by delimiting a specific and clear boundary can the main objectives, threat sources and countermeasures of network security be determined, which enables the selection of appropriate security technology solutions. In addition, only through technical measures to fully eliminate external threats and attacks and achieve

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boundary security can the internal security risks and hidden dangers be accurately located, and thus, the corresponding network security measures can be taken to ensure network security. Strengthening boundary security is also the requirement for courts and staff at all levels throughout the country to implement the responsibility system for network security. Smart court network security depends on the joint participation of the national court staffs, courts at all levels and all kinds of personnel bear a very important responsibility for the networking security work. Clear boundary drawing, strict prohibition and ensuring boundary security are the important goals and concrete embodiments of all court staffs’ responsibility for defending the territory and for guarding the territory. According to the construction and application practice of smart courts, to some extent, as long as courts at all levels keep their network boundaries, there will be no major risks to the network security of courts throughout the country. 1.

Internetwork security exchange

There is a clear security boundary between the network systems of the smart court information system. The internetwork security exchange is carried out through the security isolation and information exchange platform. The overall structure is shown in Fig. 7.4. The security isolation and information exchange platform is composed of a oneway optical gate and internal and external terminals or front-end (back-end) servers, realizing the cross-network exchange of file data, database data, service data and audio and video data between the Internet, external private network, mobile private network and the court private network. In the application mode of file data exchange, the application system on the external network ends at the file server in the external network, and the application system of the court private network ends at the file server in the private network. It is prohibited to directly connect security isolation and the information exchange platform with the business production library. In the application mode of database data exchange, the application system on the external network ends at the database server in the external network, and the application system of the court private network ends at the database server in the private network. It is forbidden to directly connect the security isolation and the information exchange platform with the business production database. In the application mode of service data exchange, data exchange is carried out through the Web service interface. The data exchange content shall not contain information such as IP, port, domain name, and SQL statement. All business systems allowed for service data exchange are deployed with the application system front-end processor, and the access ends at the application system front-end processor. In the application mode of audio and video transmission, two methods can be adopted: one-way audio and video transmission and two-way audio and video communication. During the one-way audio and video transmission, data are only allowed to be transmitted from the court private network to the external network through the one-way means, and direct transmission of external network data to

7.2 System Boundary Security

Fig. 7.4 General architecture of security isolation and information exchange platform

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the court private network is prohibited. The control signaling is transmitted bidirectionally between the court private network and the external network, and it is session management information between audio and video devices, which is used to stipulate the behavior such as the establishment and deletion of logical communication channels between audio and video devices, as well as data transmission control and management. At this moment, the one-way optical gate in the security isolation and information exchange platform must be used in conjunction with the front (rear) server. During two-way audio and video transmission, two-way audio and video interaction between the court private network and the external network is allowed, and two-way interaction between non-H323, SIP protocol audio and video services and the court private network is prohibited. At the same time, bidirectional transmission of control signaling is allowed. The audio and video services following the H323 and SIP protocols only open the streaming port during service interaction and do not open any port during nonservice interaction to ensure the security of service interaction. In this way, the one-way optical gate in the security isolation and information exchange platform must also be used in conjunction with the front (rear) server. II.

Divisional boundary security

There should be a clear network boundary between each security partition and necessary security protection measures taken in each partition boundary. In addition, reasonable security policies should be set to establish an effective control mechanism, ensuring the boundary security of each partition. Network access control measures should be deployed at the network boundary of each network system of the unit in each court, including firewalls, gateways, intrusion prevention systems, anti-virus walls, and access control gateways. Effective network routing strategies should be set to prevent boundary protection measures from being bypassed. In view of the extensive external attributes of Internet ports, detection and defense measures for the prevention of Internet attacks should also be deployed in the Internet boundary of each court, including the anti-DDOS attack system, anti-crawler system, content distribution system (CDN), operation and maintenance control channel encryption system (VPN), etc., effectively defending the Internet boundary of the court against all kinds of intrusions and attacks from the Internet. The setting of the boundary protection policy shall follow the principle of minimization. The access control policy should be reasonably set on the basis of the actual business access that needs to be combed in detail to prevent unauthorized access caused by an overly rough policy. At the same time, the opening strategy of high-risk and high-privilege ports should be given great concern, and closing or preventing measures on ports with security risks should be taken to prevent them from being used by malicious attackers. For ports with remote logins, it is necessary to accurately judge the management and use needs and reduce port exposure, and the necessary operation and maintenance management and control operations should be carried out through the security operation and maintenance management and control platform to achieve remote monitoring of ports with high authority.

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To ensure that the network boundary protection is reasonable and effective, a control mechanism should be established to manage the full life cycle of the boundary protection policy. The policy changes should be approved to ensure that the open boundary protection policy is minimized. In the case of major policy changes, experts in business systems, basic networks and security maintenance shall be organized for review. The policy control mechanism mainly includes demand confirmation, policy verification, white list, review and approval, regular inspection and other mechanisms. III.

Business Boundary Security

The business security zone of the smart court information system carries all business applications and data resources, and strengthening security protection from the network boundary and host boundary should be a focus. For the network boundary, each business application should be deployed in an independent VLAN network. User access, operation and maintenance management, and communication between systems shall all pass through the network boundary control equipment. The core business application shall be deployed separately, and the strictest security protection measures shall be taken at its boundary. Business applications with different levels of security protection should be deployed in different levels of security areas. For the host boundary, host hardening software should be installed in the operating system of the business application server to control the communication port of the server. Business applications deployed on the cloud platform should also achieve effective isolation between different cloud tenants. The formulation of the business boundary access strategy shall follow the principle of minimization. The access needs for each business application should be sorted out, and the account of business access needs should be formed. The business boundary access control strategy should be formulated according to the access needs, and the source address, destination address, service port and specific role of access should be specified. Before the policy is implemented, it should be evaluated to prevent unnecessary access channels from being generated at the business boundary. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between business system access channels and management channels. IV.

Terminal Security Protection

According to the characteristics of user terminal management and use, hardware standardization, network access, identity authentication, antivirus, behavior control and security audits should be focused on to strengthen the security protection of operating terminals. The user terminal of the court information system shall be equipped with equipment that meets the security requirements, and the terminal equipment equipped for special needs shall be tested and qualified by a specialized security testing institution before it can be used. The user terminal of the court private network shall not be equipped with equipment modules with wireless communication functions.

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Access measures should be taken to prevent unauthorized terminals from accessing the court information system. The terminal information shall be verified when the user terminal accesses the network, and the security protection software of the user terminal shall also be verified when the court private network terminal accesses the network to limit the network access scope of the terminal whose protection measures do not meet the requirements. In the local login of the user terminal operating system, identity authentication measures with a certain degree of strength should be adopted to prevent identity fraud and prohibit the user terminal from being remotely accessed. USBKey based on a digital certificate and combined with PIN code can be used for identity authentication. When the combination of user name and password is used for identity authentication, the length and complexity of the password shall meet the protection requirements. The function of the locking account due to identify authentication failure shall be set to prevent the PIN code or password from being cracked by a brute force attack, and the PIN code and password shall be changed regularly. An antivirus system should be installed in all user terminals to enhance the virus protection capability of the terminal host and upgrade the malicious code software version and malicious code library in a timely manner. Security management software should be installed in the user terminal, focusing on the control of the user terminal’s illegal external connection and illegal equipment access behavior. Host audit software shall also be installed in the user terminal to audit the user’s login and operation behavior. The audit contents include file operations, equipment access, illegal external connections, configuration changes, etc.

7.3 Network Equipment Security Network equipment security is the security protection capability of all kinds of equipment and facilities in the network system to maintain stable and reliable operation. The equipment and facilities referred to include not only the information technology equipment, such as communication, computing and storage, that support the operation of the system but also the corresponding infrastructure, such as computer rooms, power supplies and circuit lines, as well as a series of special equipment for network security. Network equipment security is an important foundation for the network security of smart courts. Physical security is a prerequisite for the security of network devices. As the installation and operation environment of the key network equipment of the smart court, the computer room is the main link to ensure physical security. It needs to meet the specific needs in location selection, temperature and humidity control, power supply and other aspects. It should have the ability to protect against lightning, fire, flood and electrostatic damage. Important areas must be equipped with electronic access control and video surveillance, ensuring that the entry personnel are always in a controlled state. Facilities such as computer rooms and circuit lines should also have corresponding electromagnetic protection capabilities in accordance with the

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specifications and standards to avoid instantaneous or permanent electromagnetic damage to network equipment. Compared with physical security, system operation risk is a more realistic, more severe and more complex challenge for network equipment security. Under the condition of interconnection, attackers can destroy the program code, data resources or parameter settings inside the system by means of hackers and viruses remotely through information flow, which can destroy the necessary conditions for normal operation without leaving a clear trace. This requires a series of combined information security measures to deal with all kinds of possible information attacks to achieve the goal of the operational security of the network equipment system of the smart court. To ensure network security, security equipment such as firewalls, bastion machines, cipher machines, isolation switches and identity authentication terminals and other equipment has become an indispensable part of the information system. It is the shield guard to maintain network security. The security of the specialized equipment not only determines the security of the whole system but also affects the normal operation of network equipment. In the operation of smart courts, there are many abnormal phenomena caused by the problems of specialized security equipment itself. Therefore, it is necessary to establish more stringent code requirements for specialized security equipment than general network equipment, ensuring that special security equipment is always in a safe and adaptive state through the close combination of technology, system, management and manpower. I.

Host Equipment Security

Host equipment is the basic supporting element for system operation, data storage and business processing. Host equipment shall be classified according to equipment type, protection level, deployment location and other characteristics. Corresponding security protection measures should be taken. The host equipment of a court information system can be classified into servers, network equipment, storage equipment, security equipment, office automation equipment, audio and video equipment and other special equipment (such as card readers and attendance machines). According to the protection level, it can be divided into core equipment, important equipment and general equipment. According to the deployment location, it can be divided into court private network equipment, Internet equipment, classified intranet equipment, mobile private network equipment and external private network equipment. Among them, classified intranet equipment is protected according to the requirements of classified protection standards, and other network equipment is protected according to the requirements of graded protection. The security risks faced by host equipment include physical intrusion, illegal external connection, unauthorized device access, password leakage, identity fraud, operating system or software vulnerabilities, network attacks, and virus intrusion. The security protection of host equipment should focus on aspects including physical security, network access control, violation monitoring, identity authentication, malicious code prevention, vulnerability management and security auditing.

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Host equipment should be deployed in a secure physical environment. Servers, storage equipment, core switches and other core equipment should be deployed in the datacenter computer room, and the location and site requirements of the computer room should meet the requirements of relevant national standards. Network access equipment such as access switches shall be deployed in special equipment rooms. Access control measures should be taken to control personnel access, and an antitheft alarm system or video surveillance system with special personnel on duty should be equipped. At the same time, necessary protection measures, such as fireproof, waterproof, moisture-proof, anti-static and power supply, should be provided. Other equipment should be deployed in a secure physical environment to prevent loss or damage of the equipment. Strict network access control strategies should be set for host equipment, and technical measures should be taken to strictly prevent unauthorized devices from accessing the network. At the same time, illegal external connection monitoring measures are taken for the equipment that has been connected to the network, and real-time monitoring and warning of external connection behavior are carried out to support network boundary security protection. The operation and maintenance management and control system shall be used to centrally manage the identity authentication behavior of the host equipment, and the corresponding identity authentication strategy and technical measures shall be set according to the importance, equipment type and technical conditions of the host equipment. For important servers, network equipment and other core equipment, two or more authentication elements should be adopted. When the host equipment adopts the authentication method of combining the user name and password for technical reasons, the authentication password shall have corresponding strength and shall be changed regularly. At the same time, the account locking strategy for identity authentication failure shall be set to prevent brute force cracking, and the authentication failure event shall be recorded in the equipment operation log. The operation timeout reauthentication policy should be set to prevent the authority from being illegally used after authentication. The default user name shall not be used in the host equipment, and the redundant account shall be strictly closed. Virus and malicious code protection systems should be deployed on all servers, and malicious code software versions and malicious code libraries should be upgraded in a timely manner to continuously strengthen the virus protection capabilities of host equipment. Vulnerability scanning software shall be used to regularly detect the security vulnerabilities that may exist in the host equipment, and vulnerability repair work shall be carried out for the host with vulnerabilities according to the scanning results to prevent the security vulnerabilities from being exploited. An audit system needs to be deployed for host security auditing. The audit function includes file operation audits, external device operation audits, illegal external connection audits, IP address change audits, service and process audits, and databaserelated operations. The audit record includes the date, time, type, subject identification, object identification and result of the event. Audit records need to be backed up regularly to avoid being deleted, modified or overwritten to ensure that the problems

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can be traced and determined as soon as possible and that the equipment attacked is recovered in time. II.

Key Management Facility

Cryptography is used for the key management system to ensure the security of the full life cycle of the key and meet the requirements of key management based on an asymmetric key system and symmetric key system. The key management system mainly includes an asymmetric key management system, symmetric key management system, password device management system, password compliance management system and password application validity management system as well as a cascade system. It supports SM1, SM2, SM3 and SM4 cryptographic algorithms and manages cryptographic keys, cryptographic devices and cryptographic modules used in the whole network. The symmetric key service and management system has the functions of generating, updating, applying, distributing, storing, destroying, backing up, restoring and archiving the symmetric key. During the lifecycle process of key management, the key plaintext does not appear outside the cryptographic device. A cryptographic device approved by the State Cryptographic Administration is used to generate keys through physical noise sources to ensure the randomness of keys. It has the function of querying and counting the symmetric key information and the related information of the corresponding business system, including the information statistics of symmetric key generation and key usage. The logical architecture of the key management system is shown in Fig. 7.5. The asymmetric key service and management system has the functions of generating, updating, applying, distributing, storing, destroying, backing up, restoring and archiving the asymmetric key. During the key lifecycle management process, the key plaintext does not appear outside the cryptographic device. It has the function of asymmetric key pregeneration to improve the effectiveness of asymmetric key generation. The system functions in key library management. Through key management, the basic operation of the backup library, in-use library and history library of asymmetric keys can be viewed, including the production, use and production strategy of asymmetric keys. It has the function of providing asymmetric key service for electronic certification infrastructure, supporting the issuance of certificates and providing asymmetric encryption key pairs. Password device management includes centralized management, device monitoring and use maintenance. Centralized device management provides network access registration for different types of cryptographic devices, objectifies and abstracts the management behavior of devices, forms different types of configuration strategies, supports visual configuration operations such as parameter editing and issuing through the cryptographic device configuration interface, and realizes centralized configuration of devices. device monitoring provides a real-time, intuitive and visual graphical monitoring interface to centrally monitor the password device of the whole network so that the administrator can know the use and operation status of the current password device in a timely manner. Use maintenance provides remote maintenance operations such as remote smart upgrades and restart of devices, integrates common

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Fig. 7.5 Logical architecture of key management system

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network diagnosis commands, provides remote fault diagnosis mechanisms such as device connectivity tests, helps administrators quickly find and locate device faults, and improves device maintenance efficiency. The integrated management platform provides the initial configuration, supports the authentication mode of user name password and USBKey + PIN, records all the management operation logs of the system, and allows the administrator to check the operation log records and auditors to audit and track the operation log afterwards. The platform verifies the validity of the log signature and provides various statistical charts. It can also help analyze and process the original data of symmetric keys, asymmetric keys and password device monitoring from different angles to form different dimensions of situations and statistical reports. The cascade system supports the hierarchical management mode, and the monitoring data of the device are reported to the superior key management system through the subordinate key management system to realize the hierarchical management of keys, hierarchical management of devices and centralized monitoring of devices. Password compliance management checks the compliance of the password devices supervised by the key management system and locates the password devices alarmed that violate the regulations. Password application validity management is used to manage the password devices supervised by the key management system, including the management of password application validity benchmark data and the inspection and analysis of password application validity, and to locate the password devices alarmed that violate the regulations. III.

Equipment Security Log

Security logs are important data that objectively and truly record the running and operation of equipment. It is an important basis for judging whether all kinds of equipment are running normally, whether there are security risks and whether they are attacked by external forces. It also provides important clues to trace the origin of all kinds of security incidents. Efficient and accurate collection and analysis of equipment security logs are of great significance to the safe operation of information systems. Scientific management and utilization of smart court information system equipment security logs should be designed from the aspects of log classification, log collection, log analysis and utilization to ensure the integrity and accuracy of equipment logs. The security log shall be classified according to the equipment type, event type, security level and other factors. According to the equipment classification, it can be divided into server logs, network equipment logs, storage equipment logs, user terminal logs, office automation device logs, security device logs and special device logs. According to the event type, it can be divided into identity authentication logs, query and retrieval logs, configuration change logs, fault warning logs and security attack logs. According to the security level, it can be divided into low-risk logs, medium-risk logs and high-risk logs. A log classification matrix shall be established according to the above principles to identify various logs and prepare for subsequent log collection and analysis.

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Equipment security logs should be collected in a centralized manner. Log data with comprehensive coverage and complete elements should be collected in a centralized manner as much as possible. All equipment, events and basic log data shall be summarized and collected. The log information shall include equipment name, event time, IP address, event type, event content, event result and other information. The log collection also protects the integrity of the log data to prevent the log data from being deleted or tampered. On the basis of comprehensive collection of equipment security logs, deep mining and analysis of log data should be carried out using big data technology, focusing on the analysis of equipment operation status, host user activities, abnormal event behavior, data access and other events, and the host equipment activity feature model should be established. By comparing the feature model, abnormal host activity behavior can be effectively identified, and early warning can be sent to the security management center.

7.4 Application System Security An application system directly serves all kinds of users, which is the purpose of the survival and development of an information system, so application system security is the essential requirement of network security. However, all kinds of application systems are usually implemented through software codes, which are particularly easy to modify or replace, so they are the weakest link of network security. Access to application systems requires verified identity authentication, and illegal access by counterfeiting verified identities has become commonplace. The operating systems that support the running of various application systems and the communication protocols that exchange information generally have unintentional or intentional vulnerabilities and loopholes, which undoubtedly bring a variety of risks to the application systems that run on them. Numerous computer viruses that are rampant around the world not only pose a direct threat to Internet applications but also easily break through the security line and enter the court’s private network in the case of omissions in boundary security protection, threatening core applications. These phenomena have occurred in the smart court information system and caused severe repercussions, which requires us to pay close attention to and take effective precautions. The application system security strategy must first meet the overall requirements of the security infrastructure and at the same time should be fully in line with the specific technical and management measures of the system boundary and network equipment protection. It relies on the solid protection barrier provided by the solid frontier and basic security to achieve its own security, which can not only simplify the redundant links but can also reduce the conflict and incompatibility between multiple lines of defense, achieving the overall optimal security performance. Of course, a corresponding security protection mechanism needs to be established in any application system according to the operating environment, business characteristics, user scope, connecting objects and data sensitivity of the application

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system. It is necessary to establish an access permission policy, that is, to permit access to all service programs except those explicitly denied or to deny access to all service programs except those explicitly permitted. On this basis, establish a series of protection mechanisms, such as identity authentication, access control, log recording, communication encryption, and residual information protection, to achieve direct and concise application security protection. Monitoring and auditing are the last line of defense to protect the security of application systems. For the core and important application systems of smart courts, it is necessary to establish a real-time monitoring and postaudit mechanism for access modification. Sufficient operation monitoring endpoints and log elements should be set up in application research and development to ensure that application security risks can be determined and resolved through normal operation monitoring and institutionalized security audits. I.

Unified Identity Authentication

Identity authentication is the entrance to use and manage the application system, and it is also the key target of network attacks. If there are security vulnerabilities in the identity authentication system, the application system and its business data will have no security at all. Building a highly secure and well-managed identity authentication system is the primary task to ensure the security of application systems. To realize the safe and efficient management of application system identity authentication, in the smart court information system, a unified user identity management system has been built for the courts at all levels to realize the unified user identity management, identity authentication and authorization management of the court information system. The unified user identity management system of courts at all levels is a user identity management system established and deployed by the Supreme People’s Court to meet the business application needs of cross-level and cross-regional access of courts at all levels. It is connected with the user identity management systems of all high people’s courts and integrated with some business platforms of courts to realize a single sign-on of business application systems across the country. The unified user identity management system of courts at all levels is mainly composed of personnel information, login/authentication, and system management, and its relationship with the business system is shown in Fig. 7.6. The life cycle management mechanism of personnel information is established in the system, monitoring and tracking the whole process of user account from addition to deletion. In addition, it achieves the real-time monitoring of the system aggregation, change and deletion of user data and increases the audit mechanism of abnormal state updates, ensuring that users can use all application functions normally in the three states of “addition, validity and invalidity” and preventing the normal use of the application system from being affected by error deletion, untimely synchronization and so on. Before obtaining personnel information for the first time, the business system shall apply for registration in the unified user identity management system. The information on the following aspects should be specified, including the name, system

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Fig. 7.6 Logical architecture of the unified user identity management system of court at all levels

category, construction unit, purpose for using personnel information, personnel information using scope, frequency, valid period and other information of the business system. The management personnel shall examine and verify the authenticity of the application details according to the actual situation. After the verification of the application, the unified user identity management system shall share the user information with the application system through the secure encryption channel. The national unified user identity management system supports a variety of identity authentication methods, including password verification, two-factor verification, biometric identification, etc. The system realizes the exchange of authentication information with the user identity management system of the High People’s Court, supporting the user’s one-time authentication and the whole network access. Unified authority management is a service that authorizes users to access business applications and information resources and provides basic information of user authority for application systems. A security audit is a centralized audit operation of the administrator’s operation behavior and the user’s access behavior. Through auditing the whole operation behavior from user login to user exit, it monitors user’s sensitive operation, focuses on key events such as frequent login, and realizes timely detection and early warning of security events and accurate tracking and monitoring afterwards, which is conducive to rapid detection of system problems, timely handling of accidents and ensuring system operation.

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II.

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Application System Log

The application system log records the user’s activity track in the system, which is an important clue to trace the source of security incidents in the application system. To objectively and accurately reflect the activities of users in using and managing the application system, the log function construction should be carried out simultaneously in the design and development stages of the application system. At the same time, to meet the requirements of traceability and analysis, the log module of the application system should be designed and constructed in accordance with unified standards and specifications. The application system log can be divided into a system operation log, an administrator log and a user log according to the type of audit object. It can be divided into system event logs, user login/logout logs, browse/retrieval logs and operation/processing logs according to the type of event, and it can be classified into error logs, alarm logs and information logs according to importance. The running log records the information that affects the running state of the application system itself, including service startup, service shutdown and system failure of the application system software. The elements recorded in the operation log include event time, system host IP address, event type, event content, and event result. The administrator log records the activities of the administrator account of the application system, including administrator identity authentication events, user identity management events, permission change events, organization adjustment events, and system configuration change events. Log elements include event time, event type, administrator ID, administrator host IP address, management operation object ID, specific operation content, and operation result. The user log records all the activities of the user in the application system, including user identity authentication events, information change events, and business handling events. The log elements include event time, event type, user ID, user host IP address, function module name, specific operation content, and operation result. III.

Service Channel Encryption

To ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data transmission in the process of using and managing the court application system, it is necessary to encrypt the service channel of the application system according to the importance of the data. Cryptographic technology should be adopted in the third level of the classified protection system to ensure the confidentiality of data during the communication process, and verification technology or cryptographic technology should be adopted to ensure the integrity of data during the communication process. According to the importance of business data, the system below the third level protects the confidentiality and integrity of information transmission, such as identity authentication information, sensitive business data and data related to citizen privacy. According to the system architecture, the application system is divided into C/S architecture and B/S architecture. In the system design and development stage of the application system of the C/S architecture, the implementation of the service

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channel encryption function module should be synchronously considered, and in terms of the encryption algorithm, a symmetric encryption algorithm conforming to the national secret standard should be adopted. The application system of the B/S architecture is based on the court key management infrastructure, and the HTTPS protocol is used to encrypt the service channel for important business data transmission. The digital certificate used for service channel encryption shall be in line with the certificate format requirements of the Technical Requirements for Unified Identity Authentication (FYB/T52007–2017), and the key shall be produced by the password management infrastructure. The Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) shall be selected for application systems based on the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and software or hardware encryption measures shall be taken for audio and video systems according to the importance of audio and video content. When designing the encryption of the service channel, the compatibility of the encryption channel with other systems, especially the network boundary access equipment and the network audit analysis system, should be fully considered to minimize the risk of system docking caused by the encryption of the service channel. IV.

Application Vulnerability Management

Application system vulnerability is the entrance of network attacks. If the security vulnerability management mechanism is defective, the security vulnerability of the court information system will be exploited by malicious attackers. In serious cases, the application system will be destroyed, and business data will be stolen or damaged. The establishment of a vulnerability management system with an application system as the core is an important requirement to ensure the safe operation of information systems. Security vulnerabilities can be divided into protocol vulnerabilities, operating system vulnerabilities, database vulnerabilities, middleware vulnerabilities and application software vulnerabilities according to their locations. They can be classified into known vulnerabilities and zero-day vulnerabilities according to whether remediation measures exist. High-risk vulnerabilities, medium-risk vulnerabilities and low-risk vulnerabilities are classified according to their threat levels. To accurately determine and handle security vulnerabilities in a timely manner and minimize the risk of security vulnerabilities, security vulnerability management of the court information system should be carried out from the aspects of security research and development, code audit, penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, emergency disposal, repair and reinforcement. For the development of application system software, the writing of software codes should be checked based on the security coding specifications, focusing on whether there are security vulnerabilities in functional modules, such as input verification, identity authentication, authorization management, configuration management, data operation, session management, encryption management, exception handling and log audit.

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When the development of application software has been completed, it is necessary to use automated or manual code auditing tools to check and analyze the program source code one by one. After determining the potential security risks or nonstandard coding in the program source code, the potential security vulnerabilities will be repaired according to the detection results. It is necessary to use a penetration test to verify the security protection strength of the application system and determine security vulnerabilities. First, after the deployment of the application system, it is necessary to carry out a penetration test to check whether the system meets the security requirements for online use. Second, penetration tests should be carried out regularly in the life cycle of application system operation, and security protection measures should be adjusted or strengthened according to the penetration results to repair security vulnerabilities. Automated vulnerability scanning tools should be used to regularly scan the hardware, software and operating environment of the application system, and the security vulnerabilities should be repaired according to the results of vulnerability scanning. The vulnerability information base should be regularly updated for vulnerability scanning tools. When security vulnerabilities are found in the application system, they should be dealt with in a timely manner. Different emergency measures should be taken according to the threat level of vulnerabilities and the impact of repairing work on system operation, including restricting system access, closing service ports, shutting down system services, and system hosts going offline. For security vulnerabilities that have been discovered, the vulnerability repairing scheme shall be formulated according to the vulnerability type, impact degree, repairing method and other factors. Verification of vulnerability repair should be carried out in the system test environment after evaluation to ensure that the vulnerability repair work does not affect the normal operation of the system and business data, and then the vulnerability is repaired in the production environment. After the vulnerability is repaired, the repairing effect should be verified by means of vulnerability scanning and penetration testing.

7.5 Data Resource Security Data are the manifestation of information and the concentrated reflection of the subjective and objective world. Therefore, it is undoubtedly the most valuable resource in the information system, especially when the information system runs for a long time and the accumulation of effective data reaches a certain level. Thus, the security of data resources must be an important theme of network security, which is becoming increasingly prominent in the construction and application of datacentered smart courts. Many strategies, principles and technical measures to protect the security of data resources are similar to the security of application systems. However, since data are more static, independent and passive than programs, they need to be protected more actively, sensitively and thoughtfully.

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First, data resource security requires the protection of the integrity and accuracy of data from improper damage. The information measurement system can be more concretely used to analyze and judge whether the specific measurement indicators of the entire data resource meet expectations. Therefore, multiple lines of defense should not only be used to prevent illegal and malicious intrusion, tampering, deletion and destruction of data resources but also to establish a fault-tolerant mechanism to avoid unrecoverable data losses caused by improper operations or program bugs. Certainly, the security of data resources also requires the prevention of the improper leakage of data, especially confidential or sensitive information, which can also be regarded as the destruction of information accessibility indicators. For important data platforms and systems, effective access control must be formed based on the permission access strategy. Data processors may not have the right to know the data they process. Allowing access to any subset of many data sets neither means that all resources are granted to be accessed nor means it is convenient to download and obtain the data, and it is also necessary to prevent malicious theft by illegal intruders. All these require the comprehensive use of data encryption, access control, download restrictions and hacker defense measures to form an effective protection system. The security of data resources should also ensure the availability of data so that the normal requests of legitimate users can be responded to and served in a timely, accurate and safe manner. Protective measures should not be unreasonably used, and the access threshold should be raised because of one-sided emphasis on data security, thus limiting the reasonable needs of normal users. At the same time, to prevent the transient or even permanent inaccessibility of data resources caused by illegal intrusion or improper operation, it is necessary to establish a real-time monitoring and emergency response mechanism for data resource system configuration, network attacks, virus infections, security vulnerabilities and mis-operations to deal with the availability risks of data resources in a timely and effective manner. Similar to the security of an application system, a security audit is also the bottom line of defense to protect the security of data resources. In datacenters and big data management platforms at all levels, a postaudit mechanism for the core and important data resources of smart courts must be established, and institutionalized security audits should be implemented through adequate operational monitoring of endpoints and log elements. I.

Access Control

To reflect the value of data collected, stored and generated in information systems, the data must provide services for users or other related systems in some way. In the process of providing data services, data security should meet the CIA three-element principle, namely, confidentiality, integrity and availability. Generally, it includes the following: data information should not be known by people who should not know it; the data information is not modified by a person who should not modify it; and the data information can be used normally by the person who is allowed to use it. Obviously, the control of data access rights is an important means to achieve the security goals mentioned above.

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The business data service of the smart court usually relies on the big data service platform or a specific business application system, and data protection should involve two systems: the data storage system and the business application system. The protection of all servers on the entire data service path is the basis of data protection, and relevant servers should be protected according to the protection requirements and strategies of network hosts. In terms of access control, first, the opening of service ports should be strictly restricted according to the needs of data services. At the same time, according to the requirements of operation and maintenance work, reasonable system accounts and permissions should be set up. Two-factor authentication should be enabled, and access paths should be restricted on each layer of boundary equipment to eliminate bypass access by bypassing the operation and maintenance system. The data types stored in the data storage system are divided into structured data and unstructured data, and neither can be directly accessed by ordinary users. Structured data are mainly accessed by general databases, while unstructured data are accessed by file servers or middleware. A reliable database, middleware and file service system shall have a built-in complete authority management function and reasonably set access permission according to needs. Accounts in the high authority and high management scope shall be strictly controlled, and two-factor authentication and incorporation shall be opened into a unified operation and maintenance management channel. In addition, a key issue that is easily missed is that the access configuration of the application server to the database and file server should avoid direct plaintext storage to prevent the application server from being easily accessed to data resources after being breached. The main service object of a business application system is ordinary users, and it often provides data services for related systems for complex logic business. In terms of the data access control of the business application system, the user objects served should first be classified. The data access needs of all levels and types of users should be sorted out, and the control of the data accessing scope of different users should be realized in the system design. The role and permission form should be established, and the control granularity should be determined according to the business process and characteristics. The user system of the business application system should be integrated into the unified identity authentication system for centralized management. Based on the integration, two-factor strong authentication should be realized. For access control in the data service of the related system, the first step is to establish an appropriate access account for the related system and to limit the scope of its access to data through system design. At the same time, it is necessary to confirm the identity of the associated system by means of system certificate authentication and access to information such as IP addresses to prevent illegal access to data resources by using the identity of the associated system. II.

Control of abnormal access

Access permission control establishes a service channel for the normal access demand of data resources. However, due to insufficient estimation and restriction of access behavior, system design defects, network attacks and other issues, access beyond the design of the data resource access mode will also occur, posing threats to data

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security, which are called abnormal access. The paths generated by abnormal access can be divided into two categories: abnormal access initiated through the legal access path and abnormal access initiated through the illegal access path. The abnormal access initiated through the legal access path mainly includes the data access initiated by the remote address other than the normal access source, the data access initiated outside the regular time, and the data access obviously exceeding the reasonable quantity or frequency. The discovery of abnormal access initiated by legal access paths is mainly achieved by means of access logs, network traffic and protocol analysis of data service-related systems. Among them, remote access and abnormal time access mainly aim at data resources that need to be accessed after logging in with a legal account. The occurrence of these two types of situations does not necessarily mean that a data access security incident has occurred, and it needs to be confirmed through comparison with the actual use of the user. For the behavior determined as abnormal access, the security situation of the relevant user account should be analyzed. The leakage of user login information is often accompanied by other more serious security incidents, so it is necessary to timely block the source of access or modify the security information of the account and further trace the source, check the security status of the host or system at the source of abnormal access and organize coordinated disposal. For data access that obviously exceeds the reasonable amount or frequency, it is usually the access behavior automatically initiated by the machine code using the legal access interface. This kind of situation is quite common on the Internet. The typical scenario is to use the web crawler system to grab resources, while the data are obtained in batches, which often causes great consumption of application system resources, affecting the system to provide normal services. For important data resources, an anti-crawler system should be established. In addition to conventional measures such as frequency checking, IP blocking, browser feature analysis and page confusion, it is more effective to embed code in the application page to check the access source environment and accurately block it. In addition, there are also abnormal access behaviors with high frequency to meet the normal data access and acquisition needs, especially in the court private network. For such cases, service interfaces should be established for reasonable needs while blocking abnormal access with high frequency to guide the normal access of reasonable needs. The abnormal access initiated through the illegal access path refers to the data access by using the high-permission management account or bypassing the access control system, which often causes data theft behaviors such as malicious tampering, destruction of data resources and database dragging. It is a serious security incident accompanied by other situations that damage information security. The discovery of such anomalies relies on database audit systems, network audits, full traffic analysis and situational awareness systems. After the event is confirmed, the security status of the high-permission management account and the effectiveness of the operation and maintenance account authentication system shall be checked. Whether the access control mechanism is invalid or has loopholes shall be checked and dealt with in a timely manner.

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Data Security Audit

A data security audit is an important method to analyze abnormal data access. By analyzing the records of data access, operation and other links, data security audits can timely and effectively find data security incidents and provide clues or a basis for security incident characterization, traceability, emergency response, accountability and security reinforcement. In addition to the abnormal data access mentioned above, through data security audits, a comprehensive assessment of data use can also be conducted, and more hidden data security problems can be discovered. This is especially true for data security problems originating from the court, such as malicious operation and maintenance operations and nonmalicious data operation errors caused by unclear division of responsibilities among operators, nonstandard management, and failure of supervision by outsourced operation and maintenance personnel. At the same time, data security audits are also helpful for finding software system design defects and logic errors in time. The premise of a data security audit is to leave traces of all data operations, including data resource management, data resource application and data resource access, which are mainly realized by log recording. Log information shall at least include key information such as time, source, user and operation. For structured data, the general database system itself can generally provide a relatively complete logging capability, the logging and auditing functions can be directly enabled in the database configuration, and the content and scope of logging can be configured. It should be noted that the impact of database open logs on database performance should be fully evaluated. For databases that cannot be audited by themselves, a specialized database auditing system should be deployed. Unstructured data rely on the file management function of the operating system to realize auditing. Windows servers enable the file operation log configuration in the system security policy. Linux servers need to use inotify, auditd or similar file operation monitoring services. Similar to databases, logging of unstructured data can be done with more sophisticated, dedicated logging and auditing systems. In addition, data security audits should also include information such as application service logs and network traffic audits to produce more abundant, complete and accurate audit conclusions. The core of data security audits is the ability of audit analysis. Rule matching is one of the most basic functions of data audits. The abnormal data access based on the source, time and frequency mentioned above is realized based on rule matching. It is also the basic matching rule for deleting forms and databases in the database. At the same time, statistical analysis and association analysis can be used to expand the rule matching ability. For courts that have established a comprehensive security supervision system, the function of data security audits can be realized by relying on the big data analysis engine of the comprehensive security platform. The ability of data security audits can be further improved by combining the capabilities of user usage feature modeling and user behavior portraits assisted by artificial intelligence.

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As an important measure to discover data security risks, the results of data security audits need to be connected with the security incident handling process. At the same time, in terms of the ability of the data security audit system, timeliness should be fully considered, especially for the audit of high-risk data operations. It must control and reduce the extent and scope of damage caused by data security incidents in a timely manner. IV.

Sensitive Data Encryption

In addition to access control, abnormal access control and data security audits, data encryption can protect data itself, and it is also the core part of data security protection. Once other protective measures fail or the security line is broken through, encryption measures can restrict the further illegal use of data that have been illegally obtained, thus avoiding substantial damage and impact on the information security of smart courts. The premise of data security protection is the evaluation of the importance of data resources. One of the key reasons for the failure of security protection is that it is easy to fall into the misunderstanding of protecting all data of information systems regardless of their importance. The result is often either that the burden is too heavy to achieve the goal or that the intensity of protection is too low to protect enough. Therefore, the classified protection of data security requirements is particularly important for data encryption. For classified systems, the hierarchical protection of information involving state secrets that has been determined is the classified standard of data security requirements. For non-classified systems, the importance of data resources should be determined according to the degree and scope of their impact after leakage, and the important core data that need to be protected include working secrets, sensitive information and personal privacy. The important core data that have been identified should be encrypted. The links involved in encryption include storage and transmission, and the data encryption protection for the transmission link must be implemented in the encryption part of the service channel of the business system. In terms of data storage, the server side often gathers a large number of important core data, which is also the first consideration of data encryption. There are two ways to implement encryption on the server side: one is to add functional codes to encrypt and decrypt data when the application system stores and reads data, and the other is to deploy specialized data encryption equipment. Comparatively speaking, the encryption and decryption functions implemented in the application system have obvious advantages in cost, and their efficiency can also be guaranteed through code optimization, especially for newly developed systems, which should be fully considered in the system design. Data encryption devices can usually support the transparent proxy mode of data access. For the application system, the access target in the configuration only needs to be adjusted, and the system itself generally does not need to be modified. It is suitable for the security reinforcement and upgrade of the existing system. The terminal is the direct environment for users to obtain and use data, and the encryption protection of the core important data flowing on the terminal should also be given great attention. The terminals in the classified network have strict input

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and output control, which can ensure the security of core important data. On the non-classified network terminal, the encryption tool and the client should be used to establish the necessary encryption storage area for the particularly important data to protect the user’s important data. Such tools can also provide an interface with the application to realize the encryption protection of the application data after local download. Especially for mobile terminals, due to the risk of loss, a more stringent data encryption isolation area should be established, or the application mode of data not landing should be adopted. Data encryption protection shall comply with relevant national standards. That is, data encryption in classified networks shall meet the requirements of classified protection, and data encryption in non-classified networks such as court private networks, the Internet, external private networks and mobile private networks shall be realized by the national secret algorithm.

7.6 Network Attack Detection The driving force of network security lies in offensive and defensive confrontation. Network security technology is always developing under the mutual promotion of attack and defense. Therefore, for the network security of smart courts, it will not be done once and for all because of the adoption of a number of technical protection means. However, security protection measures should be constantly adjusted and enriched according to the source, mode and intensity of network attacks to adapt to the increasingly severe network security situation. Network attack detection is not only a prerequisite for the timely detection of attacks but also a source of basis for evaluating the security status of the system, which is indeed a necessary link to ensure network security. The first step of network attack detection is to determine the appropriate detection layout according to the possible attack threats. It is necessary to determine a reasonable distribution of detection points for information system architecture, network security infrastructure, denial of service, viruses, hackers and other types of attacks. The detection should be deployed not only at the front ports but also from the outside to the inside to form a deep echelon, especially for key objects and weak links, forming an attack detection system with reasonable layout, strong pertinence and adaptability. Appropriate attack threat handling often goes hand in hand with network attack detection. Since signs of attack or traces of invasion are found, corresponding measures should be taken to keep the enemy out of the door or plug the leak in the gap, and timely notification should be made to facilitate the follow-up in-depth protection to ensure that key targets are not affected or to minimize the degree of damage. Offensive and defensive confrontation drills are an effective way to comprehensively test the actual combat capability of network attack detection and attack threat disposal. The courts above the high level are responsible for the network security of the courts in their jurisdiction. They should regularly organize qualified

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network security departments to carry out network offensive and defensive confrontation drills for key systems to expose weak links and improve protection capabilities in actual combat drills. The system log, especially the security log audit, is also an effective measure to check the traces of attacks and discover the existing vulnerabilities. Although it is a posttreatment, many attacks can still be found that are difficult to be exposed through real-time monitoring with careful checking. Through institutionalized management and normal auditing, the log will play an important role in network security protection, as the Chinese saying goes, “mending the fold after the sheep are lost”. I.

Malicious Attack Detection

Malicious attacks refer to attacks on the hardware, software and data in the information system by using the vulnerabilities and security defects of the information system. Court information systems face different threats posed by malicious attacks according to their different network characteristics. The main malicious attacks faced by the court private network come from network boundary destruction, virus spreading, and fraudulent use of management rights. The main malicious attacks faced by the Internet are scanning detection, DDOS, web crawlers, vulnerability exploitation, and supply chain attacks. The main malicious attacks faced by mobile private networks are communication link attacks and mobile terminal attacks. The main malicious attack faced by the external private network is network boundary destruction (as shown in Fig. 7.7). According to different threats of malicious attacks, for each network system of the court information system, targeted malicious attack detection measures should be taken. Detection tools should be deployed on network boundaries, security area boundaries, cloud platforms, important application system entrances, data centralization platforms, operation and maintenance management and control centers, and host equipment to detect all kinds of malicious attacks in time and form a detection system for malicious attacks. Detection tools should be combined with the emergency response platform to effectively deal with all kinds of malicious attacks. Network boundary detection aims at the boundary security of each network system of the court information system. According to the requirements of only allowing data exchange in the form of files, prohibiting common protocol penetration, avoiding direct access between cross-network applications and strictly restricting data exchange, a malicious attack detection system and anti-virus wall are deployed on the external data exchange channels of each network system to detect the data entering and leaving the network. Checking data format, virus and malicious code, sensitive data leakage and other events should be given concern, timely warning and blocking border exchange channels when malicious attacks are found. Security zone boundary detection is based on the implementation of the minimum access control strategy between security zones. Malicious attack detection tools are deployed, such as an intrusion detection system and network protocol analysis system on the zone boundary, monitoring the network communication data entering and leaving the security zone boundary in real time, and focusing on detecting abnormal network access behaviors such as viruses, Trojan virus and vulnerability exploits.

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Fig. 7.7 Logical structure of network attack detection

Cloud platform detection is designed according to the characteristics of cloud platforms, and virtualization intrusion monitoring systems and security situational awareness platforms should be deployed to monitor the network access behavior of cloud platforms. According to the characteristics of application system use and management, for important application system entrance detection, WAF and secure access control gateway and other measures should be adopted on the access channel to control and monitor user access behavior. For the management channel, the fortress machine

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for operation and maintenance is used to monitor and manage the maintenance and management behavior of the application system. Data centralization platform detection focuses on the data call behavior of the data centralization management platform. Through the deployment of a database audit system, a sensitive data abnormal access detection system and a data leakage prevention system. The platform monitors the operation behavior of data acquisition, modification and deletion and detects abnormal data access, leakage and destruction. The operation and maintenance management center monitors and audits all maintenance operations by using the security operation and maintenance management and control platform as the only access to the host equipment, application system and datacenter, mainly focusing on the detection of unauthorized operations. Host equipment detection realizes the monitoring and auditing of the running status, operation behavior, network access and other events of the host equipment through the anti-virus, host audit and host reinforcement system client software deployed on the host equipment, focusing on the detection of viruses, Trojans, unauthorized access and other attacks. II.

Security Intelligence Analysis

To effectively defend against network attacks, a good job must be done in threat intelligence collection and management. All kinds of security systems and equipment should be used to collect, clean and collate security intelligence and logs from outside and inside the court, and important data should be marked and analyzed in a correlated manner to generate threat intelligence data. Through the professional security research team, the threat intelligence data should be analyzed. The denial of service attack situation data related to the court, the complete situation data of the Internet and the security vulnerability situation data of relevant external units should be sorted out. The latest vulnerability intelligence and attack means should be tracked and analyzed. According to the current situation of information systems and business of courts at all levels, targeted security recommendations and measures are provided. Early warning of threat intelligence, based on network security threat intelligence, monitors and manages the security and health status of court information system assets, providing targeted analytic reports on threat intelligence according to security vulnerabilities and security incidents occurring in different periods, using third-party security big data for correlation analysis and behavior analysis, accurately labeling threat intelligence, and providing targeted threat intelligence. It actively provides early warning, analysis and countermeasures of security incidents to help courts at all levels keep their information infrastructure updated, better preventing security vulnerabilities, data loss and system failures, and effectively resisting potential network attacks. Malicious attack detection tools, such as intrusion detection systems, intrusion prevention systems, antivirus systems, network audit systems, database audit systems, network threat situation awareness systems and network protocol analysis systems, are used to collect and analyze threat data from the court information system.

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In the big data platform for security analysis, the threat intelligence data related to the court information system can be analyzed and extracted, which can help understand the security situation of the court itself for the first time and enable the relevant information security departments and personnel to deal with it in a timely manner. III.

Attack Threat Disposal

To deal with all kinds of malicious attacks and threats, the department for court information system management should establish a dedicated organization for network security incident disposal, formulate disposal plans covering all kinds of security incidents, clarify personnel responsibilities, equip itself with threat disposal tools, regularly carry out security incident drills and constantly improve the disposal mechanism to ensure that network security attacks are handled in a timely and effective manner. Courts at all levels should set up specialized emergency response agencies for network security incidents, which are responsible for the handling of network security incidents, including emergency response plan formulation, security situation monitoring, security risk notification and early warning, equipment of emergency tools, organizing emergency drills, security incident handling, notification and liaison, and security incident summary, to manage network security incidents throughout the life cycle. Targeted disposal plans should be formulated according to the types of security incidents, including virus outbreaks, denial of service attacks, external intrusions, internal intrusions, data theft, and website tampering. Different levels of incidents should be divided according to the impact of attacks, and emergency disposal processes and personnel responsibilities should be clearly defined. After the emergency response plan is formulated, it should pass the professional review and be continuously improved after the drill and the incident. Courts at all levels should incorporate security incident drills into their annual security work plans, regularly carry out security incident drills, test the effectiveness of security protection systems and emergency response plans, strengthen the organization and coordination capabilities of emergency response agencies and the emergency response capabilities of relevant personnel, and make full preparations for the disposal of security incidents. Before the drill, the drill plan should be formulated, the drill objectives should be clearly defined, the drilling process should be standardized, and the business and data backup of the target system should be done well. During the drill, the drill activities should be carried out in strict accordance with the process, and relevant records should be made. After the drill, the summarization should be done in time, and the problems in the drill should be sorted out. The emergency plan should be optimized, and suggestions for improving the security protection system should be put forward. After users or system management personnel discover, detect and warn security incidents in the information system in a timely manner through tools such as malicious attack inspection, they should start the incident handling process in time and carry out the handling work quickly and orderly, including incident analysis,

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nature determination, traceability, suppression treatment, system recovery, vulnerability repair, incident assessment, security reinforcement and other links. When a major network security incident occurs, the local network security supervision department should be notified in time to carry out coordinated disposal work.

7.7 Security Operation and Maintenance Security operation and maintenance is the daily defender of network security. Network security is highly dependent on daily management, and the implementation and inspection of a systematic and comprehensive security system is not only a heavy management task but also involves complex technical connotations. A large number of security devices and software configured to enhance network security cannot do without continuous system management and maintenance. The adjustment or maintenance of general infrastructure, application systems or data resources are often related to network security, which requires corresponding technical support and management supervision to ensure network security. Therefore, management, guarantee and supervision are the main missions of safe operation and maintenance, playing an irreplaceable and key role in the network security and system operation of smart courts. The higher the degree of informatization is, the greater the security responsibility and the more prominent the role of security operation and maintenance. Smart court security operation and maintenance work is complicated, and the most important thing is to train a high-level security operation and maintenance team in practice. First, political quality should be emphasized. The people’s court is the judicial organ under the leadership of the CPC. Court network security issues are not limited to the technical level, and many are not only closely related to national judicial credibility but can also directly affect people’s personal feelings. Therefore, engagement in the court network security operation and maintenance requires a high sense of political mission and sensitivity. Only by closely linking ordinary work with the overall strategy of comprehensive law-based governance of the country can we be conscientious, fearless of difficulties and not disgrace our mission. Second, the sense of responsibility should be emphasized. The information system cannot be separated from all aspects of operation and maintenance, in which security operation and maintenance play a role of security supervision and control. Not only should the quality of work be improved but also should the operation and maintenance of other professional fields be coordinated with a high sense of responsibility. All aspects of work shall be promoted in an orderly manner on the premise of maintaining and ensuring the security of the system. Third, professional technology should be emphasized. The rapid development of information technology has promoted the continuous progress of network security technology, which inevitably requires the security operation and maintenance team of the smart court to fully grasp all kinds of theory and methods of network security. At the same time, it requires a thorough understanding of the information infrastructure, application systems, data resources and operation and maintenance mechanism characteristics of the smart court and the

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ability to skillfully use them. Only through correctly dealing with various technical problems that may arise in daily operation and maintenance can the increasingly complex requirements of security operation and maintenance be met. Fourth, business coverage should be emphasized. The network security operation and maintenance of the smart court covers many business contents, including both management and technical specialties, both point work and line coordination, and both real-time monitoring and postanalysis, which requires the establishment of a comprehensive, multiskilled security operation and maintenance team to protect the network security of the whole life cycle. I.

Security Operation and Maintenance Services

The objects of information system security operation and maintenance of the people’s court include application systems, network systems, network facilities, security equipment and the physical environment in classified and non-classified information systems. The main contents of security operation and maintenance work include the construction of security operation and maintenance mechanisms, analysis and assessment of potential risks, normal monitoring of security conditions, emergency response and disposal of incidents, optimal configuration of security strategies, integration of security tools, preparation of security analysis reports, organization of security evaluation work, maintenance of security system equipment, basic security training and guidance, and security guarantees in key periods and other supporting work. The construction of security operation and maintenance mechanisms mainly aims at the construction and operation of court networks and information systems, and the establishment of security operation and maintenance mechanisms includes defining specific scopes, establishing work objectives, establishing task lists, designing operation processes, sorting out security indicators, formulating work processes, compiling system norms, and improving emergency response and incident handling mechanisms. The analysis and assessment of potential risks should be coordinated with the basic operation and maintenance team to establish a complete network and information system asset account and update it dynamically. According to the network structure, information system architecture and business logic, the security risk points and weak links should be comprehensively investigated, analyzed and assessed, and suggestions for security reinforcement and key monitoring should be formed and implemented. According to the design of the security operation and maintenance mechanism and process, for the normal monitoring of security status, the security status of main places, networks, equipment, systems, accounts and other aspects are continuously inspected. The threat of viruses, malicious programs, illegal access, unauthorized important operations, attack detection and other risks are dynamically monitored, and the real-time alarm of security incidents and timely warning of potential risks is realized.

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Incident emergency response and disposal mainly enable the organization of relevant departments and personnel to carry out emergency drills for security incidents. After the occurrence of major security emergencies, an emergency team composed of back-end experts and personnel from relevant departments shall be organized to carry out analysis, judgment and disposal in a timely manner, controlling the impact of the incident, and assisting relevant departments in completing the recovery of damaged networks and systems. For the optimization of the configuration of security policy, the network structure and information system requirements are analyzed; the division of security areas are designed and improved; the deployment of security equipment is adjusted; and the configuration of security policy is optimized. According to the construction of networks and information systems and the change in use demand, the deployment and security strategy of relevant security areas, security systems and equipment should be adjusted in time. Security tools are equipped and integrated according to the design of security operation and maintenance tasks, and the required security tools are equipped to support various security operations. The relevant important security data provided by the court’s existing security systems, security equipment and security tools are integrated to support centralized analysis and display. For the preparation of security analysis reports, security analysis reports of the court network and information system are regularly formed, comprehensively presenting the current security status of the network and information system, reflecting the reinforcement of security risk points and weak links in a timely manner, analyzing and disposing security incidents such as attacks, formulating follow-up work plans, and proposing suggestions for security construction. The security assessment organization shall organize the preparations for the assessment of graded protection and classified protection in accordance with the requirements of relevant work specifications and standards for graded protection and classified protection, aiming at the relevant network and information systems of the court. The preparation works include organizing of self-assessment, formulating of rectification requirements, and organizing of rectification. In addition, the security assessment organization cooperates with the assessment organization to carry out relevant assessment work. For security system equipment maintenance, security system and equipment maintenance services are provided in each network, which is responsible for security equipment failure repair, undertaking security equipment system and feature library upgrades depending on specific equipment types, providing spare parts support during equipment failure, and ensuring normal and stable operation of security equipment. In terms of basic security training and guidance, according to the requirements of laws and regulations related to network security and the work plan of the Supreme People’s Court, basic security knowledge training for network and information system users and basic security skills training for other operation and maintenance and technical personnel are regularly organized and carried out, and assistance in carrying out technical guidance for the security work of lower courts is provided.

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In terms of security assurance in key periods, in accordance with the requirements of the national network security supervision department, relevant departments and teams shall be organized to carry out key security for the court’s key information infrastructure. Core network and important information systems during major meetings, activities and other sensitive periods, and personnel shall be organized to provide 7 × 24 h duty protection when necessary. II.

Security Operation and Maintenance Tools

To support security operation and maintenance work, operation and maintenance tools that are convenient for management work should be provided. Security operation and maintenance tools include asset account management systems, asset discovery and identification systems, security baseline verification systems, classified protection toolboxes, security intelligence collection systems, operation and maintenance process supervision systems, integrated security supervision systems, security big data analysis systems and work order systems (as shown in Fig. 7.8). The asset account management system is used to record the status of various assets in the court information system in real time. The elements of the asset account include the responsible department, importance, location, operation status, etc. For account management, assets are identified and managed according to their importance, and corresponding management measures are selected according to the value of assets. At the same time, information classification and identification methods are stipulated, and the use, transmission and storage of information are standardized. The asset identification and discovery system is used to detect all kinds of storage and computing resources, application systems and other asset information in the court information system. Its functions include network asset topology discovery, network asset operation service identification, network asset compliance analysis and network asset compliance analysis. The security baseline verification system checks against the security configuration baseline by means of automated tools and manual checking, mainly including the network equipment security configuration baseline, security equipment security configuration baseline, operating system security configuration baseline, database security configuration baseline, middleware security configuration baselines, etc. It adopts mainstream security configuration checking systems or checking script tools. The equipment inspection shall be completed in the form of online inspection, and the inspection script tool shall be used to complete the inspection for the equipment in physical isolation or network isolation. The classified protection toolbox is an integrated specialized inspection equipment for network security classified protection inspection, which has the functions of standard inspection, tool invocation and result display. It integrates special security inspection tools, provides classified protection inspection knowledge and methods, and supports the improvement of the normalization and standardization level of network security inspection. The security intelligence collection system monitors and manages the security and health status of the court information system based on network security threat intelligence, actively provides early warning, analysis and disposal of security incidents, uses security big data to carry out correlation

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Fig. 7.8 Security operation and maintenance tool

analysis and behavior analysis, accurately labels threat intelligence, provides security early warning, finds security vulnerabilities, and provides security. Actions should be taken to prevent data loss or system failure to effectively defend against attackers. Threat intelligence early warning provides targeted threat intelligence analysis reports according to security vulnerabilities and security incidents in different periods. The unified operation and maintenance management and control platform supports the authorization, supervision and early warning of all operation and maintenance activities, including operation and maintenance account management, account authentication management, account authority management, management behavior audit and other functions. The integrated security monitoring platform is an integrated tool for the maintenance, monitoring and management of the information system security of the people’s

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court. It collects the log data of various security devices and systems in a centralized way, visually displays the security situation of the information system in real time, and realizes various audits, hierarchical alarms of events, work order allocation, rule invocation, fault location and asset management in an automated way. Based on system assets, network structure, applications and data, the platform for security big data analysis uses various security system logs, alarm information and threat intelligence collected by the integrated security monitoring system to conduct in-depth mining of network attacks and internal violations by means of correlation analysis and behavior modeling to provide decision support for security operation and maintenance management. Security operation and maintenance personnel can have task work orders generated through the work order system and can also trigger one-time work orders according to security events and alarms and send them to designated handlers. The administrator can specify the priority of the work order, select the appropriate notification method, specify the start time and end time of work order processing, set the time limit for work order completion, view all work orders and their flow process, and organize the completion of the security incident handling process. III.

Security Situation Analysis

Security situation analysis is the key link to strengthen the construction and management of the information security guarantee system of the people’s court. By carrying out normal information security situation analysis and assessment, we can timely and effectively discover the threats and weaknesses faced by information systems, analyze the possibility of security incidents caused by corresponding threats and vulnerabilities, judge their possible impact on court information systems, determine the solutions and countermeasures to solve key problems, and continuously improve the security of smart court information systems, achieving the goal of a safe and controllable effect. All kinds of security operation and maintenance tools should be fully used to carry out security situation analysis. Taking court information system assets as the object, a security baseline verification system, level protection toolbox and other security assessment tools are used to analyze and evaluate the compliance of information system configuration. A security intelligence collection system is used to predict external risks and threats, and a unified operation and maintenance management and control platform and work order system are used to monitor the standardization and timeliness of the operation and maintenance management process. A comprehensive security monitoring platform and security big data analysis platform are used to comprehensively analyze the operation, alarm information and security events of various security systems and equipment. According to the characteristics of the court information system, the security situation evaluation index system should be formulated to comprehensively evaluate the overall security status of the information system from the aspects including infrastructure, application system, business data, security protection, operation and maintenance management. Basic requirements of security protection in all aspects

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shall be determined, and the security situation analysis and evaluation results shall be given according to the current status of the system. Security situation analysis includes self-assessment and inspection assessment. Self-assessment mainly refers to the security risk assessment of the court information system initiated by the people’s courts at all levels, which can be implemented by the courts themselves or entrusted to third-party technical service agencies. Inspection assessment mainly refers to the security risk assessment of the court information system organized by the superior management department, and the evaluation results are responsible for the department that initiated the inspection and evaluation. In the process of security situation analysis, evaluation means, including interviews, inspections and tests, can be used. Interview is a process of targeted inquiry and communication between the evaluators and the relevant personnel of the evaluated people’s court on the issues concerned by the evaluation, which can help the appraisers understand the current situation, clarify doubts and obtain evidence. The depth and breadth of the interview were selected and judged by the evaluators according to different evaluation needs. Inspection refers to the process of observing, investigating, reviewing, analyzing or verifying the information system of the people’s court. Similar to interviews, it can also help evaluators understand the current situation, clarify questions and obtain evidence. Typical inspection behaviors include the verification of security configuration and the analysis and review of security policies. Testing refers to the process of running one or more evaluation objects with different mechanisms or behaviors in a specific environment and comparing the actual results with the expected goals. Testing can help the evaluator obtain evidence. Testing activities can be divided into three categories: functional testing, structural testing and penetration testing.

Chapter 8

High Quality and Efficiency Operation and Maintenance

As an information system develops, it needs more continuous and orderly operation and maintenance. Traditional operation and maintenance support focuses on predicting, discovering and dealing with various breakdowns in time to ensure that each system is in a normal state, which we call “intact operation and maintenance”. In line with the core mission and construction content of the smart court, we propose that we should not only ensure that the information system is in good condition but also pay close attention to, collect, display and analyze the operation quality and efficiency of various systems through operation and maintenance, that is, “high quality and efficiency operation and maintenance”. Its significance is reflected in the following aspects. First, only the application effect should be the basic criterion for judging the smart court system project. The fundamental purpose of the construction of smart courts is to support litigation services, trial execution and judicial management in a highly digitalized way, centering on the two principles of justice for the people and of judicial justice, so that the people and the vast number of court staffs can achieve the greatest effect in the application. Therefore, we must fundamentally change the usual tendency of “heavy construction and light application” of informatization and realize the value goal of smart courts through constant attention and unremitting promotion of daily operation. Second, based on operation and maintenance, we can collect and analyze the comprehensive quality and efficiency of information system projects. With the rapid development of smart court information systems, each part of it supports and restricts each other. The application effect of information infrastructure is reflected in the operation status of various application systems and data resources, and the application effect of application systems is reflected in the direct experience of various users. Therefore, only by continuously collecting and aggregating the operation status and user feedback of all systems through operation and maintenance can the operation quality and efficiency of the whole system be comprehensively evaluated and attributed to each part.

© People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1_8

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Third, attaching importance to quality and efficiency does not mean lowering the integrity requirements of the system. Only the normal operation of various information systems can support the whole system to achieve a high level of operation quality and efficiency. Therefore, the operation and maintenance of high quality and efficiency does not reduce the operation quality standards of various systems; it can also expand the closed-loop scope of system evaluation by focusing on the perception experience and use effect of various users, thus forming more complete, accurate and practical integrity index requirements. Fourth, the operation quality and efficiency not only reflect the current state of the information system but also represent the demand orientation of the system construction. Through the change trend of application distribution, quantity, frequency and load, we can analyze and predict the increase and decrease demand of each part to plan and guide the improvement and perfection of the system, and we will be able to better adapt to the dynamic changes of smart courts.

8.1 Operation and Maintenance of High-Quality and High-Efficiency Services Operation and maintenance service is the main content of operation and maintenance support. The specific purpose of operation and maintenance services should be reasonably determined according to the composition, operation mode and application objects of the information system. On the basis of the previous service purpose of ensuring the normal operation of information systems, for the operation and maintenance of high quality and efficiency services of smart courts, the service purpose of focusing on the application effectiveness of information systems needs to be substantially increased, and the specific contents need to be specified in detailed written instructions such as subject definition, team organization and operation guidance. The Supreme People’s Court and high people’s courts are responsible for the operation and maintenance of a large number of information infrastructure, business applications, data resources and network security systems that run through all courts in their jurisdiction, including hundreds of systems and courts at all levels, and their quality-based operation and maintenance services must be coordinated by a unified organization, with division of labor and cooperation among various subjects, applications and levels. Only in this way can the operation and maintenance tasks be completed efficiently and orderly. In the actual organization, the operation and maintenance services should not be decentralized to their own independent operation and maintenance units simply according to the business type or business department, which will inevitably lead to their own struggle and lack of overall synergy, so it is impossible to improve the operation quality and efficiency of the whole system. In addition, it is also necessary to avoid the phenomenon that the contracted enterprises exclusively undertake all operation and maintenance services because many information systems involve many different manufacturers, and no enterprise can solve all the problems faced by the operation of the smart court system only by relying

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on its own strength. Especially according to the requirement of focusing on application effectiveness, the main functions, running status, user distribution, number of visitors, click traffic and response time of all kinds of important applications need to be considered at all times, which inevitably depends on the full cooperation of manufacturers dedicated to the research and development of information systems. This is also a powerful measure to promote departments of research and development not only to focus on system development and delivery but also to always pay attention to product application effectiveness and win customer satisfaction. Therefore, based on reasonable subject settings, the operation and maintenance services of high quality and efficiency of courts above the high level shall carefully select the leading enterprises familiar with the operation of smart courts and cooperate with a group of key enterprises that have long participated in the informatization construction of courts in their jurisdictions to provide high-level operation and maintenance of high quality and efficiency services. I.

Frontline Operation and Maintenance Support

Front-line operation and maintenance is the main force of traditional “intact” operation and maintenance services and is also an indispensable part of the high quality and efficiency operation and maintenance of smart courts. It is mainly responsible for solving the problems or hidden dangers exposed in the process of information operation, that is, responding quickly to all kinds of basic operations and maintenance breakdowns and events and carrying out practical operations to ensure the intact and efficient operation of the operation objects. The complete front-line operation and maintenance organization system shall include the infrastructure operation and maintenance group, the application operation and maintenance group, the data operation and maintenance group and the security operation and maintenance group, which shall carry out comprehensive and refined operation and maintenance support for the infrastructure, application system, data resources and information security modules, respectively. The system shall have a front-line operation person in charge to assist the chief operator in completing the goal setting of high quality and efficiency operation and maintenance, in implementing the construction of front-line operation and maintenance organization, personnel management and resource management, and in managing the task decomposition, target achievement, work content, work efficiency and work quality of each operation and maintenance group. The front-line operation and maintenance support work is mainly reflected in the following aspects: The first is to deal with and solve the problems in the process of information operation. The problems here include the breakdowns that occur in the process of information operation, as well as the essential technical support and maintenance, such as patrol inspection, equipment on-line and off-line, configuration file update, spare parts replacement, and conference support. This requires front-line operation and maintenance teams to undertake information operation breakdown handling, asset management, operation status inspection, operation maintenance, emergency response and other work covered by the team. The infrastructure team shall be responsible for the problems arising in servers, network equipment, storage equipment,

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audio and video equipment, weak current equipment and computer room environments. The team shall also be responsible for the troubleshooting of user terminal computer systems, software installation, system update, shared printer settings and consumables replacement, equipment debugging, video recording, editing and video scheduling of conference support. It is necessary to cooperate with other teams to troubleshoot and deal with the problems at the infrastructure level and to manage the account changes of related assets. In addition to daily system upgrade, training and promotion, and account management, the application system group shall conduct troubleshooting in case of business system breakdown, response delay, performance degradation and other problems, confirm the running status of application services, middleware, database and other components, and implement specific solutions. The data resource group implements data aggregation, quality inspection and sharing and exchange support; carries out backup and disaster recovery of data resources and statistics and analysis of various types of data based on the aggregated data resources; and jointly investigates and handles relevant business data problems with other groups. The information security team is mainly responsible for investigating potential security risks such as network boundaries, network equipment, business systems and operation and maintenance channels, monitoring network attacks, killing terminal viruses, upgrading patches and vulnerabilities, monitoring illegal operations, formulating and implementing network security strategies, and minimizing all possible security risks. The second is the response support after the user makes a request. Courts on or above the high level shall have a specialized information operation and maintenance service desk, including a hotline support and integrated operation and maintenance work order system, to receive, respond to and filter the operation and maintenance problems, needs and suggestions reported by users in the process of information operation and to conduct preliminary analysis and treatment of various problems. The problems that cannot be solved on the phone shall be immediately sent to the relevant front-line operation and maintenance personnel through the work order system for handling. The progress of problem handling is tracked in the process, and follow-up phone calls are made, forming a closed-loop mechanism for handling user needs, regularly obtaining the user’s satisfaction with the operation and maintenance services, and then proposing suggestions for improving the operation and maintenance services according to the user’s opinions. Third, the front-line operation and maintenance knowledge base is improved and updated. The basic work of front-line operation and maintenance involves a wide range of areas and requires high efficiency, so in the actual work process, each operation and maintenance team should establish a knowledge base contributing to the work of the team, which should cover all kinds of information equipment or systems, such as infrastructure, application systems, data resources and information security. The content should include the knowledge of installation, deployment, debugging, troubleshooting, tool usage and other aspects involved in each element and form a regular improvement and updating mechanism.

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Second-Line Operation Monitoring

To change the traditional operation and maintenance mode of “heavy construction and light application”, second-line operation and maintenance came into being to contribute to high-quality and-efficiency operation and maintenance and carried out operation monitoring around the concept of active operation and maintenance. Its main responsibility is to monitor and experience the status and response of information operation and maintenance, grasp the status and ability of various information elements to support business in a timely manner, ensure the first detection of breakdowns that have occurred, and warn and avoid possible breakdowns or events. Similar to the organizational structure of front-line operation and maintenance, second-line operation and maintenance is also divided into infrastructure operation and maintenance, application system operation and maintenance, data resource operation and maintenance, and information security operation according to different objects and roles. It monitors the information operation status at all levels in real time and obtains a comprehensive understanding of the health of network operation, the operation status of each component of the application system, the normal convergence and sharing of data resources, and the potential risks of information security incidents. Through manual experience, continuous testing of each module of the information system and the testing of the fit between information construction and overall performance are performed. With the help of the web page results and voice scheduling functions of the operation and maintenance monitoring tool, the second-line operation and maintenance of infrastructure mainly tracks the connectivity of network topology, the connectivity of dispatched tribunals and of science and technology courts, bandwidth utilization, server computing resource load, disk reading speed, hardware equipment alarm information, online status of audio, video and weak current equipment, dynamic environment temperature and humidity of computer room, air conditioning status and other infrastructure operation status in real time. According to the graphical color identification, quantitative index trend and change law, abnormal phenomena are judged; potential problems in equipment operation are found at the first time; infrastructure assets and topology are maintained; and dynamic updates are made in the operation and maintenance monitoring tool to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the monitoring scope. The second-line operation and maintenance of the application system mainly checks the system response time, slow operation and user access and judges whether the performance of the application system is stable and whether the application effect is good in combination with the system business scenario, user scope and system architecture diagram. It also checks the running status of system components and log access records in time and provides specific reasons and suggestions for problem rectification. The second-line operation and maintenance of data resources monitors the convergence, use and security process of six types of data resources, namely, judicial trial, judicial management, judicial research, judicial personnel, information data and external data. It grasps whether the growth of data resources is stable and whether the quality is up to standard through the convergence status, change trend and quality statistics. Whether the data are truly used is judged by

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the number and quantity of shared exchanges, and the security status of data resources is understood through the backup status and verification status. The second-line operation and maintenance of information security always pays attention to the security status of network boundaries, the security of business wall channels, the rectification of application system vulnerabilities, and the status of network attacks through the operation and maintenance monitoring platform and makes preliminary warnings and positions possible security risks. On the basis of normal operation monitoring, second-line operation monitoring also needs to increase the application effect monitoring of information systems, that is, the experience monitoring of various users, which requires second-line operation and maintenance to carry out routine inspection of each module and function of the application system in addition to tool monitoring and to carry out intensive and continuous in-depth operation. From the user’s point of view, we can fully understand whether the system has such breakdowns as carton, response delay, cumbersome operation, even blank pages and open failures, and record the inspection and experience results in time. For the modules and subsystems with many problems reported by the users, second-line operation monitoring can grasp the real running status of the systems through the comparative analysis of users’ experience and monitoring results. An understanding of the real experience of users in using the system can provide accurate data support and an analysis basis for the improvement of the effectiveness of information application. III.

Analysis of Operation Quality and Efficiency

Generally, operation and maintenance support and operation monitoring are a series of work, such as prediction, discovery, processing and response, which are implemented around the current state of information operation, while quality and efficiency analysis is a summary analysis and quality and efficiency evaluation of the contents of operation and maintenance support and operation monitoring from the perspective of the capability of information elements to support business, proposing solutions. It is a deep exploration and practice of the overall control of information operation. The content of operation and maintenance support services and operation monitoring includes all aspects, and the quality and efficiency analysis is the summary of the data level and the analysis and summary of the potential rules behind the data, which also involves all levels of information operation. Generally, the quality and efficiency analysis data include not only information operation performance data but also user data and business data. According to the different focuses of quality and efficiency analyses at different stages, quality and efficiency analyses are usually carried out from the time dimensions of day, week and month. Daily quality and efficiency analysis can be called daily report, which is a summary and analysis of the work and problems arising in the day, including the date, the completion of the work of the day, the existing problems, and the matters to be dealt with tomorrow. For the operation and maintenance of infrastructure, application systems, data resources, information security, operation and maintenance management and other aspects, the core content of the daily report will vary with the focus of work. The daily report on infrastructure mainly focuses on the breakdown handling of

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hardware equipment, dynamic environment of computer room, weak current equipment, and desktop terminal, on the technical support for meetings, and use and allocation of resources. The daily report on the application system focuses more on the handling of system breakdowns, the results of system performance monitoring, the user access to the system, and the results of manual experience. Daily reports on data resources mainly focus on the changes in various types of data in the data resource catalog, the transfer of data resources, and the improvement of data quality. Daily reports on information security mainly focus on the summary and analysis of the handling of security incidents, the operation status of security equipment or software, and the compliance of user operations. The daily report on operation and maintenance management focuses on the analysis of work order acceptance, processing, follow-up and other matters on that day and analyzes the reasons for the problems reported by users or the time-consuming work order solution on that day. Weekly quality and efficiency analysis is a weekly report that summarizes and analyzes the major issues of operation and maintenance of high quality and efficiency and the operation of information technology in a week, summarizing the completion of key work in this week and making plans for the work in the next week. In terms of weekly reports on infrastructure, we should focus on the analysis of resource utilization, especially the operation indicators of alarm equipment and high-load equipment, and analyze potential dangers. In the aspect of weekly reports on application systems, the response time and user behavior of the core application system are analyzed, and the system operation situation is checked from the perspective of system performance and application effectiveness. In terms of weekly reports on data resources, the increment and backup of data resources are the main focus, and the reasons for abnormal data increments and failure to back up in time are analyzed. In terms of the weekly report on information security, the operation of security equipment and the compliance of terminal use are focused on, and the security status of information operation is judged basically. In addition, it is necessary to classify the acceptance of operation and maintenance work orders within a week, determine the focus of work order problems within the week, and put forward relevant suggestions and opinions on the problems existing in the process of information operation. The monthly quality and efficiency analysis can be regarded as a physical examination report on the information operation of the smart court, which consists of eight parts, including the overall situation, the operation quality and efficiency of five aspects of high quality and efficiency operation and maintenance, the existing problems and suggestions for promotion, the appendix, etc. Usually, the second-line operation and maintenance personnel combine the monitoring results of operation and maintenance monitoring tools and the results of manual experience of the system to summarize the trend of information operation data in five aspects of operation and maintenance of high quality and efficiency in the same month and compare and analyze them from the perspective of availability, being easy to use and effectiveness according to the quality and efficiency operation index system. Availability is mainly considered from the perspective of the normal operation of informatization, including breakdown, network connection and disconnection, data size and growth, availability status of security equipment, and network access control. From the perspective of

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being easy to use, whether the user needs are met or not is the focus, including resource utilization, bandwidth utilization, system response time, the proportion of slow operations, data backup coverage, network attack and defense status, and vulnerability rectification. Effectiveness is mainly considered from the perspective of whether digitalization truly solves the practical problems of the people’s court’s business operation, such as resource allocation, user visits, operation times, and data sharing and exchange times. In addition to the detailed analysis of the monthly content, it is also necessary to analyze the historical trend on a monthly basis, especially through comparison with the data of the last month and of the same period last year, to analyze the changing trend of the quality and efficiency of informatization operations, to make a comprehensive assessment of the current situation of informatization operations and to analyze and solve the problems exposed in that month. It presents the role and problems of the construction of a smart court information system in an all-round and three-dimensional way.

8.2 Visual Management Platform A visual management platform is the main supporting tool for the operation and maintenance of high-quality and efficiency. It is the basic requirement of advanced operation and maintenance management systems to use visualization technology to intuitively display the system operation status and support operation and maintenance services. The operation and maintenance of high quality and efficiency focuses on the application effectiveness of information systems, so it is necessary to fully demonstrate the application effectiveness of various users while reflecting the operation status. Figure 8.1 shows the system architecture of the visual management platform for high quality and efficiency operation and maintenance management in the smart court, also known as the architecture of the platform of the eye of the law. To fully support the high quality and efficiency operation and maintenance services and the analysis of the quality and efficiency of normal operation, the eye-of-the-law Platform possesses the following characteristics. First, it is comprehensive, which reflects the quality and efficiency of information system operation according to information metrics such as breadth, meticulousness, continuity, richness, volume, delay, universality, authenticity and adaptability, as well as smart court evaluation indicators. Second, it is objective, connecting all information infrastructure, application systems, data resources, network security equipment and software as much as possible, directly collecting all kinds of objective parameters that can reflect the operation status and quality, and avoiding the influence of subjective factors. Third, it is real-time, fully collecting the operation parameters of various information systems in real time, supporting the evaluation and judgment of the current working state of the system and timely early warning, and facilitating the accurate analysis of the interaction mechanism of each part in the retrospective process. Fourth, it is visible, through pages, graphics, tables, data and other forms, that the operation status and quality of systems and equipment at all levels can be intuitively displayed, and

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Fig. 8.1 Architecture the eye-of-the-law platform system

the status of facilities, places, equipment or application software can be explored according to user needs in as much detail as possible. Fifth, it is synthetic, presenting the overall picture of the information system work through the large screen display, supporting the retrieval of any local state that needs attention to facilitate collective research and analysis on the quality and efficiency of the system operation and on the causes and consequences between the various components. Sixth, it is distributive, which supports the terminal of the operation and maintenance station to display the

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operation status of the system or equipment that needs to be considered to monitor the operation details of each part according to the division of responsibilities and regularly form detailed reports on operation quality and efficiency. Seventh, it is dynamic, which can preserve, accumulate and show the dynamic changes and development trends of various operating states according to time periods and support the use of mathematical statistics methods to carry out the overall factor analysis of various parameters, such as extreme values, mean values and variances. Eighth, it is intelligent, supporting quick access to the graphical interface that users need to enter through voice access, fuzzy recognition, intelligent push and other ways to and solving the problem of inconvenience in accessing the vast system layer by layer. I.

Visualization of Infrastructure Operation Quality and Efficiency

The infrastructure in the construction of smart courts mainly includes host equipment, network equipment, storage equipment, security equipment, audio and video equipment and facilities for special places, which are the support for the construction of the whole smart court. Its operation status, quality and efficiency directly determine whether the information system operates normally; therefore, it is also the focus of monitoring and visualization of the eye-of-the-law platform. The visual presentation of infrastructure operation quality and efficiency mainly includes the following aspects. First, it is the presentation of network topology and connectivity, which dynamically and intuitively displays the architecture overview of network topology and network connectivity through real-time mapping of connected GIS map components and distinguishes network connectivity status with graphical color marks, reminding the operation and maintenance personnel to repair the interrupted network in time. The second is the presentation of resource utilization, which presents the CPU, memory and disk utilization of the host, storage, network and other equipment in the form of a list form and the historical change of resource utilization in the form of a trend chart. The granularity of the graph can be refined to hours, days, weeks and months so that the high and low load utilization of equipment can be seen at a glance, which is convenient for the timely allocation of resources, avoiding the waste of resources or the slow or even failure of business operations due to insufficient resources. The third is the presentation of bandwidth usage, which is presented in the form of an indicator panel, including the real-time utilization rate, historical utilization rate, uplink and downlink usage ratio, trend analysis, and port traffic, providing accurate data for operation and maintenance personnel to obtain knowledge of the carrying capacity of network equipment and to optimize the network system. The fourth is the presentation of breakdown conditions, including the location, time, and causes of breakdown equipment and alarm conditions that do not occur but exceed the health threshold. In addition to real-time visual presentation, breakdowns and alarms need to be immediately sent to operation and maintenance personnel in the form of short messages to check and deal with breakdowns and alarms in time and shorten the failure duration as much as possible. This can ensure the normal operation of the business system. Fifth is the presentation of the access and use of the dispatched tribunals and science and technology courts, which presents the monitoring access and network connectivity of the dispatched tribunals in the form of pie

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charts and double-ring pie charts, as well as the monitoring access and court details of the science and technology courts. Dispatched tribunals are mainly set up by basic people’s courts according to region, population and case conditions to provide litigation convenience for the public and alleviate the burden of litigation for the masses. They are the last part of the construction of smart courts. Science and technology courts are important facilities to support court trial activities, judicial publicity and supervision by means of information technology. The monitoring and presentation of the operation quality and efficiency of the two provide the most intuitive, concrete and comprehensive evidence for us to grasp the operation status of the front-line judicial places in the national courts for the first time. II.

Visualization of Application System Operation Quality and Efficiency

The visualization of the operation quality and efficiency of the application system is the core content of the operation monitoring and presentation of the eye-of-thelaw platform. The smart court application system includes six types of application systems: smart service, smart trial, smart execution, smart management, judicial openness and other application systems. The visualization of the application system operation quality and efficiency makes the operation of these six types of systems clear at a glance. At present, the number and proportion of application systems online are presented in the form of a distributed pie chart, and the system accessing the eyeof-the-law platform is presented in the form of a line graph. The application system list is presented in the form of a list. Click on the corresponding system, and there will be the presentation of the system operation indicators in the form of indicator panel. Click on the corresponding indicator, and the trend analysis of each indicator will be presented. Ideally, the operation performance data of the application system should be accessed by directly collecting system logs to minimize manual intervention, objectively and comprehensively reflecting the operation status and operation behavior records of the system, and presenting the performance and use effectiveness of the system for the first time. However, due to the numerous types of information systems, different log formats, incomplete records and frequent interruptions, it is difficult to adopt a unified method of log docking. Therefore, it generally settles for using data dial tests and other methods, which can test the response of the system, supplemented by some log records and manual experience data as verification support. For a full range of log monitoring record analysis, more work needs to be done. The visual presentation of the operation quality and efficiency of the application system mainly focuses on the following aspects. The first is the system continuity. With a click on the application name in the application system form, there will be the system failure time, failure frequency, alarm time and alarm causes in the form of an indicator data list, and the failure rate, failure frequency, failure duration and alarm frequency presented in the form of a trend chart. These data lists and trend charts objectively show whether the system is in normal operation and whether there are hidden dangers behind operation. The second is the system response, which shows the response time and the change in the proportion of slow operations in the form of trend analysis and shows the ranking of slow operations and the corresponding

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functional modules in the form of a combination of histograms and line graphs, serving as a reference for measuring the user’s experience to remind the operation and maintenance personnel to investigate, optimize and deal with the slow response modules in a timely manner. The third is the system access situation, including the number of visitors, the number of operations, and the degree of application. It objectively reflects the characteristics of the system that has been put into operation in a specific period of time, such as how many users, when there are more users and when there are fewer users, and provides data support for system optimization, performance improvement and business demand updates. The fourth is the amount of business flow. According to the type of business carried by each system, different types of business flow are distinguished, such as the amount of document flow or case handling, directly reflecting the business functions and use needs of the system. III.

Visualization of the Quality and Efficiency of Data Resource Operation

Judicial data are the basic way of expressing information in an application system and are also a valuable resource generated in the operation of smart courts. Visualization of the quality and efficiency of data resource operation enables data managers and decision analysts to intuitively feel the changing trend, security situation and application quality and efficiency of these valuable assets, mainly in the form of acceleration balls, histograms, etc. A group of indicator data of a class of objects is presented on a map in the form of a histogram through a GIS class component. The visual presentation of the operation quality and efficiency of data resources mainly includes the following aspects. The first is the data resource catalog, including presenting the composition and integrity of the data resource catalog in the form of pie charts, displaying the size of each type of data in the form of histograms, and describing the increment of data resources in line graphs. The second is data quality, which presents data quality in the form of trend charts, including the results of quality inspection indicators of cases, documents, files, archives and other data, whether they can be opened normally, and shows the trend of data quality in the form of a time axis, reflecting whether the data are accurate, whether it can restore the actual operation of judicial business, and whether it is available. The third is data backup, including backup cycle, coverage, capacity growth, data verification, etc. A pie chart is more suitable for the description of data backup to judge whether data resources have strong data recovery capability in the face of security risks. The fourth is data sharing, including the amount of data calls, call distribution, sharing and exchange times, to show whether the data resources are in the state of an activated application with the historical trend chart. IV.

Visualization of Network Security Situation

Network security situation visualization is mainly integrated with the interface of the security monitoring platform to manage and display the data related to the information security system of the five major network systems. Its presentation mode is to present security attack events in the form of a radar scanning chart, to present an attack summary in the form of an indicator panel and to present security performance

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in the form of a rose diagram. The display content is mainly reflected in the following aspects. The first is the security topology, which focuses on the security operation of the whole network system. Through the comprehensive calculation and analysis of the operation status of security equipment, the number and level of alarms, the connectivity of security equipment, the compliance of terminal equipment and the number of security incidents, the information security situation score of each network system is formed, which intuitively reflects the overall information security situation. The second is security quality and efficiency. Through centralized collection of log data of various security devices and systems, log compliance is reflected in an automated way, the user behavior analysis is supported, and the security audit, hierarchical alarm of events, rule invocation, fault location, etc. are realized to visualize the real-time display of the information system security situation. The third is the security attack situation, a real-time dynamic display of the current attack situation of each network application system. The total number of times in the month and the ring ratio information are realized. The fourth is the number of harmful program events, the rolling display of data leakage events, equipment viruses, and high-risk vulnerabilities and other information, and the results of the comparison between these data and historical data are highlighted. V.

Visualization of Operation and Maintenance Situation

Since there are many channels of operation and maintenance services, such as telephone, CoCall, system problem feedback interface, APP for operation and maintenance, WeChat, and QQ, the problems involved include desktop terminals, servers, system performance, account passwords, and use consultation. The channels are scattered in different regions, networks and systems and are complex and related to each other. Unified control and display is an effective way to understand the implementation of operation and maintenance support and potential problems. At present, the operation and maintenance is uniformly scheduled and displayed through the operation and maintenance service desk. After receiving the relevant problems, the system currently used by the user or the problem object pointed to is intelligently identified, and the corresponding operation and maintenance engineer is designated. The operation and maintenance engineers log into the service desk work order system. The engineers will see the list of problems to be dealt with and then will deal with each problem within the schedule time. The processed results will be returned to the user, and the user will evaluate the satisfaction of operation and maintenance services. The operation and maintenance service desk, as a submodule of the eyeof-the-law platform, covers the full record of the operation and maintenance service processing procedure, including work order entry, work order allocation, work order processing tracking, and work order knowledge base. It is presented in the form of a view carousel and list. The main contents of the visual display of operation and maintenance include the following aspects. The first is the relevant situation of work order processing. The pie chart can be used to display the type and distribution of work orders. The trend chart is used to describe the number of work orders, the on-time resolution rate, the

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processing time and its comparison with history to intuitively show the response and closed-loop processing of problems in the construction and operation of the current smart court. The second is the work order knowledge base, which mainly extracts and summarizes knowledge items from the operation and maintenance work orders, solidifies the knowledge system of operation and maintenance services, gradually forms the operation and maintenance knowledge map, supports knowledge retrieval, knowledge classification and list display, provides experience and knowledge support for the rapid processing of operation and maintenance matters, and contributes to high quality and efficiency in the operation and maintenance of systems. The third is the management of operation and maintenance personnel, which objectively displays the structure of operation and maintenance personnel, division of work, contact information, completion of personal operation and maintenance matters, and operation records so that the operation and maintenance work can be supervised and assessed by users in an open and transparent way. VI.

Visual Interface for Voice Scheduling

The visual management platform supports the comprehensive operation monitoring and presentation of the five network infrastructures, application systems, data resources, information security and operation and maintenance management of the smart court. The platform integrates the emergency management and control platform, audio and video management platform, data backup console and operation and maintenance service desk, possessing a five-level view that can be drilled down step by step for detailed presentation. However, it is inconvenient for users to use page switching layer by layer in a very large system. This problem can be solved by voice scheduling, which is also an important part of the intellectualization of the eye-of-the-law platform. The visual interface for voice scheduling directly cuts into the graphical interface required by users in the platform through personnel voice commands and supports automatic matching of scheduling content through keyword voice commands. The platform responds intelligently to push scheduling results in seconds so that users’ needs can be presented in real time. At the same time, the visual management platform can help users quickly grasp important details while monitoring in an all-around way. Through the combination of voice menu and demand parameters, the voice scheduling content realizes the scheduling of various monitoring results, functions, operation menus and interfaces of the platform, ranging from the network topology and connectivity of the courts at all levels to the connectivity of the dispatched tribunals and the trial pictures of the science and technology courts. In addition, it can also support cross-platform scheduling. Interface scheduling of audio and video management platforms, data backup consoles, etc. is realized through the eye-of-the-law platform.

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8.3 Report on Operation Quality and Efficiency The report on the operation quality and efficiency is a comprehensive reflection of the operation quality and efficiency of the smart court information system, and it is the concern of the system engineering promoters. The data resources of the operation quality and efficiency report mainly come from the eye-of-the-law platform, and some of the data materials, especially the content related to the user’s application experience, need to be clicked, estimated and loaded manually. Whether it is automatic collection or simulated user experience, data collection is realized entirely through normal and uninterrupted accumulation, which can support the objective evaluation of the quality and efficiency of information system operation. The operation quality and efficiency report of the whole system comes from the quality and efficiency analysis of various information systems. There are a large number of information infrastructure, business applications, data resources, network security and operation and maintenance systems in courts above the high level. The operation quality and efficiency of each part directly or indirectly affect the relevant information measurement and construction indicators of the smart court. It is necessary to promote the quality and efficiency analysis of each system through a comprehensive, systematic, targeted and constantly developing analysis model and structure level. At the same time, attention to the analysis of the causal relationship among the components is needed, and the analysis of the operation quality and efficiency of the whole system is supported. Long-term quality and efficiency reports are rooted in daily, short-cycle quality and efficiency analysis. For every important system and facility, a normalized quality and efficiency analysis and reporting mechanism should be established. Through the accumulated research and analyses, we can truly grasp the operation law of the system, understand the key points of the state that need to be considered, and form high-quality monthly and long-term analytic reports through standardized daily and weekly reports. This is not only the need to fully understand and master the application effect of the smart court system but also the only way to encourage research and development manufacturers to continue to pay attention to the users’ sense of acquisition and satisfaction of their own product. It is the only way to constantly find problems, solve problems and improve product quality. The operation quality and efficiency report should not only fully reflect the positive application effect of the whole system but also help carry forward the achievements and make further efforts. We should also adhere to the principle of problem orientation and accurately reflect the key problems to make up for the shortcomings. At the same time, we must highlight the key points, come straight to the point, and avoid being trapped in the “running account” of red tape because of the huge scale and complex structure of the information system. I.

Comprehensive Analysis of Quality and Efficiency

The comprehensive analysis of quality and efficiency in the report summarizes the current information operation situation of the smart court, analyzes the existing problems, predicts the next operation trend, and puts forward suggestions, which is the

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main content of the whole report. First, the comprehensive analysis of quality and efficiency should summarize the data source of the operation quality and efficiency report, indicating whether it comes from the visual operation and maintenance platform or from the testing experience of some core application systems by simulating user scenarios and thus indicating the objective degree of the whole operation quality and efficiency analysis. Second, the comprehensive analysis of quality and efficiency needs to summarize the monitoring scope of the visual operation and maintenance platform because this is not only an important matter that needs to be promoted and continuously considered by the quality and efficiency operation and maintenance but also an important prerequisite for reflecting the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the operation quality and efficiency analysis. Last but not least, the comprehensive analysis of quality and efficiency needs to highly summarize the operation quality and efficiency of infrastructure, application systems, data resources, information security, and operation and maintenance management. It should take the application system as the main line and conduct correlation analysis through the correlation of the application system and infrastructure resources supporting it, business data flow generated in system operation, and system access security. The quality and efficiency of the whole information operation is evaluated. The main problems and risks of the information operation are explored, and targeted measures and suggestions for the continuous improvement of the whole information system are put forward according to the order of priority. II.

Analysis of Quality and Efficiency of Infrastructure Operation

The scope of infrastructure quality and efficiency analysis covers the host equipment, network equipment, storage equipment, computer room dynamic ring, transmission equipment and internetwork switching equipment in the court’s proprietary cloud, open cloud and classified cloud environment. The analysis report aims to mainly analyze and summarize the information indicators, such as operation status, connectivity status, resource utilization and resource allocation, combined with the characteristics of the carrying business. It uses periodic data trends and correlation analysis to summarize the operation and efficiency of infrastructure and estimates whether infrastructure can be used from relevant indicators such as equipment failure and network interruption. It assesses whether it is useful from relevant indicators such as resource utilization and bandwidth utilization and evaluates whether it is useful from resource allocation to deepen the study on abnormal data and determine the root cause of the problem, proposing a corresponding solution. The infrastructure quality and efficiency analysis includes the following aspects. The first is the operation status and breakdown analysis. The operation status of various types of infrastructure is analyzed, with the analysis of infrastructure faults as the focus. The fault phenomenon is described. The processing process is recorded. The root cause of the problem is located, and the impact of the fault is analyzed. In addition, whether the stability, availability and reliability of the equipment are up to the standard is judged, and the recent infrastructure fault rate is analyzed to determine whether the overall operational stability of the infrastructure is improved or deteriorated. The second is the analysis of resource utilization and load, which involves the peak utilization

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and average utilization trend of CPU, disk and memory resources of infrastructure hosts, storage, network and other equipment. The thresholds for the resource load of various types of equipment are set. High-load equipment exceeding the threshold is focused on. According to the trend of resource usage and the analysis of potential faults in the carrying business, it is suggested to expand and adjust resources in time to avoid equipment downtime caused by excessive resource load. At the same time, equipment with loads that are too low should also be analyzed to determine whether the equipment resources are fully utilized, and equipment with long-term low load operation should be recycled or reduced to give full play to the efficiency of equipment resources. The third is network bandwidth analysis, which considers the trend of network bandwidth utilization at all levels of the court and the business development of the courts in each jurisdiction. An overall analysis of the differences between working hours and full-time bandwidth utilization is conducted to determine whether the current network bandwidth resources can meet business needs and whether there is a waste of bandwidth resources. The fourth is the analysis of resource allocation. The statistical analysis of the resource allocation rate and resource utilization rate of each resource pool of the court’s proprietary cloud and open cloud is conducted. The analysis of the saturation of existing resources is conducted based on the business carrying capacity of each resource pool, and the allocation suggestions for the shortage of resources, as well as the suggestions for hardware allocation or application system resource integration, are proposed. Fifth is the analysis of the connectivity of the dispatched tribunals and the science and technology courts. The trend comparison and analysis of the monitoring coverage, network connectivity, monitoring coverage and court activity rate of the dispatched tribunals are conducted, and the implementation of the court’s “one network” office case handling and the application of smart courts in basic people’s courts and dispatched tribunals are judged. At the same time, it provides data support for court inspection and trial supervision. III.

Analysis of Operation Quality and Efficiency of Application System

Application system operation quality and efficiency analysis requires in-depth analysis of application system performance and user behavior through massive and multidimensional data to evaluate application system operation quality and efficiency. The data source is mainly based on the visual operation and maintenance platform. Some data related to user application experience need to be obtained through manual click experience and loading. Generally, it mainly evaluates whether the application system can be used from the relevant indicators of system failure, whether it is good to use from the relevant performance indicators of system response time and slow operation proportion, and whether it can be effective from the relevant effectiveness indicators of user visits and operation times. The first is the analysis of the operation status and failure of the application system. The analysis of the continuity of each application system and of the overall stability of the application system are conducted based on aspects including the system failure rate, failure frequency, failure duration, and number of systems involved in the trend, all of which are calculated based on the monthly period. The specific breakdown system is located, and the fault phenomenon, fault causes, impact scope and treatment methods are analyzed. Feasible opinions

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and suggestions for operation and maintenance support services are provided. The second is the application system performance analysis, which analyzes the change trend of the response time of each dimension and module of the application system and the proportion of slow operations. According to the “2–5–8 principle” of the response time of the application system (when the user’s system operation can be responded to within 2 s, the system response will be considered very fast. When the user receives a response after 2–5 s, he or she will feel that the response speed of the system is acceptable. When the user receives a response within 5–8 s, he or she will feel that the response speed of the system is very slow, but it is barely acceptable. When the user still cannot obtain a response after more than 8 s, he or she will feel that the system performance is very bad and unbearable), whether the application system performance meets the user’s daily work requirements is judged, whether the system with poor performance is gradually optimized, and the reasons for the sudden increase in response time and slow operation are verified and analyzed in a timely manner. Improvement suggestions for the application system with poor performance are put forward. The third is the analysis of application system efficiency. Through the analysis of the number of system users, visits, operation times, user distribution, business data flow and other aspects, when the number of system visits and operation times continue to rise, it shows that the efficiency of the application system continues to improve. When the distribution of users is not balanced. This shows that the application and promotion of the application system need to be strengthened or that the system does not meet the needs of some users. At the same time, it is necessary to judge the impact of the increase in system users on performance by combining user usage and system response time and provide data support for system optimization from the perspective of in-depth analysis of system user experience and convenience of business development. IV.

Quality and Efficiency Analysis of Data Resource Operation

The information data of the smart court cover all aspects of the business operation of the people’s court. The quality and efficiency analysis of data resources operation mainly evaluates whether the data resources can be used from the relevant indicators of data size, growth rate and quality, whether they are easy to use from the relevant indicators of data backup coverage rate and backup growth rate, and whether they are useful from the number of data sharing and exchange. The first is the analysis of the data resource catalog. Through the statistical analysis of the data size and incremental trend of six categories of data resources, the hidden dangers in the process of data resource convergence can be found in advance, and timely solutions can be taken to ensure the stable growth of data resources. For example, if the data volume of electronic file data has increased significantly for several months in a row, it is necessary to consider the expansion of the corresponding data storage space. The amount of data in judicial documents has decreased sharply, so it is necessary to analyze the accuracy of data resources and check whether there is data loss. The second is data quality analysis. Quality inspection rules, quality indicators and thresholds for cases are set for documents, files and other data. The reasons for data that fail to meet the preset indicators are analyzed. Suggestions for improvement are

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put forward, and data rectification is urged to ensure the accuracy and availability of data. The third is data backup analysis. The trend of backup coverage, the trend of data backup increment, the way and cycle of data backup, and data verification are focused on, such as whether the amount of trial execution data backup is growing steadily, whether the local, remote, online and offline backup methods meet the requirements, and whether the backup data can be effectively restored to the production environment to determine the potential security of data resources. The fourth is data application analysis. Data application is mainly reflected in data sharing and exchange, focusing on the analysis of the number of sharing and exchange, the trend of the total amount of data calls, the number of calls from various units within the court system and external units, and the distribution of calls from various interfaces to find anomalies in the process of data application. For example, if a certain type of data is only used by some courts, it is necessary to consider the application and promotion of data. If the amount of data sharing and exchange decreases significantly, it is necessary to consider whether the interface is abnormal and whether the service is interrupted to provide a reference for the promotion of data sharing and exchange applications so that the huge data resources can become live data that can provide services for the construction of smart courts. V.

Analysis of Network Security Situation

The network security situation analysis of information security operation quality and efficiency mainly evaluates whether the system can be used from the relevant indicators of network isolation exchange, firewall strategy matching, security equipment availability, system security evaluation, terminal security software installation coverage, and network access control coverage. It evaluates whether it is easy to use based on the success rate of network attack and defense, the number of harmful program events, the number of vulnerabilities, the compliance of log retention, and the number of illegal operations. On the one hand, it is the analysis of security protection situation, which mainly analyzes the basic measures in information security protection, including the analysis of the qualification of key application systems in the evaluation of classified network security protection up to now, the security of crossnetwork information exchange boundary, the security domain boundary of business system, the security of management channel, the matching situation of business needs and security policies, and the coverage of terminal security management and control. The analyses accurately assess the current security assurance capability for key information infrastructure, threats and risk vulnerabilities faced by information systems, as well as the possibility of security incidents. The causes of possible security vulnerabilities are accurately located, and rectification plans are formulated. On the other hand, it is the analysis of the security operation situation. The routine vulnerabilities, attacks, threats and other hidden dangers are analyzed in the current information operation process of smart courts. Terminal and server virus incidents, worm incidents, Trojan horse incidents, botnet incidents, mixed program attacks, malicious code incidents embedded in web pages and other harmful programs are analyzed. Rectification of high-risk vulnerabilities of core application systems, regular statistics of compliance rectification of security log retention, and timely discovery and

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location of illegal operations and abnormal access accounts are performed. Rectification suggestions are put forward. In-depth analysis of network attacks, information destruction incidents, information content security incidents, disaster incidents and other security incidents is conducted, and corresponding security protection measures are proposed. VI.

Analysis of Operation and Maintenance Situation

Operation and maintenance is the main content of the high quality and efficiency operation and maintenance system, which concerns the quality, efficiency and user satisfaction of the operation and maintenance support service. Its situation analysis summarizes the problems and effectiveness of the operation and maintenance service operation as a whole, provides multidimensional reference information for the overall quality of the operations and maintenance service, locates the key concerns in the operations and maintenance service work and the weak links in the current work, and takes targeted measures to continuously improve the quality of operation and maintenance services. The analysis of operation and maintenance situations mainly focuses on three aspects: the feedback and acceptance of problems in the process of information operation, the distribution of work orders and the processing of work orders. First, the information system has gradually achieved full business coverage from point to area, and the scope of services has become increasingly wider, followed by an increasing number of inquiries and problems. Therefore, with the analysis, the problems raised by users can be properly handled, maximizing the efficiency of the information system, increasing the frequency of use by users and improving work efficiency. The trend of work orders that have been reported or accepted can be analyzed. Thus, an operation and maintenance knowledge base can be formed through the summary of the work orders handled, which provides convenience for operation and maintenance personnel to query knowledge and is conducive to quickly solving front-line problems. Second, through the analysis of the type and quantity of work orders, the problems exposed in the concentration of work order can be located. The utilization and operation status of infrastructure resources in the stage can be summarized. The equipment or areas with frequent problems can be rectified, and the passive way of dealing with faults can be changed into active discovery and solution of hidden dangers, making them run stably at the hardware level. The running status of the application system and the user’s usage can be summarized. The user experience depends on whether the system is easy to use and whether it is stuck. An application system with a large number of work orders is focused on, and the reasons for the breakdowns should be analyzed, fundamentally improving the performance of the application system, increasing user stickiness through smooth and fast services, and improving user satisfaction. The problems related to data resource aggregation, data storage and backup should be summarized, and feasible suggestions for the stable operation of data resources are put forward. The situation of information security operation is analyzed, and the work orders on viruses and attacks are reported to the security manufacturer for countermeasures in time to improve the security performance of the system. Last but not least, the processing of work orders, including indicators such as processing time, timely resolution rate, and

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not timely processing of work orders, etc. are analyzed. The key factors for the long processing time and work orders exceeding the standard processing time are analyzed to seek more efficient processing procedures and methods. The average processing time of each person’s work order is analyzed, and the efficiency and effectiveness of individual operation and maintenance work is evaluated. The responsibility to individuals is implemented, actively solving the problems of users.

8.4 Emergency Response Platform An emergency response platform is an important support tool to implement emergency treatment and maintain the normal operation of the system as far as possible when the system has an accident. With the deepening of the construction of smart courts, information systems have increasingly become an indispensable basic support for the daily operation of courts. Once some key systems have accidents, many businesses and even the overall business will be completely suspended, seriously affecting the normal development of judicial work. In addition, due to the continuous expansion of the system scale and the increasing complexity of technical factors, the reliability, stability and security risks of the system are increasing, and various information systems often cause abnormal accidents due to their own failures, viruses or hacker attacks. Therefore, the function and mission of the emergency response platform is to formulate a stylized emergency response mechanism for the possible accident modes of some key systems and to minimize losses and maintain normal operation as much as possible by means of fault isolation, hot standby switching and emergency takeover using the pre-established redundant backup environment. Building an emergency response platform requires the following three aspects. The first is the full prediction of the accident mode. Due to the constraints of technical level, impact scope and investment cost, not all systems and accidents need or can obtain effective emergency response. Only for several key systems with a large impact scope can we take targeted measures under the condition of fully understanding the mechanism of accident occurrence and recovery. As the accident mode is analyzed more comprehensively, emergency treatment can be obtained in a timelier, correct, and effective manner. Second, it is necessary to establish an efficient disposal procedure. When an accident occurs, the state of the information system may change rapidly. Only through the pre-established and mostly automated disposal procedure can the accident be accurately identified, the urgent and complex situation be dealt with in time, and the most reasonable way be chosen to reduce the possible consequence of the accident. Third, building an emergency response platform requires relying on the redundant backup environment. After the accident of the monorail information system without redundant backup, only the necessary cutting and isolation measures can be taken to limit the expansion of the accident scope in time. For important information systems, multitrack operation mechanisms such as channel redundancy, dual hot standby and data hot standby should be established in advance to support backup takeover quickly and ensure the normal operation of

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the system in case of an accident. Fourth, it is necessary to balance the input and output scientifically. The emergency response platform is different from the general information system. Its scale, function and performance depend on the frequency of accidents and technical conditions. It is necessary to strike a compromise between the input cost and the expected utility and strive to win the best accident disposal effect through a smaller cost. I.

System Architecture

The emergency response platform is composed of the emergency command system and the unified monitoring platform. The system architecture is shown in Fig. 8.2. The emergency command system is composed of multiple emergency all-inone machines, in which the built-in KVM virtualization technology is adopted to ensure the business continuity and data security of the core and important application systems through two modes of takeover and exercise in cases of accidents. The emergency command system is mainly used in three aspects. First, before the new functions of the business system go online, it provides a simulation test environment to complete the verification of the new functions and patch upgrade process of the test application to improve the stability of the application system upgrade and, to a large extent, to avoid the problems caused by blind launching of new functions and patching. At the same time, it reduces the waste of manpower, time and resources caused by the building of the system test environment. Second, in the operation of the business system, when the application system protected by the emergency command system breaks down and causes business interruption, it can respond to the crises and take over the broken-down application system at the first time, starting the simulation environment of the emergency command system as a “substitute”, accessing the business network to temporarily replace the original system server, continuing to provide services for users, and ensuring business continuity. After the brokendown application system is repaired and can be used normally after verification, the business is switched back to the original application system by the emergency command system. The business data generated in the operation of the “surrogate” system will be written back to the original server to ensure the integrity and validity of the business data. Third, after the failure of the business system is over, the server state backtracking function of the system is used to assist the application in troubleshooting. The emergency command system can backtrack the server state to any time point within three days. For example, if the application server fails, we can start the simulation server to backtrack to the state before the failure and assist the operation and maintenance team in troubleshooting, optimizing and adjusting it. The unified monitoring platform is closely integrated with the emergency command system. Through the open interface and the standard SNMP protocol, it collects and analyzes basic data (hardware resource information, task information, etc.) on the managed emergency all-in-one machine, stores them in the database, and monitors the emergency command system in real time. When the emergency command system has problems such as hardware failure and abnormal emergency tasks, which will be intuitively displayed on the home page of the monitoring platform, the administrator will be notified at the first time by receiving short messages

8.4 Emergency Response Platform

Fig. 8.2 Emergency response platform architecture

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sent by the platform. In addition, it can effectively locate the fault host and the cause of the fault, solve the fault in a small range of influence or even in the case of “no perception” by the user to ensure the stable operation of the emergency command system. II.

Running Data Synchronization

Among the three functions of the emergency response platform, emergency takeover is the core function. The synchronization of operation data is an important prerequisite in the process of emergency takeover, which refers to the data synchronization between the emergency takeover platform and its supporting system before and after the interruption of the business system. It includes two aspects: the synchronization of business system data to the emergency takeover platform before the start of emergency takeover and the synchronization of business data from the emergency takeover platform to the business system itself after the fault is repaired. Only through perfect data synchronization can we ensure that the original data will not be seriously damaged or lost in case of business system failure, ensure data security and operation continuity, and avoid serious consequences caused by long-term interruption of core service functions. When the business system equipment breaks down, the management console of the emergency command system immediately sends a takeover request to the emergency integrated machine, creates an emergency takeover machine through the KVM virtualization technology, completes the configuration of the network, CPU, memory and other resource parameters of the emergency takeover machine, initiates a real-time data replication task, and synchronizes the business system operation data to the emergency takeover machine in real time. The emergency receiver is connected to the service network to replace the operation of the original service system. After the system failure is eliminated, the incremental data failback operation for data synchronization is started, which includes two failback methods. When the incremental data in the emergency take-over machine are small, the incremental data failback is completed in a remote manner by comparing the attributes of the emergency take-over machine and the original business system data, such as creation time, size, and occupied space. When the incremental data in the emergency takeover machine are large, the management console of the emergency command system sends a real-time recovery or browse recovery request to the emergency all-in-one machine to synchronize the data in the emergency takeover machine to the original business system to complete the incremental data failback. III.

Emergency Response Takeover

Emergency response takeover is the core link to ensure that the business system can operate at the lowest configuration after the failure. To ensure that the failure of the core application system will not affect the business development of the vast number of users, it is necessary to start emergency takeover at the first time after the failure and strive to achieve continuous and stable operation of the business system under the condition that the user is “unaware” or that the scope of failure is minimal. For the specific emergency response takeover, a strict and clear operational procedure needs

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to be implemented. The first is emergency assessment. Not all application systems are enabled to use an emergency takeover response when breakdowns occur. Due to the sudden and uncertain nature of the failure, in line with the principle of dealing with minor problems quickly and reporting major problems in time, targeted assessment should be provided according to the type and level of the failure and the characteristics of the business system. The second is to determine the emergency plan and determine the nodes of the emergency disposal process and the corresponding work contents and implementation responsibilities according to the emergency assessment. The third is emergency resource preparation. To achieve the purpose of timely takeover and rapid recovery, the resources needed for the implementation of the emergency recovery plan are determined and prepared, striving to achieve the greatest results at the lowest cost. The fourth is the implementation of the emergency plan. Simple faults are dealt with in time according to the relevant operating procedures and are reported to the emergency leading group for record. Major failures should be reported to the leading group in time, the level of emergency response should be upgraded, and relevant forces should be coordinated to take measures to avoid the expansion of the scope of the incident. Fifth is business repair. Backup, degraded takeover and other strategies and technical means are used to achieve load resource sharing, online data recovery, compression of business interruption time, data recovery to the original application system server and other major measures. Sixth is the summary and analysis after the emergency response. The experience and shortcomings of the response takeover process are reviewed to incorporate effective treatment methods into the emergency plan and to continuously improve and perfect the existing emergency support service mechanism to enhance the emergency response capability of information system emergencies.

Chapter 9

Guarantee of Policies and Measures

The smart court system project is closely related to the national strategy, judicial system, economic policy, procurement system and many management mechanisms. In addition to the driving force of science and technology, comprehensive policy measures must be guaranteed to move forward and flourish. Major strategies and development plans at the national level, such as comprehensive law-based governance of the country, the innovation-driven development strategy, the strategy for building China into a cyberpower, the big data strategy, the “Internet Plus” plan of action and the new generation of artificial intelligence, have provided strong guidance for the construction of smart courts. To promote the smart court system project, we must adhere to the national strategic leadership and actively strive for policies and fund support for major projects of relevant government departments. In addition, we must strictly abide by the laws and regulations related to network security, informatization and government procurement and ensure the implementation of national policies in all our work. The project of the smart court system is an important part of the work of the people’s court in the new era. A set of policies and regulations must be established in line with the actual situation of the people’s court in terms of organizational system, financial support, capital construction, project management, popularization and promotion, and honest practice in accordance with the requirements of judicial system reform, modernization of judicial system and judicial capacity, providing specific implementation guidelines for the whole life cycle of information construction. China has a vast territory, and the phenomenon of unbalanced development between regions, between urban and rural areas, and between courts at different levels is very prominent. In terms of the construction of the project of the smart court system, for different regions and different courts, scientific measures need to be taken with respect to target requirements, construction deployment, funding and supporting methods according to their respective realities. Efforts should be made to form a supporting system for court informatization policies and measures

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that combines national overall guidance with local characteristics, contributing to mobilizing the enthusiasm of both the central and local governments. The smart court system project is still a project that requires long-term work. With the continuous improvement of the national governance system and governance capacity, the gradual deepening of the comprehensive reform measures of the judicial system, and the rapid development of science and technology, we must use innovative thinking and development vision to continuously promote the relevant policies and measures of information construction to keep pace with the times and make changes according to the situation, contributing to the sustainable development of the smart court.

9.1 Promotion Mechanism The construction of a smart court is a systematic project that requires the participation of all the court staffs of the courts at all levels and provides service for the people of the whole country, and the organization, effort, system and mode of its promotion have a great impact on the construction and application effect. It can be said that the promotion mechanism is more important than the technical factors and is the necessary guarantee for the vigorous development of the smart court system project. It is often said that the construction of informatization is a “senior level of leaderspromoting project”, which fully reflects the key role of senior leaders’ understanding of informatization and its advancement, especially the main leaders. Promoting the project of the smart court system does not require the Party groups and main leaders of courts at all levels to do everything in detail and personally, but it does require them to have a profound understanding of the profound idea of “no modernization without informatization” and to have a deep understanding of judicial reform and informatization construction as an important part of promoting the modernization of judicial system and judicial capacity. Unifying the information understanding of court leaders at all levels, the main objectives of the construction of smart courts in the jurisdiction should be clarified, and various problems encountered in the process of implementation and promotion should be solved. There will be a decisive force to promote the project of smart court systems. The enthusiastic support and active participation of court staffs is an important basic condition for promoting the project of the smart court system. A smart court is the product of the deep integration of modern science and technology and judicial work, with the distinct characteristics of innovation, pioneering spirit and advancement, which inevitably leads to situations that are not compatible with people’s usual thinking and behavior. At the same time, many court information systems are difficult to fully stabilize, reliable and easy to use at the beginning of their application, which undoubtedly brings some difficulties to the majority of court staffs and mass users and, of course, requires the great attention of research and development personnel and rapid improvement. At the same time, it is particularly necessary to organize and mobilize all kinds of users to firmly believe in the correct direction of scientific and

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technological innovation, to correctly understand the gradual process of technological maturity, to actively participate in the process and make suggestions, to make contributions to the continuous improvement of information systems and to form a virtuous circle of research and development, application and improvement. Departments for court information management and personnel for research and development of information technology are the main force to promote the project of the smart court system. Under the leadership of the Party groups of courts at all levels, they should take serving the people, serving the execution of trials, serving judicial management and serving honest justice as their responsibilities, take the initiative and take the responsibility bravely, constantly optimize and improve the organization and management of information construction, try to win the full trust and active support of the court staff and the people, and become the engine and propeller of the smart court system project. I.

Overall Coordination Mechanism

The leading group of network security informatization of the people’s courts is the overall coordinating body for the construction of smart courts. As early as 2002, in the Supreme People’s Court, the Leading Group for Informatization Construction and its Office (Law No. 244 [2002]) was established. In 2017, the Leading Group was renamed the Leading Group for Network Security and Informatization of the Supreme People’s Court, focusing on the long-term development of smart courts, coordinating the major issues of network security and informatization in various fields such as court trial execution, litigation service and judicial management, studying and formulating development strategies, macroplanning and major policies, promoting the construction and application of smart courts and continuously enhancing the ability of information security. Under the leadership of the Supreme People’s Court’s Leading Group for Network Security and Informatization, in all of the local courts, leading groups for network security and informatization have been set up to coordinate the construction and development of smart courts in their jurisdictions. The leaders of the leading groups for network security and informatization work of courts at all levels are generally the principal personnel of the courts, which effectively reflects the key role “chief leader” plays in the construction of smart courts. Practice has proven that an important reason for the remarkable achievements in the construction of smart courts is that the personnel mainly responsible for the informatization of courts at all levels attach great importance to it, take care of it personally and work hard for it. Taking the application of office platforms as an example, the office automation system has already built in many courts to support online drafting, circulation and approval of official documents, which is often referred to as the OA system. However, due to the office habits of some leaders and court staffs, as well as the influence of external units and other factors, the phenomenon of paper document circulation has always existed, which restricts the effectiveness of OA systems. Once the main leaders no longer accept the paper documents submitted by the internal organs, the court OA system can quickly show its role in office, the

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application coverage can be rapidly expanded, and many technical problems of the OA system itself can be continuously improved and perfected in the application. The Leading Group for People’s Court Network Security and Informatization is mainly responsible for the overall coordination of the construction of smart courts in the jurisdiction and at the same level, and it mainly plays an important role in the following aspects. First, it unifies its thinking and understanding, takes the comprehensive law-based governance and the strategy for building China into a cyberpower as the guide, combines the requirements of judicial justice and justice for the people, and puts forward the development direction and layout of the construction and application of smart courts. This can unify the pace and action of the construction and application of smart courts in the jurisdiction. The second is decision-making on key issues. It holds a regular plenary meeting of the leading group to examine the annual key objectives, progress of major tasks and construction plans of major projects in the construction of smart courts in the jurisdiction and to study and make decisions on major issues affecting the construction of smart courts. The third is the review of important documents. Important documents, such as the development plan of court informatization construction and the technical standards of informatization, which affect the overall development of smart courts, should be implemented under the leadership of the leading group for network security and informatization through deployment, consultation, conference deliberation and level-by-level approval. Fourth, it is responsible for the organization and coordination. The members of the leading group include not only the leaders of the court and the information technology department but also the leaders of the filing, trial, execution and packing departments, which can coordinate and promote the construction of smart courts from the aspects of demand, construction, guarantee, application and management. Fifth, it can help the promotion of informatization at different levels. Regular meetings on network security and informatization of the courts under jurisdiction should be organized, the construction and application of smart courts at all levels should be coordinated and deployed, the whole country and courts at different levels should be taken into account, and the responsibility of higher courts for the management and supervision of the informatization construction of lower courts should be strengthened, ensuring the comprehensive development of smart courts. II.

Project Management Mechanism

The construction of a smart court relies on the construction and implementation of a series of information projects. The court informatization project belongs to the category of E-government, and the state has issued relevant laws and regulations on E-government projects, so the construction of smart courts should first follow the requirements of laws, regulations and policy documents for the construction of Egovernment projects. Specifically, the planning, approval, design, construction and acceptance of the project shall comply with the Measures for the Construction and Management of National Government Informatization Projects, the procurement of the project shall comply with the relevant requirements of the Government Procurement Law of the People’s Republic of China, and the performance evaluation of the

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projects shall comply with such requirements as the Opinions on the Performance Evaluation of National E-government Projects. In accordance with the requirements of national policy documents, the people’s courts have also formulated a number of supplementary and detailed management measures, such as the Measures for the Construction and Management of People’s Court Informatization Projects issued by the Supreme People’s Court in April 2017, to further ensure that the construction and implementation of court informatization projects at all levels throughout the country have rules to follow. These management measures mainly play the following roles. First, they can help clarify the task requirements of each stage in the whole life cycle of the project and avoid the lack of key procedure nodes in project construction. For example, archives management is often an important part that is easily neglected in the process of informatization project construction. The management measure stipulates that “archive acceptance is an important part of the final acceptance of informatization projects. Informatization projects that lack the acceptance of archives or fail to pass the acceptance of archives shall not pass the final acceptance”. The second is to clarify the division of responsibilities of the participating departments in the process of project construction. Informatization project construction involves not only the information technology department but also the business department, financial department and audit department. The management measures clarify the specific responsibilities of the participating units at different stages according to the organizational structure of the court. For example, in view of the fact that the business departments often do not pay enough attention to the participation of the project in the demand phase at the early stage of the project, which leads to a large deviation from the actual needs of the business departments after the project is completed and put into use, the management measures stipulate that “the business departments of people’s courts at all levels should actively cooperate with the information departments in project construction, and combine with the practice of trial work, to clarify the project construction objectives. For general projects, special personnel should be designated to be responsible for the collation and confirmation of business needs, and for complex business projects, a joint project team should be formed with the information department.” The third is to clarify the detailed requirements for some key tasks, such as information system operation management measures, operation and maintenance service work norms, data centralized management methods, etc., to guide and standardize the construction and application effectiveness of courts at all levels. In the process of project construction, local courts also need to strictly abide by the relevant laws and regulations of the state and national courts. At the same time, they should further make detailed requirements for management and add special provisions based on the local actuality, take measures that suit local circumstances, and constantly improve the management mechanism of court informatization projects. III.

Publicity and Training Mechanism

To maximize the effectiveness of the application of smart courts, for courts at all levels, publicity, promotion and training exchanges need to be intensified, various publicity and promotion resources should be integrated, such as new media and print

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media, and a multichannel and omni-directional publicity system for the application of court informatization should be established, which can promote and publicize the achievements and application effects of the construction of smart courts to the public, lawyers, legal workers and court staffs of courts at all levels: strengthening the training of the use of judicial execution business applications for court staffs and judges handling cases; strengthening the use of judicial management applications for staff of management departments; and focusing on publicizing pilot demonstration projects and typical application cases with remarkable results. In many years of construction practices, the Supreme People’s Court has formed a multichannel integrated publicity system of “one network, one publication and one WeChat public account”. The “one network” refers to the People’s Court intranet website deployed in the court’s private network and serving the national four-level courts. Offering service for the national four-level court staffs, it provides a news center, authoritative release, work guide and other columns so that the vast number of court staffs can obtain the latest news and information without logging into the Internet news website, promoting the information communication and learning exchange of the national court staffs. One of the most important functions of this website is to collect and link the common application software and data resources of the national courts to facilitate court staffs at all levels to quickly understand and enter the national application systems and familiarize themselves with these systems. The “one publication” refers to the Informatization Work News of People’s Court, and it is mainly aimed at the managerial personnel and informatization staff of the Supreme People’s Court and the High People’s Court. It is compiled and published on a monthly basis, including sections such as wisdom focus, work overview, data observation, extraterritorial observation, academic research, law online and so on, presenting the development of court informatization to the national court staffs in an all-round way. In addition to the domestic situation, it also tracks the practices and policies of foreign countries and regions in the world using information technology to serve judicial work through the extraterritorial observation section, interprets and studies them, helping court leaders and informatization working personnel at all levels to grasp the latest world development trend and learn good construction and development experience from outside China. One WeChat public account refers to the WeChat Public Account entitled “Smart Court in Progress”, which aims at releasing the latest developments in the construction of smart courts and providing interpretations on the latest policies of smart courts to the working personnel for national court informatization and the public. It can be considered the main platform where the national court informatization staff exchange experience, learn from each other and release information. The public account receives contributions from the technical departments of the national courts and the public and publishes at least one graphic message per day and one highlight of information per week according to the quality of the contributions. In the platform, various essay solicitation activities are organized from time to time to gather fresh experience in the construction of smart courts. To unify the construction ideas of smart courts and improve the informatization level of court staffs, the Information Center of the Supreme People’s Court, the National Judges College and the China Justice Big Data Research Institute jointly

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organize informatization training courses with various forms every year. It provides training courses focusing on top-level planning and design of smart courts, introduction to cutting-edge technologies and key special work for working personnel of information management departments, judicial business departments and other management departments of courts throughout the country. In addition, courts at all levels organize targeted training for courts in their jurisdictions every year according to the situation of information construction to help users and builders continuously improve their competence and skills in information construction and application. IV.

Communication and Sharing Mechanism

Influenced by fiscal policy and local characteristic demand, the main body of information construction of courts at all levels is purchased and constructed by local courts according to local budget and demand. Many excellent construction experiences and cases have been formed in the construction practices of courts around the country. Promoting the sharing and exchange of the construction experience of smart courts among local courts is of great significance to improve the effectiveness of court informatization construction and to change the situation of inadequate and imbalanced development. In the past, the courts mainly learned from each other through mutual research and exchanges, and the cost was relatively high. In this regard, the Supreme People’s Court has taken a series of measures to promote the exchange of experience and information sharing of smart court construction around the world. First, a website for information exchange of smart courts is established. A “Smart Court Column” has been set up on the People’s Court’s intranet website to build a learning and communication platform for the construction and application of smart courts across the country. In the column, there is information related to the construction of national smart courts, top-level design documents, conference training materials, standard and normative documents, and the inquiry of cases of smart court construction achievements and information construction suppliers are supported. Taking the supplier information of information construction as an example, the Supreme People’s Court collects the information on the manufacturers who actually undertake the information construction and operation and maintenance projects of the courts from the courts all over the country and provides the brief introduction and product content of the manufacturers, which not only introduces the latest achievements of the construction of smart courts in various places but also promotes the construction of smart courts in various places. It is also convenient for local courts to look up information on various specialized manufacturers specializing in litigation service business applications, trial business applications, execution business applications, network infrastructure, cloud platforms, information operations and maintenance and project supervision according to their needs to build a convenient channel for communication between supply and demand. The second is to set up a smart court laboratory. The Supreme People’s Court has built the National Key Laboratory for Smart courts as a technology integration platform for scientific and technological innovation, experience interaction and exhibition and exchange of courts throughout the country. The Smart Court Laboratory has the main functions, including convergence, integration, display, research and

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development and testing, which can gather the most advanced smart court products, equipment and systems, integrate the latest technological achievements of scientific and technological innovation, and provide convenience for court personnel at all levels to intuitively experience the new technologies, products and systems of smart courts. Third, the informatization experience of smart courts is summed up and promoted. In the construction of a smart court of courts at all levels, many advanced products have not only emerged, but there are also a number of excellent management modes, practical experience and reform modes formed in practice, which is of greater significance for popularization and demonstration. Therefore, the Supreme People’s Court, through various channels such as research, evaluation and communication, has collected excellent experience and practices in the construction of smart courts in various places, and through summarizing and sorting out, it has formed model examples for publicity and promotion to courts throughout the country. Taking the basic and overall work in the construction of synchronous generation and deep application of electronic files as an example, the Supreme People’s Court began to promote this work in the national courts in 2016 and gradually formed the decentralized generation mode of electronic files represented by Hebei Court and the centralized generation mode of electronic files represented by Jiangxi Court in the process of practice. The Supreme People’s Court has conducted in-depth research and summarized the two construction management modes, formed a special report, clarified the working mode, working procedures and main characteristics, and issued guidance to local courts on confirming the appropriate construction mode according to their own reality. V.

Testing and Evaluation Mechanism

Testing and evaluation are necessary steps before the information system is put into operation. Generally, system manufacturers will carry out internal testing of information systems in the process of research and development. To ensure the quality of the system, the Supreme People’s Court also requires that the important information systems of courts at all levels be tested and evaluated by authoritative third-party professional organizations before they go online. The main contents of information system testing and evaluation include functional testing, performance testing and interface testing. Functional testing is mainly aimed at the quality characteristics of the system under testing, such as functional coverage, usability, portability and reliability. The performance test mainly includes functional indicators, load capacity, configuration parameters, concurrent capacity and stability tests. Interface testing should focus on the external interface and architecture of the information system to ensure that the information system can be interconnected with relevant information systems after it is put on line and meet the requirements of information infrastructure environments such as court networks and cloud platforms. Third-party testing and evaluation mainly includes system testing, problem analysis and location, problem rectification and optimization, system architecture testing and evaluation, test report preparation and release, etc. In the process of system testing, the testing organization should design the test scheme, write the test cases,

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and record the defects in the functional and performance testing according to the characteristics of the testing objects. For some business systems with a large number of external interfaces, interface testing should be carried out to ensure the stability and reliability of the system. In the process of problem analysis and location, the testing team shall work with the research and development team to analyze and locate all kinds of function, performance and interface problems found, to confirm the fault phenomenon, to clarify the cause of the problem and to form a problem list. In the process of problem rectification and optimization, we should study and form solutions to all kinds of problems that have been clearly located and supervise the research and development team to complete the system improvement and perfection in time. In the process of system architecture testing and evaluation, the architecture of the testing system should be evaluated to ensure that it meets the overall architecture requirements of relevant information systems, meets the specific support requirements of information infrastructure such as cloud platforms for business systems, and is well prepared for online operation. In the process of testing report preparation and release, the testing unit shall form the testing conclusions of system function, performance and interface according to the evaluation and rectification, prepare the testing report and submit it to the user unit as an important basis for system on-line and acceptance.

9.2 Construction Mode The construction mode of a smart court system project mainly refers to the division of labor of courts at all levels in the construction of various information systems. The available resources and the scope of influence vary with the court level, and the difficulty and requirements of technology research and development of information systems are very different. According to the characteristics of different systems and based on the actual situation of the national courts, choosing the appropriate construction mode is an important factor affecting the promotion of the information system project. In theory, for all information systems of the courts at all levels, the centralized construction mode of unified research and development, unified deployment and unified application is adopted, contributing to the formation of a consistent and standardized system user interface and operation mode, which not only saves many repetitive research and development investments but also facilitates the familiarity of the court staff and the people with the application system. Many vertically managed government departments have adopted a unified model in the construction of Egovernment and have achieved good results, which is worth learning in terms of the construction of the smart court system. Many local courts often call for strengthening national unification in the construction of smart courts and promoting the rapid development of court informatization in all parts of the country, especially in some underdeveloped areas, reflecting the enthusiasm and strong desire of local courts to

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promote the construction of smart courts, which need to be highly valued and actively responded to. In practice, the Chinese government implements the financial policy that the central and local governments have their own budgets and expenditures, and the funds for the informatization construction of the national courts come from the courts at all levels according to the local budgets, bidding and contracts, so it is difficult to solve the problem of funds on the premise of meeting the requirements of relevant laws and regulations by adopting the national unified construction mode for all information systems. In addition, with the deep integration of technology products and business logic, many information systems are becoming increasingly complex. Although one information system can achieve good results in some regional courts, it is not suitable for replication, deployment and promotion to other regions, and it will obtain criticism if it is applied in other regions because the business processes of courts in different regions have different needs for information systems. The other cause for this is insufficiency of technology and human resources of research and development manufacturers, which makes it difficult to expand the application coverage. Furthermore, the informatization construction of courts in China has started unevenly, and there are great differences in the accumulation of resources, funding and application capabilities of courts in different regions. Due to the strong dependence and coordination among various information systems, the unified construction of the whole country will inevitably affect the advanced nature of developed areas and frustrate the enthusiasm of local courts for innovation, thus reducing the overall level of the smart court system project. In summary, the construction mode of the smart court system in China is bound to develop steadily and improve continuously by combining national unification with local innovation. I.

National Unified Construction

National unified construction is an important trend in the construction of smart court information systems, including the following basic modes. First, there is a mode in which the Supreme People’s Court organizes research and development of information systems and promotes system deployment to local courts. For example, the national court execution information system and bankruptcy case management system are business systems with relatively consistent business procedures and highly centralized management requirements from the Supreme People’s Court. Taking the execution information system as an example, to solve the problem of execution management, the Supreme People’s Court presided over the development of a management system for the national court execution case procedure information, which can realize timely detection of problems and warning reminders through the standardized control of 37 process nodes and the dynamic analysis of specific case information. This system has been fully promoted in most courts throughout the country. However, before the unified construction of this system initiated by the Supreme People’s Court, some local courts built a local execution platform and accumulated a large amount of case information. To retain the advantages of this local platform of local courts and link up the old and new systems,

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the Supreme People’s Court still allows some local courts to interconnect with the national unified system through docking and linkage to ensure the unified control of case handling information. The second mode is to entrust and guide the pilot construction of local courts and then gradually promote it to the rest of the courts around the country. For example, the China Mobile Micro Court and Pre-litigation Mediation Platform for National Court Road Traffic Accident Dispute are suitable for information systems that have not yet been widely used in local courts, need the concentration of resources and wisdom to tackle key problems and are suitable for unified services provided by national courts in business. Taking the China Mobile Micro Court app as an example, to meet the overall requirements of mobile interconnection of smart courts, the Supreme People’s Court, together with a high-level research and development team, entrusted the Ningbo Court of Zhejiang Province to develop a mobile micro courts application based on WeChat applets. This application can provide online services such as case filing, evidence exchange, court hearing, service and mediation for the parties. Through the pilot research and development of Ningbo two levels of courts, the technical route and management service mechanism were determined, and after the success of the pilot project, it was gradually promoted to the courts of Zhejiang Province, 14 provinces and municipalities, and 32 provinces and municipalities nationwide, thus forming a situation in which the China Mobile Micro courts app are widely used and fully recognized throughout the country. The third mode is that the Supreme People’s Court constructs the information system and provides system services for the courts at all levels. For example, the big data management and service platform and the voice cloud platform of the People’s Court are centrally deployed in the Supreme People’s Court, and they serve courts at all levels throughout the country. Taking the voice cloud platform of the People’s Court as an example, the system is constructed and centrally deployed in the Supreme People’s Court, which gathered various local dialect speech recognition processing modules and realized centralized training of speech learning. It is docked with the provincial voice cloud platform of local courts and provides text transcription services on demand for science and technology courts, conference venues and voice transcription. Local courts that do not yet have specific voice service capabilities can quickly obtain the most comprehensive smart voice recognition support capabilities. II.

Local Autonomous Construction

Local courts carry out information construction suitable for local courts according to their own business needs and financial conditions, which is the main mode of construction and development of smart court information systems at present, mainly including the following contents. First, the construction of information infrastructure is included. The Supreme People’s Court is responsible for the construction of the internal local area network of the Supreme People’s Court and the first-level wide area network between the Supreme People’s court and high people’s courts. The high people’s court is responsible for the construction of information infrastructure such as networks, computer rooms and cloud platforms within its jurisdiction. Due to the limitations of funds,

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space and manpower, the middle and basic people’s courts generally share the network infrastructure with the high people’s courts directly, and the courts at different levels have completed the construction of information facilities for special purposes, such as litigation service halls, science and technology courts and execution command centers, according to their own needs. Second, the construction of characteristic business applications is included. Local courts carry out the construction of office, case handling, personnel, financial management and other application systems according to their own business needs to support local information applications. Generally, due to the technical threshold and funding requirements, the main business applications, such as office, case handling and litigation services, should be developed and deployed by the high people’s courts for the common use of the courts in the jurisdiction. Some middle and basic people’s courts with strong financial support and technical support can carry out appropriate research and development of characteristic application systems. Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou Internet courts have built Internet-based full-procedure online case handling platforms, and Suzhou courts have built cloud cabinet systems to support the online circulation of electronic files, which are successful examples. Third, the operation and maintenance of information systems is included. Information system operation and maintenance mainly includes network facilities maintenance, terminal maintenance, and application maintenance. Generally, information system operation and maintenance support are provided by who builds the system. Therefore, the operation and maintenance team in local courts is generally managed, coordinated and maintained by the high people’s courts, while the terminal maintenance technicians are from the middle and basic people’s courts. Daily remote support can be provided by the operation and maintenance team of the high people’s court, and on-site support can be carried out when necessary. For local autonomous construction, the Supreme People’s Court mainly achieves unified guidance and overall promotion from three aspects: planning, standards and data. Through the compilation and issuance of top-level design documents such as a five-year development plan and guidance on information construction, the overall deployment of the construction of a national smart court can be realized, and the construction objectives, tasks and implementation routes can be unified. By compiling and issuing information standards, standardizing the construction of information infrastructure, application software and data resources of courts throughout the country, and unifying technical routes, we can lay a foundation for interconnection and data exchange and sharing between systems. Through the centralized management of judicial data resources, the coordination and unification of the underlying logic of business application systems are forcefully realized, and through the centralized quality inspection, processing and analysis of core application data, the data, application and business problems of local courts are found to achieve iterative closed-loop and improvement. III.

Innovative Demonstration Application

In the practice of smart court construction, to adapt to the requirements of reform and the trend of technological development, various new practices, new technologies and

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new applications will inevitably emerge. To make excellent innovative achievements smoothly popularized and applied in a wider range of areas, it is necessary to actively pilot the construction in some areas, fully conduct tests and accumulate experience, and further promote them after forming mature technical products and implementation plans. The innovative demonstration application of smart courts mainly includes pilot projects for reform, scientific and technological innovation and key work. The first is the pilot reform. It mainly comes from the judicial reform tasks of the central and court systems and relies on information technology to support the key judicial reform tasks to achieve better results. For example, to effectively promote the reform of the criminal procedure system centering on trial, the Political and Legal Committee of CPC Central Committee has coordinated and guided the Shanghai Court to take the lead in the pilot research and development of the “Smart Assistant Case Handling System for Criminal Cases” since the beginning of 2017, making full use of modern scientific and technological means such as big data to unify evidence standards and improve the mechanism of evidence collection and examination. In doing so, cross-sectoral online collaboration among public security, procuratorates and courts is realized, providing a demonstration role for the promotion and application of trial-centered litigation system reform throughout the country. The second is the pilot project of scientific and technological innovation. It mainly comes from the key scientific research projects issued by the national and local departments in charge of science and technology. The construction of smart courts will inevitably encounter many key technical difficulties, some of which can be solved through the efforts of system developers in the construction process, and some of the frontier, exploratory and overall major problems are difficult to solve smoothly through ordinary project construction. Since 2016, the Ministry of Science and Technology has vigorously supported scientific and technological innovation in smart courts, organized expert teams to specialize in research and regularly publish key research and development plans for smart courts, and solved key technical problems by organizing domestic research institutes and research and development manufacturers to cooperate in tackling key problems to promote the deep integration of scientific research and the actual needs of courts. The Supreme People’s Court organized local courts to undertake the pilot work of scientific and technological innovation and application, assisted scientific research teams in completing innovative research, and realized the transformation of scientific research achievements. For example, in the research process of the national key research and development project “Research on Fine Execution Technology and Equipment of Whole Process Control” led by Shanghai Jiaotong University, the key technologies such as smart evaluation of final cases have been broken through, and the software of smart assistant execution has been developed to solve the problem of deep application of electronic files in the whole process of court execution throughout the country. The pilot projects in the Second Intermediate Court of Shanghai and Baoding Court of Hebei Province have achieved remarkable results, creating conditions for the promotion to the whole country. Practice has proven that the pilot project of scientific and technological innovation will greatly promote the transformation and upgrading of technology and equipment in the construction of smart courts, give full play to the supporting and

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leading role of advanced science and technology, and accelerate the development of smart courts to a higher level. The third is key special pilot projects. It mainly comes from the special pilot work deployed by the Supreme People’s Court or the High People’s Court in accordance with the development plan and important tasks. Almost all the construction tasks of smart courts cannot be fully promoted in the whole country or a province at the same time. For the development and pilot application of many key tasks, they must be carried out in some local areas first and then qualified for a wider application based on some successful practices. For example, the Supreme People’s Court entrusted the Hebei Court to carry out a special pilot project on the development and application of the “smart trial” system, aiming at the important work of synchronous generation and in-depth application of electronic files, which is of fundamental and overall significance in the construction of smart courts. Key applications, such as the automatic generation of customized documents and smart auxiliary generation of judgment documents, have achieved definite, extensive and remarkable results, providing replicable and propagable experiences and practices for the synchronous generation and in-depth application of electronic files in courts throughout the country. IV.

Regional One-On-One Support

Due to the differences in economy, management, technology and human resources, the construction and application of smart courts at all levels and in all parts of the country are inadequate and unbalanced. In this regard, the Supreme People’s Court and the high people’s courts have always attached great importance to this fact and organize qualified courts to carry out support and mutual directional assistance and promote balanced regional development for relatively difficult areas and basic people’s courts, which has become a fine tradition of the construction of smart courts in the whole country. The main forms of regional support include project support, technical support, talent support and financial support. Project support refers to the direct provision of software and hardware facilities such as business application systems, trial execution equipment and information system services to the recipient courts, such as the “China Mobile Micro Court” app developed by the Supreme People’s Court. The free installation of this app is provided for some courts in the western region. Technical support is mainly to organize high-level technical teams to provide technical support for the recipient courts, such as support in information system planning and demonstration, scheme design, consultation and evaluation, and difficult disposal. For example, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the Supreme People’s Court organized experts from various fields to solve the difficulties encountered in the planning and demonstration of many local courts and project implementations and achieved remarkable results. For example, in the second half of 2020, at the request of the Tibet High People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Court selected a number of information professionals from courts at all levels to support the demonstration of relevant projects of the Tibet Court, and this team successfully completed the task. Financial support means that courts in relatively developed areas provide certain funds to directly help courts in underdeveloped areas.

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After the appearance of the COVID-19 in early 2020, courts across the country implemented the requirements of the Central Party Committee to support the economic and social development of Hubei. While supporting the work of Hubei courts in an all-around way, they also provided support for the construction of Hubei smart courts. The Jiangxi High People’s Court provided support for the construction of the Hubei Smart court, signing a framework agreement under the guidance of the Supreme People’s Court. With the construction of its advantageous projects “ E Center for Receiving and Forwarding” and “One-stop Litigation Service” as the main supporting focus, it provided comprehensive support in aspects from system transformation and deployment, mechanism construction to application and promotion, improving the construction and application level of Hubei Smart court and one-stop diversified dispute resolution and litigation service system.

9.3 Funds Guarantee Necessary funding is an important guarantee for the system project of smart courts. With the modernization process of China, the construction of people’s courts at all levels has also shown rapid changes, and informatization is a distinct symbol that not only greatly improves the quality and efficiency of work and enhances people’s sense of fulfillment but also significantly reduces the cost of trial execution and litigation. From the overall point of view, the people’s court’s limited investment in information technology has saved the operating costs of the whole society and improved economic efficiency. Specific investment mainly includes the following aspects. The first is construction funds, mainly including funds on planning and design, system research and development, facilities construction and so on. It is the main body of investment, and its output is tangible results such as specific facilities, systems or technical documents of smart courts. Expenditure subjects mainly include the cost of equipment and materials that constitute products, the cost of human resources engaged in design and development, and the cost of travel and transportation to support the design, development, installation and construction of information systems. The second is rental funds. With the popularization and application of cloud computing, courts at all levels now not only need to rent social communication lines to achieve remote communication but also to rent cloud resources to meet the expanding computing and storage needs as the main means to solve their own infrastructure capacity deficiencies. Therefore, they need to pay clouding service providers for the corresponding equipment and facilities they need. The output of such rental cost is the communication, computing and storage capacity needed for the construction of the smart court. The third is the operation and maintenance funds. When the information system is completed and put into operation, it generally needs to be equipped with certain human and material resources to support daily operation and maintenance, including not only normal work such as system installation, system configuration, system debugging, monitoring and security but also emergency treatment such as troubleshooting and repair. Therefore, it needs to pay service providers

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for these operation and maintenance funds, and its output is the normal operation of the information system. Expenditure subjects mainly include the cost of human resources and the cost of equipment for emergency disposal. The fourth is training funds. Many information systems can only support business work efficiently when users are fully familiar with the application, which requires research and development manufacturers to carry out necessary operation and application training for internal users of the court, which requires the corresponding cost of teaching materials and teachers, and its output is the skilled application ability of all kinds of users. The fifth is scientific research funds. As the key technologies of smart courts have become increasingly advanced, many research and development manufacturers have been unable to meet the needs of information system research and development only by their own technology capability and must rely on state investment to support pre research to keep up with the pace of scientific and technological development. Therefore, it is necessary to invest corresponding research funds, and its output is mainly tangible achievements such as development reports, prototypes and intangible achievements such as key technology patents of smart courts. Expenditure subjects mainly include equipment, materials, manpower and the cost of scientific research activities. The sixth is the management cost. The smart court system project requires a high-level information management team within the courts at all levels to implement the management work that must be directly responsible by the courts, such as overall planning, demand analysis, project management, security control, evaluation and acceptance. Its output is the overall construction and application effect of the smart court. This requires the provision of the necessary human resources, the use of premises and the cost of management activities. I.

Project Funded by Financial Budget

The financial budget is the main source of funds for the normal construction, operation and maintenance of smart court information systems. Courts at all levels apply for and use budgetary funds in accordance with the financial budget management regulations at the same level, mainly to support the construction and lease of communication networks such as business private networks, classified networks and the Internet, as well as computing and storage resources such as proprietary clouds and open clouds, as well as to support the operation and maintenance of existing court information systems and the construction of some information system projects. The smart court construction budget is an important part of the financial budget of courts at all levels in the information age. Financial budget management generally includes budget preparation, budget issuance, budget implementation, final account evaluation and supervision. Courts at all levels need to focus on the following contents in financial budget management. The first is to prepare the budget scientifically. Adhering to the principle of practicing economy and opposing waste, we should carefully sort out the needs of court informatization construction and operation and maintenance, take national policies and regulations as the premise and guarantee the needs of business work as the basis, strictly do a good job in project budget demonstration, selection, review, project establishment and ranking, optimize project structure, strengthen overall planning

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and implement budget content. Generally, communication networks, cloud resource leasing, and information system operation and maintenance provide the necessary conditions to ensure the normal operation of the court information system, which must be included in the budget preparation. The demands of project construction, such as upgrading and improving application software and renovating site information facilities, are important means to improve the efficiency of court trial execution, which can be sorted according to priorities and included in the construction needs within the budget. The second is to strictly implement the budget. Funds shall be used in accordance with the approved annual budget and the plan for the use of funds and shall not be allocated without budget, without plan for the use of funds, beyond budget or beyond plan, nor shall the purpose of expenditure be changed without authorization. In strict accordance with the relevant provisions of the Government Procurement Law, we should do a good job in the establishment, evaluation, procurement, contract signing, implementation and acceptance of information system projects. The third is to strengthen performance evaluation. For each project, performance evaluation should be performed in advance of budget application, performance evaluation should be performed in the process of budget implementation, and project performance evaluation should be performed after budget completion. The court should strengthen expenditure responsibility and efficiency awareness through the whole process of target performance management, strengthen the application of performance evaluation results, and take the evaluation results as an important basis for scientifically adjusting the expenditure structure and arranging budgets, ensuring the continuous improvement of the quality of budget implementation. The main contents of budget performance evaluation generally include the completion progress of expected output, such as quantity, quality, timeliness and cost, as well as the economic and social benefits of project application, and should focus on improving the efficiency of trial execution and user satisfaction. II.

E-government Project

Going with the development trend of the information age, the Chinese government decided at the beginning of the twenty-first century to “take the construction of Egovernment as the focus of our country’s informatization work in the coming period, and the government should take the lead in informatization, promoting the informatization of national economic and social development”. The informatization construction of people’s courts is an important part of the construction of E-government, and the E-government project is an important source of funding to promote the implementation of the smart court system project. Compared with financial projects, the application and implementation cycle of E-government projects is generally longer, so they all focus on solving the overall, systematic and basic key problems. Therefore, for the construction of smart courts, the court must actively strive for relevant E-government projects and strive to achieve leapfrog development through mediumand long-term construction. According to the Interim Measures for the Management of National E-government Construction Projects (Decree No. 55 of the National Development and Reform

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Commission), the construction of E-government projects is divided into three stages: application and approval, construction and implementation, acceptance and evaluation. In the stage of application and approval, the project construction unit needs to submit the project proposal, feasibility research report, preliminary design plan and investment budget to the development and reform department for approval. After obtaining the approval of the development and reform department, the project enters the implementation stage, and the project construction unit is responsible for the implementation of the project and strictly implements the bidding, government procurement, project supervision, contract management and other systems to ensure that the project construction meets the requirements of national laws and regulations and approval. In the acceptance and evaluation stage, the project approval department shall organize or entrust relevant departments to organize preliminary acceptance and completion acceptance, test, inspect, review and accept the overall implementation, technical status, archives, fund use and information security of the project, and examine the operation after acceptance. It also should organize experts in a timely manner or entrust relevant institutions to conduct post-evaluation on the system operation efficiency and use the effect of the construction project. E-government projects in the construction of smart courts must be strictly implemented in accordance with these procedures. The “Tianping Project” is a unified project established by the Supreme People’s Court. After the approval of the National Development and Reform Commission in 2012, the Supreme People’s Court and local high courts carried out feasibility studies, preliminary design and investment budget preparation as well as the implementation and acceptance of the approved construction contents. Finally, in December 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission entrusted the Supreme People’s Court to complete the overall completion and acceptance of the E-government project. Various construction tasks in the “Tianping Project” have been completed and the expected construction objectives have been achieved. The project quality is good, the trial operation is stable, and the use of funds is in line with the relevant provisions of the state. It has played a prominent role in the judicial justice and justice for the people and in promoting the modernization of the judicial system and judicial capacity of courts at all levels throughout the country. III.

Scientific and Technological Innovation Projects

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the Ministry of Science and Technology vigorously supported the construction of smart courts, set up national key research and development plans in the field of social development, and organized brainstorming on key technical issues of smart courts, which has become an important way to promote scientific and technological innovation of smart courts and a new source of capital investment. The national key research and development plan generally includes the preparation and issuance of guidelines, project application, scientific research implementation, mid-term inspection and evaluation, and project acceptance. To seize the development opportunities of advanced science and technology and promote the leapfrog development of smart courts through special scientific and technological innovation projects, courts at all levels, especially those above the senior level, must

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follow the law of scientific research, meet the needs of court business, lead all scientific research forces to actively strive and work together to tackle key problems, and provide a strong scientific and technological drive for smart courts. In the stage of compiling and issuing the guide, the Supreme People’s Court and the qualified high people’s courts must actively organize experts with experience in the construction of smart courts to cooperate with the departments of science and technology and experts of science and technology, in view of the pain points and difficulties that restrict the informatization business of courts, and correspondingly refine them into scientific problems that need to be studied and approached. Efforts should be made to win the support of departments responsible for science and technology for project approval and to provide precise guidance for scientific research teams to actively apply for and carry out research. In the stage of project application, courts at or above the high level must be good at mobilizing and organizing capable teams from institutions of higher learning, scientific research institutes and high-tech enterprises interested in promoting the construction of smart courts to actively apply and strive to undertake research tasks, not only to support and guide high-level scientific research teams to devote themselves to tackling key problems in court informatization research but also to avoid rushing headlong into mass action and lowering the level of scientific and technological innovation of smart courts. In the most important stage of scientific research implementation, the courts undertaking the tasks of recommendation and scientific research pilot projects must take scientific and technological innovation as their responsibility, take the initiative to care about the research content and actual progress of the corresponding projects, provide the necessary demand research and test verification environment for the scientific research team, and strive to integrate closely with the scientific research team to jointly promote scientific research. In particular, we should prevent scientific research work from being divorced from the actual work of the court, resulting in the phenomenon of “two skins” between scientific research work and the actual work of the court. Mid-term inspection and evaluation is an important opportunity to use external experts to carry out normative inspection and evaluation of the implementation of key research and development plans. The courts undertaking the task of recommendation and pilot projects must attach great importance to it, carefully analyze and absorb the opinions of inspection and evaluation, especially for the problems exposed. They must urge and help the scientific research team to rectify in time, report to the Supreme People’s Court in time for projects that fail to pass the inspection or need major rectification, and pay close attention to adjusting the research direction that does not meet the requirements to avoid the situation that is difficult to reverse in the later period. In the acceptance stage of the project, the pilot courts must actively create a pilot application environment that meets the requirements of the project for the scientific research team, mobilize the corresponding court staffs to participate in the test and verification of scientific research results, and make an objective and true evaluation of the use effect to provide a credible basis for the acceptance departments and experts.

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Multiparty Coordination of Resources

The vast majority of the funds for the construction of court informatization come from state finance. Although governments at all levels have given strong support to court informatization and invested much money, compared with the actual needs of courts around the country, the problem of insufficient funds for construction is still common. To reduce the financial burden of the government and promote the construction and development of smart courts, some courts have also tried to explore the establishment of market-oriented operation mechanisms through contract outsourcing, franchising, user payment, internal markets and other market-oriented ways of E-government construction, promoting the diversification of investment in the construction of smart courts. Some courts have research and development manufacturers install and deploy software for free for the construction of application platforms such as litigation services and office case handling platforms and gradually enable manufacturers to obtain reasonable returns on their investment in the form of service fees in the later process of use and operation. At present, the seeking of social funds to support the construction of court informatization is still being explored in many ways, and local courts should actively explore ideas and innovative development within the scope of national laws and regulations. At the same time, courts at all levels should grasp the key elements of project content, construction process and follow-up rights and interests in specific practices and do a good job in project establishment and procurement management in strict accordance with laws and national policies for project systems involving legal rights and interests, internal work secrets and sensitive information to ensure legal implementation of system projects and to achieve a win–win situation through cooperation with social capital.

9.4 Team Building There is a Chinese saying that people should be put first in front of everything. The project of the smart court system cannot be done without the correct leadership and vigorous promotion of Party groups at all levels of courts, the active participation of all court staffs and the high trust of the people, and the strong support of court information professionals. The rising tide of informatization has trained and made a large number of informatization professionals and managerial talent, who have increasingly become the driving force for the modernization process of all walks of life. Court informatization talent has also grown up in the practice of smart court construction and gradually formed a team of professional technical and managerial talents of smart courts led by the internal institutions and personnel of the courts, participated by technical personnel of enterprises and institutions, and was supported by information technology experts of colleges and universities. This team can closely combine its work with the strategy of comprehensive law-based governance and the judicial credibility

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of the people’s court and has advanced information technology research and development and information management background, familiar with the characteristics of the court’s judicial business, with a deep understanding of the information system of the smart court. It has undergone a series of backbone information system research and development and construction experiences and has developed a work style of unity and cooperation. It is the backbone and precious wealth to promote the project of the smart court system. I.

Court Talent Team

Information managerial and technical personnel are an important part of the judicial assistant team of the people’s court and the fundamental guarantee for the construction of smart courts. The Supreme People’s Court has set up an information center, the high people’s courts and most intermediate people’s courts have set up special information institutions, and the basic people’s courts are generally equipped with full-time information personnel, which has become the leading force in planning and managing the construction of smart courts. The talent team of court informatization construction mainly includes six types of professionals: people responsible for planning management, system research and development, data management, infrastructure, information security and operation and maintenance guarantee. Planning and management professionals are mainly responsible for the top-level design, planning and evaluation of court informatization construction, including development planning research, evaluation of smart court construction, revision of informatization standards, and informatization project management; System Research and development professionals are mainly responsible for the development and construction of various application systems, including needs analysis for court application system, system design, application research and development, testing and going online; Data management professionals are mainly responsible for the construction and utilization of data resources, including the construction and management of judicial data resources such as court trial execution, personnel and government affairs, data sharing and exchange, and analytic services based on judicial data. Infrastructure professionals are mainly responsible for the construction of computing, storage, communication and special facilities, including the construction of court cloud network infrastructure, court litigation service halls, science and technology courts, executive command centers and other special facilities. Information security professionals are mainly responsible for the construction of information security equipment and mechanisms, including the construction of classified protection and hierarchical protection of court information systems, the construction of information security safeguards and the operation and maintenance of information security. Operation and maintenance professionals are mainly responsible for the operation, maintenance and management of information systems, including the operation and maintenance of court software and hardware information systems, technical support for audio and video conferencing activities, monitoring and evaluation of information system operation quality and efficiency, and user training and promotion.

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Courts at all levels should be equipped with strong information construction personnel according to the actual needs of application of smart court construction. High people’s courts generally need two professionals to engage in each part fulltime. There is no need for intermediate people’s courts to be equipped with planning management and system research and development personnel, and one professional is enough for each part in the information system construction. Basic people’s courts do not have to be equipped with personnel for planning management, system research and development, and other specialties require full-time or part-time personnel. In particular, it should be emphasized that no matter how tight the number of people is, courts at all levels must arrange personnel to take responsibility for information security management because the risk of information security always goes hand in hand with the development of smart courts. Only if the leaders of courts at all levels attach great importance to it and fulfill their responsibilities at all levels can they ensure that there is no security risk. With the rapid development of information technology, the continuous reform and development of court work also requires information construction professionals to keep pace with the times and constantly learn and improve their professional ability to meet the development needs of smart courts. II.

Strength of Research and Development Manufacturers

The specific implementation of informatization project construction needs to be carried out by specific manufacturers in accordance with the procurement regulations of national government affairs projects. Through years of accumulation, a number of high-tech information technology research and development enterprises have emerged in China, which have been engaged in and participated in the construction of smart courts for a long time. In recent years, research and development enterprises involved in the construction of court informatization have gradually shown a trend of diversification and openness. According to the “Top 100 Enterprises with Comprehensive Competitiveness of Software and Information Technology Services in 2020” issued by the China Federation of Electronic and Information Industry and other organizations, that is, the list of top 100 software enterprises, at least six of the top ten enterprises, including Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, ZTE and Inspur Group, have participated in the construction of smart courts to varying degrees. The talent of research and development manufacturers participating in court informatization construction mainly includes professionals focusing on information system construction and implementation, information system operation and maintenance, information technology services, and information project supervision and audit. The personnel responsible for information system construction and implementation mainly implement the development, upgrading and improvement of information systems in the respects including various information infrastructure, application systems, data resources, network security and so on according to the specific project construction content. The main work includes demand analysis, system design, testing and evaluation, deployment and going online, promotion and training, and project management of the full life cycle.

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The personnel responsible for information system operation and maintenance mainly take care of the operation and maintenance, troubleshooting and use training of various basic software and hardware, application systems, terminals and special places for court staffs, ensuring the sound and stable operation of the information system. High-quality and high-efficiency operation and maintenance also require the operation and maintenance team to monitor and experience the status and response of information system operation, timely grasp the status, ability and effectiveness of various information systems supporting court business, ensure the first detection of failures that have occurred, warn and avoid possible failures or events, and timely analyze the main effects of information construction and application. The personnel responsible for information technology service provide personalized information technology services according to user needs, such as judicial big data analysis services and website information content editing services. Taking the operation of the big data management and service platform of the people’s court as an example, it is necessary to rely on the massive judicial trial information resources gathered by the platform to provide various situation analysis reports for the trial execution work and to customize and analyze special research reports in combination with hot topics, which need to be combined with the professional knowledge of the trial execution work. It can only be achieved by relying on the data processing and analysis ability of information technology personnel. With the deepening of court information construction and application, the demand for information technology services by court staffs is increasing, which has become an important trend in the transformation and upgrading of smart courts. III.

Scientific Research Strength of Colleges and Universities

Since the Ministry of Science and Technology supported the scientific and technological innovation of smart courts through key research and development plans, a large number of scientific research forces of colleges and universities have devoted themselves to tackling key scientific and technological problems of smart courts. By the end of 2020, the information technology and legal research teams of 44 institutions of higher learning, such as Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiaotong University, have undertaken key research and development plans for court topics, which have become an important driving force for the innovation and development of smart courts. Compared with the previous research and development of smart court information systems relying solely on manufacturers and enterprises, the scientific research force of colleges and universities has many advantages. First, it has a high theoretical knowledge level. Second, it has a better understanding of the international frontier of science and technology. Third, it is more familiar with the law of scientific research. Fourth, it is easy for researchers to conduct interdisciplinary joint research on science and technology and law. Fifth, it is conducive to training a large number of young students who are interested in the construction of smart courts from the perspective of teaching and learning. With the deepening of scientific and technological innovation in smart courts, especially continuous investment, the scientific research strength of colleges and

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universities will play an increasingly important role in the innovation and development of smart courts. Many key universities have opened new disciplines or professional directions, striving to reserve more high-end talent for the development of information technology in the judicial field through scientific research and discipline construction. In September 2017, China University of Political Science and Law took the lead in setting up the School of Law-based Information Management in the world, relying on its superior resources of the law major, in accordance with the talent training requirements of “solid foundation, wide caliber, high quality and strong ability”, to cultivate high-quality compound talent who possess law, modern management theory and computer science and technology, master the knowledge and skills of information system analysis and design methods, information management and information processing, and focus on the work related to legal information management and legal information system analysis, design, implementation, management and evaluation for national judicial organs, administrative departments, enterprises and institutions, scientific research institutions and other units. It should also be noted that the time for university researchers to participate in the smart court project is not long, and their understanding of the business needs and difficulties of the court needs to be deepened. Courts at all levels, especially courts at and above the high level, must actively cooperate with the scientific research forces of colleges and universities, create conditions for them to familiarize themselves with the needs of court business and key technical issues, overcome difficulties and form scientific research achievements that meet the needs of the people and court staffs, and at the same time effectively help them avoid the phenomenon of research being out of touch with reality in the process of scientific research.

Chapter 10

Application Effect

With the implementation of the smart court system project, China has built a smart court information system covering all four-level courts and dispatched tribunals in most remote towns, serving the court staff and the people, with the main features of “all-business online processing, all-process open according to law, and all-round smart services”. It is especially important that the Supreme People’s Court has always regarded serving the people, serving trial execution, serving judicial administration, serving honest justice and serving social governance as the fundamental starting point for the construction of smart courts. Vigorously promoting the construction of information systems, at the same time, has insisted on putting the promotion of application effectiveness in a prominent position. It emphasizes that the collection and analysis of application effectiveness should be taken as an important reference for improving and perfecting the system, that the evaluation of application effectiveness should be taken as the main basis for measuring the construction of information technology and that the application effectiveness of smart courts should be continuously improved to continuously enhance the satisfaction and sense of acquisition of the people and the court staff. As a result, the habitual thinking of “focusing on construction and light application” has been effectively changed, and the smart court information system has been widely used in courts at all levels throughout the country, supporting the fundamental reform of the work of the people’s courts, supporting the construction of an open, dynamic, transparent and convenient sunshine judicial mechanism, and “basically solving the implementation difficulties in two to three years”. It provides an important reference for the Party Central Committee and the State Council to make major decisions.

© People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1_10

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10.1 Serving the People Adhering to the people-centered development idea and striving to provide open, transparent, universal, equal, convenient, efficient, smart and accurate litigation services have always been the goals of the construction of smart courts, realizing that the people can minimize unnecessary travel and litigation costs in the pursuit of fairness and justice. The “Balance Project” has set up a “judicial satisfaction index”, which is a comprehensive index of the court filing change rate, appeal rate, mediation rate, withdrawal rate, complaint rate, petition complaint rate and mass questionnaire survey, which is closely related to the feelings of the people involved in the lawsuit. All of the courts throughout the country are required to obtain 93% of the index, and the real index tested reaches 94.91%, which marks that the smart court has achieved remarkable results in serving the people. I. Facilitating Communication and Exchange 12368, as a unified litigation service hotline for the courts at all levels, provides services including litigation consultation, case inquiry, information inquiry, contact with judges, opinions and suggestions for the public by means of telephone access, voice and short message. The 12368 hotline is open to 32 high people’s courts, and area-free calling functions are used in 21 provinces. In 2020, the total number of calls received was more than 2.3 million, and more than 290 million short messages were sent and received. By providing voice navigation services, the response time was reduced from 40s to less than 25s, providing the most convenient channel for communication between the people and the courts. Through the litigation service network, courts at all levels have established an online platform for people involved in litigation to contact case handlers, transmit litigation materials and handle litigation affairs. Ninety-eight percent of the courts in China have launched the litigation service network, which fully supports citizens involved in litigation to contact the courts without leaving home. The information litigation service hall provides guidance, consultation, mediation, filing and other information services for the people who come to the court to consult laws and regulations, resolve contradictions and disputes, and handle litigation matters. The courts at the four levels of the country have built an informationbased litigation service hall in an all-around way, providing very convenient onsite services for the public by using display screens, guidance machines, integrated litigation service machines and marking terminals. The national unified judicial process information online website not only discloses the information of the case handling process to the parties and litigation agents in a timely manner according to law but also provides a direct channel for communication and contact with the corresponding case handlers for specific cases, which has become a special channel for litigants to contact the court conveniently. Taking advantage of the large number and wide range of WeChat users, the China Mobile Micro Court has provided a unified mobile electronic litigation window for

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the public. In less than a year of nationwide pilot, the cumulative number of realname users has exceeded 4 million, and the average number of visits per day has exceeded 2 million. It has become a new channel for the people to communicate with the court. Starting from the Supreme People’s Court, on the official websites of the high and some intermediate and basic people’s courts, communication windows for judges to leave messages, opinions and suggestions, supervision and reporting have also been set up, providing a very convenient channel for the people to contact the courts, especially the leaders of the courts at all levels. II. Reducing the Burden of Mass Litigation The “Internet + litigation service” mode created by the smart court has truly brought convenience in all aspects before, during and after the lawsuit process to people. More than 3500 official websites of courts at all levels, litigation service networks and guidance profiles embedded in the Baidu navigation system provide specific guidelines for people to understand the geographical location of courts, online service platforms and procedures for handling matters so that people concerned about courts or having litigation needs can obtain the basic information they need at any time and anywhere, as well as the relevant legal knowledge and case information, obtaining the knowledge of the related information as soon as possible. Filing a case and paying the fee are the necessary conditions for the people’s court to formally accept the case. Online filing and online payment services opened by courts at all levels have made it a thing of the past for litigants or litigation agents to go to the court window to file cases. In 2020, 10.8 million cases were filed online by courts nationwide and self-help by litigants, accounting for 54% of the first instance filing volume. Approximately 1/5 of the filing applications were submitted during nonworking hours, and approximately 1/10 of the filing applications were submitted during nonworking days, truly realizing the “zero distance”, “no closing” and “fingertip office” of filing service. Cross-domain filing is a special service provided by the people’s court for some people who need to file lawsuits in different courts and are not familiar with online operations. A cross-regional case filing saves at least 10 km or even hundreds or thousands of kilometers of travel fatigue for the parties. From September 30, 2019, to the end of 2020, all the middle and basic people’s courts in China opened crossregional filings, relying on China Mobile’s microcourts, and more than 90,000 crossregional filing cases were completed, which fully demonstrated the actual effect of smart courts in reducing the burden of mass litigation. Online evidence exchange is a typical application of electronic litigation that supports the plaintiff, the defendant and the judge to upload and display all evidence materials asynchronously on the same online interface. In 2020, the number of online evidence exchanges in courts nationwide reached more than 1.7 million, which not only alleviated the rush of litigants to and from courts to submit and verify evidence but also created favorable conditions for litigants to confirm facts as soon as possible and support correct judgments.

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Trial is the central link in the trial process. An online trial is another typical application of electronic litigation that supports litigants, agents and judges in completing the trial by using network video, which can not only reduce the number of people in court but also enable litigants to be in a more suitable environment. In 2020, the national courts held more than 800,000 online sessions, which not only greatly reduced the burden of litigation for the people but also reduced the risk of the spread of COVID-19. III. Reducing Litigation Costs. Many measures taken by smart courts to facilitate communication and reduce the burden of mass litigation can greatly reduce the litigation costs of the people. In 2020, the national courts received 10.8 million online cases, the number of which accounts for 54% of the first instance cases. The number of online filing applications submitted by the parties during nonworking hours beyond 8 h accounted for 23.6% of the total online filing applications. The number of filing applications during nonworking days accounts for approximately 10% of online filing applications, achieving “zero distance”, “no closing” and “fingertip office” of filing services. While the people’s courts have fully realized the online filing of cases, they have achieved full coverage of the four-level courts in cross-regional filing services. In the litigation service hall, lawyers are provided with “one-code” service, and a lawyer service platform is jointly established by the court and the Ministry of Justice to provide 35 online litigation services for the pain points, difficulties and blockages in lawyers’ practice to achieve “one-time verification, all-network operation and nationwide operation”. Through the mediation platform of the People’s Court throughout the country, the smart court connects all kinds of professional dispute resolution channels in the whole society, aiming at various contradictions and disputes appearing in people’s daily lives, including the aspects of marriage and family, property management, labor disputes, road traffic and financial capital, realizing the full sharing of mediation resources and mediation information. Before entering the litigation procedure, a large number of social contradictions have been resolved in a timely and effective manner, which not only saves the short-term litigation costs for the parties but also avoids the long-term contradiction costs often caused by litigation among the people. The remote video interview mode provided by the smart court provides the scene of receiving complaints face to face from the judges of the four courts from the highest to the basic level, which cannot be measured simply by saving the travel and time costs of the parties. Because the courts at all levels are online at the same time, it can fully ensure that the problems reflected by the letters and visits are solved most properly and authoritatively, which played a prominent role in reducing the cost of complaints and petitions through letters and visits. The Internet court initiated by the Chinese court, aiming at the development and governance requirements of cyberspace, realizes a new mode of online dispute resolution and online case handling. In August 2017, Hangzhou Internet was established to explore new litigation rules and trial mechanisms adapted to the trend of the Internet era to promote the legalization of cyberspace governance. In September

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2018, the Beijing Internet Court and Guangzhou Internet Court were officially established. The Beijing Internet Court is committed to creating a practical, innovative, neutral, inclusive, secure and controllable electronic litigation platform for Internet courts, building a trusted electronic evidence block chain platform “balance chain” to solve the problems of electronic data information security and joint verification and authentication. The smart trial platform of Guangzhou Internet Court further enhances the experience of the parties, realizes the “six one-key” design objectives of the final one-key filing, one-key mediation, one-key mediation, one-key trial, one key guard and one key service, and brings the parties a very simplified litigation service experience. IV. Enhancing Judicial Credibility Smart courts make the elements of trial execution open according to law through the whole process, effectively satisfy the people’s right to know, participate and supervise, and greatly enhance the credibility of the judiciary while striving to safeguard fairness and justice. The China Judicial Process Information Online website has realized the unification and standardization of court case process information throughout the country, and the parties and litigation agents can visit this website to directly inquire about the progress of the case, which has fundamentally changed the situation in which the parties used to find connections to inquire about the trial and progress of the case. Since its revision in September 2018, it has become a unified information disclosure platform for the judicial process of the national courts. By the end of 2020, more than 35 million cases had been made public, with more than 400 million visits, which has become an important way to facilitate people’s participation in litigation and protect the litigation rights of the parties. The China Court Trial Online website supports the litigation acts of plaintiffs and defendants in civil and administrative cases, the investigation and prosecution acts in criminal cases, and the defense opinions of defendants and lawyers, all of which are subject to supervision and evaluation both inside and outside the court together with the trial activities. Since its launch in September 2016 to the end of 2020, it has carried out more than 11 million live court trials, with a cumulative number of visits exceeding 30 billion, which is the most intuitive and vivid way to disseminate the judicial image of Chinese courts to the whole society and the world. Through the Internet, the China Judgments Online website publishes all the effective judicial documents of the national courts to the whole society, except for sensitive contents such as state secrets and juvenile delinquency information. It is the largest platform for the publication of judicial documents in the world, demonstrating the determination and confidence of Chinese courts to administer judicial justice, and it has become an important window for China’s rule of law, which has attracted wide attention at home and abroad. At 18:00 on August 30, 2020, the total number of documents on the China Judgments Online website exceeded 100 million, and the total number of visits was 48 billion, which was widely discussed, demonstrating the judicial confidence of Chinese courts and judges.

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The China Execution Information Online website realizes the disclosure of information such as the discredited person, the execution case information, the final case information, the online judicial auction information and the announcement of the execution case payment. By the end of 2020, the China Execution Information Online website was publishing more than 6.3 million discredited persons, which not only provided strong support for solving the difficulty of execution but also became an important part of the construction of the national credit information system. In addition to the four open platforms, the Supreme People’s Court has also promoted the disclosure of enterprise bankruptcy information, launched the national enterprise bankruptcy reorganization case information online website, provided online judicial services for creditors, debtor enterprises, market investors and other stakeholders, and played an important role in bankruptcy trials in dealing with “zombie enterprises” according to law. By the end of 2020, there were 8,246 administrator organizations and 36,900 administrators on the website. More than 2400 investor recruitment announcements have been issued, more than 1200 online creditor meetings have been held, involving more than 600,000 creditors, and more than 500 enterprises have been successfully supported in bankruptcy reorganization, which has become an important measure for structural reform of the service supply side.

10.2 Serving Trial Execution To respond to the judicial demands of the people, under the situation that the number of court cases has increased dramatically and the requirements of trial execution have continued to improve, it is an inevitable trend for the application of information technology and an important prerequisite for better meeting the expectations of the people to support the majority of court staffs to improve their quality and efficiency in a highly informationized way. For this reason, the construction of smart courts has always focused on the application of trial execution, continuously providing convenient, collaborative and smart support for case handlers. The Balance Project has set up a “judicial trial efficiency index”, which is a comprehensive index that is closely related to the quality and effectiveness of court staffs in handling cases, such as the average number of closed cases per year, the rate of closed cases, the balance of closed cases, the rate of application of summary procedures in the first instance, the court’s judgment rate, the case closing rate within the normal trial time limit, and the enforcement rate within the normal time limit. Courts throughout the country are required to obtain at least 93% of the index, and they reached 97.75% of the index, which marks the remarkable achievements of the smart court in serving the trial execution. I. Standardizing the Procedures of Case Handling The important characteristic of informatization is to provide users with standardized, procedural and standardized operation methods and processes through business application systems, which not only enables users to master working skills and avoid

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unnecessary ineffective labor but also stipulates user operation links and prevents unintentional or intentional violations of rules and regulations. Courts at all levels have built an online case handling system that serves all court staffs, covers all types of cases and opens up all business processes so that all links, such as filing, case division, court session, collegial discussion, submission to the trial committee, making of judgment documents, case reporting and filing, are included in the process management. It also sets up several nodes for real-time and dynamic monitoring of civil, criminal, administrative and execution cases, strengthens the supervision of trial limits, unifies the management of important permissions such as the change of trial limits and the examination and approval of closing cases, and carries out trial limit tracking prompts, early warning displays and urging supervision through yellow and red colors to urge the president of the court and the case-handling judge to pay attention to the case at any time. It promotes the efficient operation of handling cases. The information management system of the execution case process developed and deployed by the Supreme People’s Court covers four levels of courts nationwide, dividing the execution process of each case into 37 key nodes, and the node information is synchronized into the system in real time. In this way, all the executing policemen in the national courts carry out the execution work according to the unified and standardized working nodes, the negative execution, delayed execution and nonstandard handling of cases cannot be carried out, and the illegal operations are clear at a glance in the system and difficult to conceal. Moreover, the node information of case execution is open to the parties, and the parties can inquire about the progress of the case at any time, follow up and supervise the execution, which fully improves the compliance and transparency of the execution process. The trial norms directly affect the judicial image and credibility. Through the automatic inspection system of court trials, courts at all levels can automatically inspect the scheduling of cases, the audio and video effects of court trials, the dress of judges, late arrival, early departure, abnormal departure, and the status of court equipment. In the first half year of 2019 alone, the Supreme People’s Court conducted an automatic inspection of more than 20,000 court hearings in more than 600 courts covering 23 provinces across the country and found more than 1300 violations, including more than 600 irregularities in dress, as well as other irregularities, such as the absence of judicial personnel and telephone calls by judicial personnel during court hearings. It has played an important supervisory role in standardizing court trial activities, strengthening trial management and maintaining a good judicial image. II. Improving Trial Efficiency The Supreme People’s Court has always regarded the synchronous generation and indepth application of electronic files as an important grasp for smart courts to support trial handling and improve trial efficiency. Since the guidance was put forward to the courts at all levels in 2016, it has been making unremitting efforts to inspect and report monthly and has continuously promoted the implementation of technical and management measures. By July 2020, 93% of the courts in China had built an electronic file synchronous generation system, which technically realized the core

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functions of compiling electronic file catalogs, online marking, auxiliary generation of legal documents and filing. Through the direct submission of electronic files or the scanning and uploading of paper files to the case handling system at the first rime, the smart identification system can automatically classify all kinds of files, which provides great convenience for judges to find files. Electronic files can meet the needs of many people to read papers online at any time and completely overcome the outstanding problems of inconvenient circulation, inadequate storage and incomplete sharing of paper files in the past. All kinds of automated and smart means are applied to electronic files, which provide judges with a variety of smart AIDS. Based on character recognition technology, the case electronic file materials are documented, structured and digitized, which can help the case handling system classify and summarize specific case information and assist judges in making various standard documents with one key. Through retrieving and reusing information such as indictment, defense and court transcript, it can smartly assist judges in automatically compiling the factual part of the case in the judgment documents, which is widely used in courts all over the country. By the end of 2020, Hebei courts generated more than 340 million documents relying on the smart trial assistant system based on electronic files. Among them, more than 2.5 million judgment documents have been produced, which has been proven to be able to reduce the routine work of judges by more than 30%. The smart analysis and error correction system of judgment documents realizes the identification and analysis of 61 elements in judgment documents, can find logical errors, omissions of litigation requests, errors in quoting legal provisions that are not easy to find in manual evaluation, and prompts judges to change and correct errors in time, which has become an indispensable auxiliary tool for judges and effectively supports the improvement of judicial credibility. By the end of 2020, Shanghai courts had analyzed more than 640,000 judgment documents, with defects accounting for 29.44%, and the proportion of defects in 2020 was 12.65% lower than that in 2019. In view of the prominent contradiction that the clerk is highly nervous and the progress of the transcript affects the rhythm of the trial, the Supreme People’s Court has organized the development of a speech recognition system for the trial, which automatically distinguishes the object and content of the trial speech and automatically converts the speech into text. With artificial intelligence assistance, batch revision and other technologies, the clerks only need to make a few revisions to the transcripts to make them complete records of the court hearings, effectively improving the efficiency of the trial. The court trial speech recognition system has been widely used in the courts all over the country. In many court trial applications, the correct rate of speech recognition has reached more than 90%, the court trial time has been shortened by an average of 20%-30%, and the completeness of court transcripts has reached 100%. In view of the prominent problems of law, procuratorial and judicial personnel carrying a large number of files back and forth, which is time-consuming and laborious in handling commutation and parole cases in the past, the Supreme People’s Court has pushed courts around the country to actively promote the construction of

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commutation and parole platforms, and the vast majority of courts in the country have realized the exchange of case information with procuratorial organs, penalty enforcement organs and courts at high and basic levels. Online collaboration not only greatly improves the efficiency of handling cases but also makes the whole process of case trials leave traces and be supervised. III. Unifying the Criteria of Judgment China is a country with written law. In the process of trial, since judges, lawyers and parties have different understandings of the law, there may be disputes in the judgment of individual cases, and the inconsistency of judgment standards has become a prominent problem affecting the credibility of the judiciary. Smart courts use big data technology to help judges analyze and read hundreds of similar cases in a short time. The experience and rationality formed in these past cases have promoted the formation of a unified judgment scale by courts and judges around the country and helped the parties form a consensus on the right and wrong of the court’s judgment to win the public trust of the people. Using the legal information platform developed by the Supreme People’s Court, case-handling judges can easily search for and determine the corresponding provisions of laws and regulations throughout the country, accurately understand the gist of the law, and provide preconditions for the correct application. The tens of millions of judgment documents collected in the China Judgments Online also provide rich reference resources for judges to find similar cases, and the effect of helping judges grasp the scale of judgment has been fully demonstrated. In view of the positive guiding role played by cases in judicial practices, the Judicial Case Academy organized and developed by the Supreme People’s Court leads members of the legal professional community to participate in the collection, generation, research and exchange of judicial cases through hot spots, case methods, case forums and other columns and becomes an important platform with full use of big data thinking and positive innovation mechanisms and to support local judges in unifying their judgment standards. The Faxin Platform is also embedded in the case handling platform of local courts, based on the automatic reading and analysis of the specific information of the case electronic files, to summarize and push the characteristics of the case, the focus of disputes and the applicable law for judges and to push similar cases within the scope of the national, high courts, intermediate courts and basic courts to provide judges with similar cases. It has become a smart assistant for judges to grasp the main points of the case, the focus of disputes, the application of law and the results of similar cases with a click of the mouse, which provides strong support for the realization of the relevant requirements of the Supreme People’s Court on deepening judicial reform, promoting case retrieval and unifying the criteria of judgment. After the judge forms the judgment result, he can also use the early warning system of different judgments in the same case to extract the case plot information, analyze the sentencing results and calculate the judgment deviation according to the indictment and court records, which provides the most critical reference means for improving the unified application of law and the unified judgment standard.

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IV. Solving the Difficulties of Implementation Smart courts have provided unprecedented powerful support for solving the persistent problems of execution. From 2016, Chinese courts solemnly promised to “basically solve the difficulty of execution in two to three years”. By the end of 2018, 94.54% of the cases with property available for execution had been executed within the statutory trial time limit, 99.78% of the cases with no property available for execution had been executed, and 99.14% of them had been executed. The execution rate of cases reached 87.96%, other expected goals were fully achieved, and the scientific and technological support provided by the construction and application of smart courts played a key role. The Supreme People’s Court promotes the construction of execution command centers in courts at all levels throughout the country, constructs an integrated and horizontally connected execution command management platform, forms an “intensive, flat and visual” execution management system, takes the execution linkage mechanism as the core, unifies the supervision and management of execution cases in courts throughout the country, and coordinates major execution actions. The implementation management system characterized by unified management, unified coordination and unified command of the courts at the four levels has basically been formed. The execution case procedure information management system developed under the auspices of the Supreme People’s Court is directly deployed or docked in the courts at all levels throughout the country to achieve full coverage of the courts, of the execution of court staffs and of the handling of cases. Through macrocontrol of 37 key nodes of 8 types of execution cases and dynamic analysis of specific case information, it effectively avoids various problems in the execution work. It has formed a “chess game” management and control mechanism for the execution work of the courts at all levels. The Supreme People’s Court has actively promoted the establishment of a network investigation and control system covering the courts and major forms of property throughout the country, forming a network execution investigation and control system with the Supreme People’s Court as the main body and the local courts as the supplement, which is connected with more than 10 units, such as the People’s Bank of China and the Ministry of Public Security. It can inquire approximately 25 items of information in 16 categories, such as bank deposits, and cover all forms of property in an all-around way, effectively solving the outstanding difficulty in finding people and things in the past execution work. The Supreme People’s Court has established a system of publishing the list of discredited persons to be executed, cooperated with more than 60 units such as the National Development and Reform Commission, adopted compulsory measures such as restricting the purchase of air tickets, soft sleepers and high-speed rail tickets, and restricting the appointment of legal representatives of enterprises, and jointly punished the discredited persons to be executed to achieve “one breach of trust and restriction everywhere”, making the discredited person who fails to fulfill his legal obligations find it difficult to do anything.

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To solve the problem of property realization, the Supreme People’s Court issued a judicial interpretation of online auctions, forming a system with online auctions as the principle and on-site auctions as the exception, including seven websites such as Taobao and Jingdong in the list of judicial online auctions, to achieve nationwide coverage of online judicial auctions. By the end of 2020, through the national unified online judicial auction management platform, the national court online auction volume had been more than 2.7 million pieces, with a turnover of more than 140 million yuan, saving more than 43.9 billion yuan of commission for the parties and achieving zero complaints of violation of discipline and law in the high-risk judicial auction field.

10.3 Serving Judicial Administration Smart courts promote the online management of administrative offices, financial equipment, logistics services and other businesses; integrate advanced management concepts with modern information technology; smoothly integrate trial execution, litigation services and other systems; realize the fine management of judicial administration in the dimension of “case, person and matter”; and optimize modes of operation, such as the administrative affairs of courts, personnel management and decisionmaking support, effectively improving the scientific level of judicial decision-making and management of courts at all levels throughout the country. At the same time, through the people’s court trial management platform covering four levels of courts in the country, relying on judicial big data to improve the level of fine management of trials, the smart court further enhances the timeliness, comprehensiveness and accuracy of trial situation analysis and case status analysis, strengthens the ability of case correlation analysis, enhances the scientific level of performance appraisal, and strengthens the management and control of trial process nodes, promoting the quality and effectiveness of trial execution in courts at all levels throughout the country. I. Supporting the Optimization of Management Process With the online office platform as the main body, which is connected with various government management application systems such as personnel management, financial management, equipment management, affairs management, file management, notification and announcement, and learning and training platforms, the smart court has not only changed the mode of litigation service and trial execution but also promoted profound changes in the administrative management of courts at all levels. It supports the construction of an internal management system characterized by being online, remote and full-time. The online office platform supports the online drafting, review and approval of all internal documents, which not only changes the inefficient circulation mode of paper documents completely but also breaks the time and space constraints of participants. Whether online or not, no matter where they are, they can deal with the most needed work at a convenient time. Compared with the traditional offline office mode, it

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has incomparable advantages. In particular, the Supreme People’s Court, with the process of judicial reform, has set up six circuit courts in Shenzhen, Shenyang, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Chongqing and Xi’an. If the online office mode is not adopted, the circulation of a large number of internal management documents from Beijing to other places will bring about a great waste of manpower and time. By the end of 2020, the Supreme People’s Court relied on the court office platform to write nearly 600,000 documents and circulated more than 6.7 million documents, with an average of more than 11 times per document, which greatly improves office efficiency compared with the traditional offline paper document circulation mode. Using the private network of courts, the courts at all levels can break the geographical restrictions and hold nationwide video conferences at any time to mobilize and deploy the special work of courts at all levels. At the same time, the instant messaging system covering the courts around the country not only supports the rapid transmission of various documents in different places but also supports small video conferences involving dozens of people. All court staffs can organize research exchanges and work coordination involving internally sensitive information across many courts in the country at any time. During the prevention and control period of the COVID19 epidemic in 2020 alone, courts across the country held more than 4,700 video conferences. This new mode ensures the normal operation of all work while taking strict prevention and control measures and further improves working efficiency. With the expansion of the online office platform to the mobile end, the majority of court staffs can use portable terminals and even mobile phones to handle work business. Whether at home or on business trips, they can truly deal with emergencies all day. From February to March 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic was the most serious, the mobile office platform of the Supreme People’s Court helped the court staff handle more than 12,000 affairs, which ensured that many court staffs could be in quarantine at home without delaying the handling of important matters. In addition, the four levels of the website of the national court intranet enable all court staffs to communicate with and learn from each other, share court working news and business experience, and read many mainstream newspapers, legal monographs and excellent books online at any time. This way of network communication greatly shortens the psychological distance between court staffs throughout the country. II. Supporting Automatic Judicial Statistics Judicial statistics are a kind of statutory regular work of the people’s court, which requires high accuracy, timeliness and authority. During the two sessions held nationally and locally every year, many of the data reported by the presidents of courts at all levels to the deputies to the National People’s Congress come from judicial statistics. In the past, judicial statistics were conducted manually, and courts at all levels designated special judicial statisticians to carry out regularly detailed cataloging statistics of ten categories of cases, such as criminal cases, civil cases, administrative cases, state compensation and execution every month. Hundreds of statistical tables are collected and reported to the higher body during the set time limit, forming a judicial statistical report that reflects the basic status of the trial execution of the people’s court. Such statistics and summary methods obviously have some shortcomings, such

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as high human cost, long reporting cycle and narrow sharing, especially the difficulty of checking specific data case by case, which is the traditional noninformation method. In 2016, with the judicial big data management and service platform of the People’s Court successively realizing the full coverage of the courts at all levels throughout the country, judges and case data, the Supreme People’s Court further promoted the full coverage of judicial statistical data. The judicial statistical reports of the national four-level courts are automatically generated according to the realtime aggregated national court case data. The local generation table and the main platform generation table of each high people’s court are formed, and the relationship between the subplatform report and the main platform report, the statistical items of the report and the specific cases is established for each report. As a result, each item of data in the statistical report can be further explored in the specific case details step by step, and once an anomaly is found, it can be traced back to each relevant case quickly, thus ensuring the authenticity, accuracy and traceability of the entire judicial statistical data with technical mechanisms. Judicial statistics based on big data can help obtain the latest judicial statistics of more than 3500 courts in China within 24 h, with automatic data calculation, automatic updating of 5,807,000 judicial statistics reports every day, generating more than 200 million reports every year, and realizing data persistence of 7.55 million reports at the end of each year. Judicial statistical reports for the national courts on a monthly and annual basis can be automatically generated, which not only saves many manual statistical costs but also improves the efficiency and accuracy of judicial statistics in an all-round way, transforming the manual statistical mode that has lasted for nearly 70 years into the fully automatic statistical mode. At the same time, three fundamental changes in the history of judicial statistics, namely, the largest number of reports, the largest number of one-time service units and the fastest generation efficiency, have been achieved. III. Supporting Trial Situation Analysis The trial situation reflects the operation status of the trial execution of the people’s courts, reflects the concrete results of justice for the people and judicial justice, and is the main issue of daily concern to the leaders of courts at all levels. Court leaders usually interpret, analyze, study and evaluate the trial situation through various forms of meetings and take timely measures to improve the quality and effectiveness of their work. The analysis of trial situations based on judicial big data has fundamentally changed the prominent problems of traditional methods, such as less information, untimely access, weak relevance and low visualization, and has provided strong support for the analysis of trial situations of courts at all levels. Through the judicial big data management and service platform of the People’s Court, all case data are gathered, such as data of criminal cases, civil cases, execution and state compensation cases. The data gathered include not only the cause leading to the case and the information on the case but also the information on the aspects including the parties, litigation agents, case-handling courts, undertaking judges, acceptance time and trial nodes. In addition, the data can also be linked with the

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electronic files of cases to allow for the analysis of case details. Whether the court leaders organize comprehensive analysis or the court leaders carry out thematic research, they can obtain comprehensive and objective trial situation data they need, and the judges are enabled to grasp the overall situation. In the big data platform, all kinds of data from the national courts are gathered in real time so that all kinds of combined information can be quickly obtained and the corresponding trial situation report can be provided with little processing. Since 2015, the Supreme People’s Court has studied and judged the trial situation of the national courts and the Supreme People’s Court every quarter, which is based on the rapid formation of rich analysis reports based on judicial big data to support research and decision making. The chambers of the Supreme People’s Court and courts at all levels throughout the country need hundreds of judicial thematic data every year and can quickly obtain satisfactory and detailed data reports through the big data platform. The judicial big data management and service platform of the people’s court not only helps gather the data of trial execution but also collects a large number of judicial personnel, judicial administration, judicial research, informatization and external data. Through the multidimensional trial information correlation service centered on the case, the follow-up of the case, the litigant’s involvement in the lawsuit, the application of the law and the sentencing of similar cases are integrated. It supports the multidimensional correlation analysis of the trial situation so that managerial personnel can not only limit themselves to the case itself but also examine and analyze the quality and effectiveness of the work from a broader perspective. Based on related information and advanced information processing technology, many trial situations are no longer dull and abstract digital expressions but intuitive and combined comparisons of case causes, regions, departments, personnel and time in the form of tables, graphs and curves, which help researchers and judges grasp the whole picture quickly and accurately through highly visual methods, fully improving the accuracy and pertinence of situation analysis. IV. Supporting Performance Evaluation of Personnel To meet the needs of quantitative personnel performance evaluation, the judicial big data management and service platform of the people’s court integrates the gathered case data and personnel data and provides personnel performance evaluation services for courts, business courtrooms, judges and other dimensions. According to the case data of different trial procedures, the full lifecycle management of cases in the first trial, second trial, retrial, execution, petition and other links has been realized, and the establishment of a judicial personnel performance management system related to “person and case, matter and person” has been supported through the multidimensional trial information correlation service centering on cases. It provides important support for the role of performance evaluation in the reform of the judge post system, the optimization of trial resource allocation and the analysis of judicial reform effectiveness. In the second half of 2016, the Supreme People’s Court required that the national court personnel information system should be connected with the court staff file

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system. Through powerful computing and processing capabilities provided by the judicial big data platform, according to the four levels of national courts, courts at the same level, business courtrooms and case-handling judges, the data of cases received and closed, the rate of cases closed, the number of cases closed per capita, the situation of outstanding cases and the average trial time are calculated automatically every day, thus forming a court staff performance data statistics file connected with the personnel information system. Each data point is linked to the details of the case, fully ensuring the accuracy of court staff performance data, making judicial big data directly related to all court staffs handling cases, and providing increasingly important support for personnel management and performance evaluation of courts at all levels.

10.4 Serving Honest Justice Smart courts promote the online handling of all businesses, realize the whole process of tracing and supervision of each case and link, implement the requirements of online registration of inquiry cases, and further broaden the channels of mass supervision by relying on such carriers as the website for reporting violations of discipline and the network communication platform for NPC deputies and CPPCC members. Through the construction of information technology, such as tracing, supervision and suggestions, risk early warning, dynamic tracking, openness and transparency, we can further regulate judicial acts and prevent the abuse of judicial power. I. Ensuring the Traceability of the Whole Process The traceability of the whole process is the basic requirement of using information technology to support honest justice and prevent judicial corruption. No matter what kind of business, as long as all links can be true, comprehensive and tamper-proof, the legality, compliance and rationality of all personnel and operations at any time thereafter can be traced back, which will instinctively remind the staff to consciously perform their duties in accordance with laws, regulations and authority requirements and avoid any improper operation. The online litigation service system is directly open to the public. All the appeals of letters, calls and video visits from the people and every reply from court staffs at all levels are automatically retained in the information system in the form of text, voice or video, and any different opinions between the people and the courts can be checked and confirmed in the information recorded in the system. Any improper response, disposal or delay of the staff is fully recorded in the system, which undoubtedly provides a full guarantee for the courts at all levels to correctly treat the reasonable demands of the people. The information recorded in the system is not only a powerful measure for the people’s courts to reduce the burden of mass litigation but also an important basis for the test and evaluation of whether the courts at all levels treat the people in accordance with the law and regulations.

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Courts across the country have fully realized the online handling of cases, and every case in the trial process, from filing to division, trial, collegial discussion, judgment, and the production of judgment documents, is conducted on the Internet. In January 2017, the Supreme People’s Court issued the Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Audio and Video Recording of Court Trials, requiring that people’s courts at all levels should record and video the whole process of court trials and that the case information and file materials involved in the process of handling cases should be truly, timely and comprehensively entered into the online case handling system. It not only provides services for future inquiry statistics and quality and effectiveness evaluation but also provides full support for online reference. The information of more than 200 million cases currently stored in the national court case handling system reflects the detailed imprint of the impartial administration of justice by judges at all levels. The national court execution procedure information management system, through setting up program nodes, prompts and reminders, examination and approval management, supervision and supervision, risk prevention and control nodes, and connecting with mobile execution terminals, realizes online handling, online publicity and online supervision of all of the execution cases, ensuring that all online operations leave traces throughout the process. It also fully supports video recording and control of the whole process of outgoing execution activities and truly realizes the threedimensional node monitoring of the whole process of case execution, which greatly promotes the standardized and honest handling of cases by executing staffs. The information of all execution cases in the information system is the irrefutable evidence that can be traced back and tested for the specific effectiveness of each execution case at any time in the future. II. Promoting Judicial Justice Judicial justice is the inevitable requirement of honest justice and the expected effect of honest justice. The judicial and executive powers of the people’s courts are sacred powers entrusted by the people. The greater the power is, the more supervision is needed. Smart courts regulate judicial activities through information-based procedures, enable judicial activities to leave traces throughout the judicial process and to be supervised throughout the process to keep judicial power in the cage of the system and effectively promote judicial justice in courts at all levels. Whether it is through whole business online processing to achieve the whole process of leaving traces or using information technology to standardize the case handling process, improve trial efficiency, unify the judgment scale, and solve implementation problems, it provides all-round support for the judicial justice of court staffs. However, support cannot replace supervision, and decentralization cannot lead to laissez-faire. To this end, the smart court also provides a new means of information technology for judicial supervision, making online supervision, feedback supervision and supervision an important branch of the closed-loop of trial execution at all levels and contributing to judicial justice. Normal operation mechanisms have been established for information systems such as execution command centers, litigation service guidance centers, execution

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command management platforms and information platforms of litigation service guidance centers throughout the country, which can help court staffs grasp the details of execution and litigation service work of courts at all levels in real time and discover each court and even each case in a timely manner. In view of the irregularities in the judicial process and the problems reflected by the people, timely investigation and analysis, supervision opinions are put forward, supervision is carried out within a time limit, and responsibility is assigned to people, which has become an important guarantee for the national courts to exercise their powers in a unified and standardized manner and for the high courts to play an effective supervisory role. In view of the direct and important impact of court trial and litigation service standardization on judicial image and judicial credibility, the Supreme People’s Court has built and encouraged local courts to use the smart trial supervision system to conduct automatic inspection and sampling of personnel behavior and equipment status in every court trial and every litigation service reception window of courts at all levels throughout the country. If violations are found, they can be reported to the corresponding courts and judges in time, which has played a very positive role in strengthening trial management, maintaining a good judicial image and promoting judicial justice. III. Preventing Dealings under the Table Transparency is the best way to prevent corruption. An important purpose of the smart court to publicize the elements of the whole process of trial execution according to law is to use the Internet to make all the information of judicial activities public to the whole society as much as possible and to ensure that the judicial process is transparent through open, dynamic, transparent and convenient measures. In addition, the court’s internal business is handled online, and the whole process is traceable, which also makes the internal supervision mechanism increasingly perfect, and the dealings under the table are becoming increasingly difficult to escape the supervision of people. The Supreme People’s Court promotes the publicity of judgment documents, requiring all effective judgment documents of courts at all levels throughout the country, except for special cases involving state secrets, to be made public to the whole society through the China Judgments Online within 7 days. Therefore, for general cases, all the factual basis, applicable law, judgment reasoning and ruling results can be easily accessed and inquired through this unified window and are subject to supervision and inspection from all aspects of society. By the end of 2020, China Judgments Online had accumulated more than 112 million judicial documents, becoming the largest open resource database of judicial documents in the world. Although there are still some mistakes in some of the documents, as Chief Justice Zhou Qiang has repeatedly stressed, the people will allow us to make some unavoidable mistakes in our work, but they will never forgive us for deliberately operating behind closed doors to cover the mistakes. The Supreme People’s Court has also advocated the publicity of live court trials throughout the country, requiring courts at all levels to broadcast live court trials to the public through the China Court Trial Online as much as possible. Through this

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unified window, there are now an average of more than 10,000 live court hearings across the country every day, and many cases have attracted hundreds of thousands or even tens of millions of viewers to visit and pay attention to the facts of the case, the focus of controversy, the opinions of litigants and agents, the judge’s trial process and the reasons for the judgment. Therefore, the previously closed and mysterious trial process can be subject to the comprehensive supervision of the legal profession and all sectors of society. The Supreme People’s Court has also formulated important documents, such as the Implementation Measures of the People’s Court for the Implementation of the Provisions on Records, Notifications and Accountability of Leading Officials’ Interference in Judicial Activities and Handling of Specific Cases, and the Provisions on Records and Accountability of Interrogation Cases by Internal Personnel of Judicial Organs. A special database was set up to record the interference of external leaders in judicial activities and the interference of internal personnel in judicial cases, which also prevents the violation of rules and regulations by internal and external interference from working personnel in private to a large degree.

10.5 Serving Social Governance As a national judicial organ, the people’s court is the last line of defense to protect social fairness and justice. The operation status and information accumulation of courts at all levels reflect the development of the economy and society. The accumulated judicial big data provide an important reference for revealing the essence of social problems, proposing effective solutions and serving social governance. Smart courts support the improvement of court litigation services and case handling modes, provide a strong guarantee for business operations and contract execution, and become an important measure to optimize the business environment of China. I. Improving the Business Environment Building and constantly improving a market-oriented, law-based and internationalized business environment is the basic guarantee to stimulate the vitality of market players and social creativity and the necessary prerequisite to promote high-quality economic development. Among them, it is an important way to improve the business environment and an important goal of social governance to realize the predictability of business activities through improving the rule of law. The various systems and procedures of the court have a direct impact on the business environment of the country, and the optimization and improvement of the court’s judicial efficiency, judicial cost, judicial organization, judicial procedures and information technology will undoubtedly contribute to smooth and efficient business activities, contract execution and dispute resolution. Every year, the World Bank conducts an assessment of the business environment of the global economy and publishes an annual report on the business environment, which covers 10 aspects, including starting a business, obtaining construction

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permits, obtaining electricity, registering property, obtaining credit, protecting small and medium-sized investors, paying taxes, cross-border trade, executing contracts and handling bankruptcy. Undoubtedly, it has an objective and authoritative guiding role in improving and optimizing the business environment. Among them, “executing contracts” mainly involves the judicial system and litigation procedure, which are divided into three indicators: judicial efficiency, judicial cost and judicial procedure quality. Judicial efficiency is evaluated according to the time interval and specific duration between prosecution, filing, pretrial conference, evidence exchange, trial, judgment, appeal, preservation and execution. The judicial cost is calculated based on the statistics of average attorney fees, court fees and enforcement fees, and the judicial process quality index is calculated based on the statistics of court organization, litigation process, case management, court automation and alternative dispute resolution. As the comprehensive effect of the construction and application of smart courts will play a significant role in promoting the above contents, it will also directly improve China’s business environment. In the Doing Business 2020 report released by the World Bank in October 2019, China’s ease of doing business ranking rose by 15 places after a sharp increase of 32 places last year, ranking 31st out of 190 economies in the world. In recent years, China’s “contract execution” index has been among the highest in the world, ranking fifth in the world in 2019. The “Judicial Procedure Quality Index” with court informatization as its main indicator ranked among the top three in the world for two consecutive years in 2017 and 2018 and ranked first in the world in 2019 with the highest score in history, reflecting the latest achievements of smart courts in improving the business environment. Behind it is the remarkable progress made by the smart court in promoting justice for the people and judicial justice. II. Quantifying the Effectiveness of Governance As an important part of national big data, judicial big data can reflect many situations of economic and social operation from the side of the rule of law. Therefore, it is an inevitable requirement for the wider application of smart courts to make full use of the rich judicial data resources accumulated by smart courts, to study and discover the internal relationship between judicial activities and economic and social development and to form an analysis and evaluation mechanism of social governance effectiveness of “data speaking, quantitative analysis and precise control”. Relying on the judicial big data resources of the big data management and service platform of the People’s Court and combining important economic operation data such as population size, GDP, financial deposit balance, civil automobile volume and tourist number of administrative regions all over the country, we strive to explore the maximum balance point between “what judicial big data can do” and “what assistant decision-making needs”. Hot and pain spots exist in the economic and social development and difficulties faced by people, which include administrative disputes, administrative violations, private lending, rural land, commercial housing transactions, financial fraud, intellectual property protection, illegal fundraising, arrears of labor remuneration, personal safety risks, road traffic safety, personal property safety, abduction and trafficking of women and children, pornography, gambling and

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drug control, family disputes, neighborhood disputes, media disputes, and ecological environment protection. Combined with these issues, a comprehensive judicial index system has been formed with 27 indicators in 6 aspects, including the construction of a law-based government, economic and social development, social integrity system, the construction of a safe society, the construction of a harmonious society and the construction of ecological civilization. A specific administrative region can automatically extract, correlate and count the required data, compare similar areas in the country horizontally, analyze the jurisdictions at higher and lower levels vertically in detail, and show the development trend according to the time period to form a more systematic, objective and dynamic “Assessment Report on Regional Social and Economic Operation Based on Judicial Big Data”. Since its launch in 2019, a pilot study on “digital decision-making” to serve social governance has been carried out in 53 different regions covering 17 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities across the country, aiming to reflect the achievements and challenges of local social governance in an all-round way through “digital physical examination” based on judicial big data, which has won full recognition from many local Party committees and governments. III. Supporting Legislation and Justice The judicial big data platform, which is one part of the construction and application of smart courts, helps gather the full amount of judicial trial information, which has the most direct and close connection with legislative and judicial activities. It not only reflects the judicial practice effect of applicable laws and regulations in the process of trial execution but also contains the new characteristics and laws of the development of social contradictions in the new historical period. To use judicial big data to serve social governance, we need to form a closed decision-making loop from observation, judgment, decision-making, and implementation to reobservation from the two interdependent and mutually promoted aspects of legislation and judicature to support the construction of a national governance system with good law and good governance. By the end of 2020, the big data management and service platform of the People’s Court had carried out more than 860 special studies on legislative and judicial activities, providing important support for the National People’s Congress to improve the legal system and for the political and legal organs to revise judicial interpretations. In October 2018, only 22 days after the bus crash in Wanzhou, Chongqing, the China Judice Big Data Research Institute released to the public the Analysis of Criminal Cases Caused by Bus Conflicts between Drivers and Passengers, which showed that from January 2016 to October 2018, in the first instance criminal cases of bus conflicts, cases occurring in the new first-tier large cities and small cities accounted for nearly 50%. From the perspective of trend development, the number of cases in first-tier and second-tier, third-tier and fourth-tier cities has declined significantly, while the number of cases in new first-tier and cities below the fifth-tier and sixth-tier cities has increased significantly, which shows that the conflict between bus drivers and passengers should be given special attention in areas with rapid social development. The charges involved concentrated on the crime of endangering public

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safety by dangerous means and the crime of intentional injury, accounting for nearly 70% of the total, and 88.79% of the cases occurred in the course of operation, 54.51% occurred in the course of vehicle driving, more than half of the cases had serious acts such as passengers attacking drivers, and nearly 30% had passengers seizing vehicle control devices. This shows that the conflict between drivers and passengers has become an important factor affecting bus safety. Most of the disputes are caused by trivial matters, such as disputes on fares, boarding and alighting, accounting for nearly 60% of the total, which shows that minor disputes that are prone to occur on buses are likely to cause serious consequences concerning people’s lives and that they require high attention from both legislative and judicial aspects. Shortly afterwards, the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the Guidance on Punishing Criminal Acts of Impairing Safe Driving of Public Transport Vehicles in accordance with the Law, which made stricter and specific provisions on the acts of both drivers and passengers suspected of endangering public safety by dangerous means. It should be said that judicial big data research has played a timely and positive role in promoting this work. IV. Providing Reference for Decision-making It is an important way of supporting management decision-making to quantitatively and intuitively reflect the effectiveness of social governance through a systematic and objective index system. Once these evaluation indexes are further integrated with the policies, laws and regulations, organizational systems and implementation methods of social governance and the causal relationship contained in governance activities is studied and analyzed, more profound experiences and lessons can be obtained, and in-depth analysis reports on several topics can be formed to better serve national governance and economic and social development. In the past, courts at all levels also carried out a large number of thematic studies, often and a topic requires extensive research in various places to collect case data from different regions. Some studies also need to issue a large number of survey forms for nationwide data statistics, and it will take half a year or longer to complete the empirical analysis. In this way, most researchers focus on preliminary research work, which is not only time-consuming and laborious but also easy to reduce its statistical significance because of the lack of data samples, making it difficult to obtain extensive and comprehensive objective results and affecting the accuracy of research results. At present, based on the judicial big data resources automatically gathered by smart courts and the extensive accumulation of external economic and social development information, a preliminary data report can be formed in one to two days by using general analysis aids to comprehensively process judicial and social development big data for a special study, and the report can be used to conduct further comparison and analysis by researchers from professional institutions and courts at all levels. In general, a high-level thematic research report with detailed content, credible data and well-founded conclusions can be completed in a week to provide a reference for the decision-making of relevant management departments. Both timeliness and credibility research reports are significantly improved.

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The decision-making reference research supported by smart courts can be driven by political policies. Researchers can form thematic research ideas and data aggregation directions according to the specific topics they accept, obtain the required case volume trends and case characteristics statistics directly from the judicial big data platform, and complete the preliminary research work quickly and accurately. Then, manpower is concentrated on the in-depth analysis of the combination of judicial big data and social development background to form profound and targeted research results. In addition, driven by the database, researchers actively display the case situation according to the judicial big data platform. Through the analysis and comparison of case information in different dimensions and different periods, they determine the contradictions and laws contained in it, as well as abnormal early warning, clarify the research topics, and complete in-depth research and analysis in combination with relevant economic and social backgrounds, achieving the purpose of using judicial big data to find problems in time and provide decision-making reference and better playing the role of “barometer” and “wind vane” of judicial big data. Since 2016, the judicial big data platform has supported more than 200 thematic studies and analyses every year, and many thematic reports, such as “Analysis of the Effectiveness of Building a Safe China” and “Analysis of Cases of Falling Objects Injuring People”, have been highly valued by the leaders of the Party and the state, providing a very important decision-making reference for improving governance methods and the governance system.

10.6 Remarkable Economic Benefit Smart courts have brought remarkable social benefits in the administration of justice for the people and judicial justice but have also produced remarkable economic benefits, including reducing personnel travel, improving work efficiency and saving the cost of the parties. I. Main Ways of Cost Reduction The informatization mode implemented by smart courts can help reduce costs and increase efficiency by ignoring many secondary links, which can be fully reflected at least from the following aspects. The first aspect is to serve the people through the application of information technology, reducing travel costs for the people. In traditional offline litigation, the parties or agents need to go back and forth to the court many times. According to the statistics conducted by a lawyer one time, it takes an average of 5.7 trips to and from the court to complete a lawsuit. It is even more unbearable for people to go back and forth many times for litigation across different places. Smart courts use a series of information applications, including electronic litigation platforms to support online litigation and cross-domain filing services, 12368 litigation service hotlines to support telephone litigation services, bankruptcy case handling platforms to support online creditors’ meetings, judicial auction platforms to support online

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judicial auctions and so on, reducing the travel time and cost of the people who used to go to and from the court. It can reduce travel distance, save working hours and travel costs, and produce considerable economic benefits. The second aspect is to improve judicial efficiency by means of information technology, reducing the travel cost of court staff. In the past, court staffs had to go to property management departments such as banks and housing management departments to inquire about the possible property to be executed. In many cases, they had to go all over the country and might have to go back and forth many times, which was truly time-consuming and laborious. The trial of court cases also requires judges and court staffs to travel frequently to conduct research, interrogation and interviews. Smart courts carry out information services such as network investigation and control, execution entrustment, remote interrogation, remote video interviews, remote training, video conferencing and remote trials, which can greatly reduce the travel distance of court staffs, save working hours and produce considerable economic benefits. The third aspect is to save the cost of judicial manpower through paperless office. In the past, the court needed many paper materials to be transmitted, which not only required human transmission but also took up much time for waiting, and it was difficult to achieve both at the same time. The online circulation of electronic documents, electronic service of legal documents, remote processing of electronic signatures and other business functions implemented by smart courts have reduced a large number of exchanges and time delays, reduced travel distances, saved working hours and produced considerable economic benefits. The fourth aspect is to save commissions for the parties through online judicial auction. The last important link in court execution is judicial auction. In the past, offline auctions were used, and equity owners needed to pay auction commissions proportional to the value of property. The execution informatization implemented by the smart court supports the network judicial auction, realizes the zero commission of the auction, saves many expenses for the parties, and produces considerable economic benefits. II. Benefit Estimation Method Based on the data collected from the survey of the construction of the smart court at ll levels, according to the calculation method provided by the National Development and Reform Commission, the comprehensive application of information technology reduces travel, saves time, reduces human costs, saves judicial human costs and saves judicial auction commissions. By designing evaluation indicators, collecting evaluation data, and analyzing and converting the evaluation results, the economic benefits generated by the application of information technology in courts throughout the country can be calculated. The original data required for evaluation and calculation are obtained through reading directly from the national unified application system and investigating the local courts. First, the estimation method of economic benefits generated by the service information application provides for the people is to select the evaluation indicators of the effectiveness of information application in serving the people, reducing travel and

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saving time. These applications include online litigation platforms, 12368 litigation service hotlines, cross-domain filings, online creditor meetings and online judicial auctions, which are shown in Table 10.1. Second, the method for estimating the economic benefits generated by improving judicial efficiency by means of informatization is to select the informatization application design evaluation indicators with obvious effects and easy quantitative evaluation, such as network execution investigation and control, execution entrustment, remote audio and video application to evaluate the effects of reducing travel and saving time, as shown in Table 10.2. Third, the estimation method of economic benefits generated by paperless office and case handling is to evaluate the effectiveness of three information applications, namely, online circulation of electronic documents, electronic document delivery and electronic signatures, in saving paper and improving work efficiency, as shown in Table 10.3. Through the three aspects of the evaluation indicators shown above, based on the national court application data, we can obtain the quantitative effect of the smart court application system in saving travel distance, improving efficiency and saving paper, which can be converted into saving travel costs and printing costs. Fourth, through the online judicial auction to save the auction commission and produce economic benefits, the estimation method is to support the online judicial auction, realize the zero-commission judicial auction, save many commissions for the parties and bring economic benefits. The formula for calculating the economic benefit of this part is as follows. The economic benefit generated by saving commission cost through online judicial auction = (the amount of each part of the subject matter traded by online auction * the commission rate of each part in the traditional way). The commission rate of each part is as follows: for the part with a turnover of less than 2 million yuan, the commission rate is 5%. If the turnover exceeds 2 million yuan and is no more than 10 million yuan, for the exceeding part, the commission rate is 3%. If the turnover exceeds 10 million yuan and is no more than 50 million yuan, for the exceeding part, the commission ratio is 2%. If the turnover exceeds 50 million yuan and is no more than 100 million yuan, for the exceeding part, the commission ratio is 1%. If the turnover exceeds 100 million yuan, for the exceeding part, the commission rate is 0.5%. III. Estimation of Economic Benefit To scientifically evaluate the effectiveness of the construction of smart courts in promoting green development and generating economic benefits, the Supreme People’s Court has organized the extraction and investigation of the application system data of courts at all levels throughout the country and evaluated them year by year. During the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, the Supreme People’s Court promoted courts at all levels throughout the country to vigorously promote electronic litigation and guided courts at all levels to use litigation service platforms and online office and online case handling platforms to serve the people and the court staff in online litigation and work. On May 25, 2020, President Zhou Qiang delivered a report on

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Table 10.1 Evaluation table of economic and green benefits produced by informatization serving the people Number Application

Traveling distance reduction

Time saving Paper saving

1

Online filling

Number of online filling cases * Average number of people involved in online filing per case * Average traveling distance for per person by traditional methods

Number of online filling cases * Average number of people involved in online filing per case * Average time spent per person by traditional method

Number of online filling applications * Amount of paper consumed by traditional method

2

Online payment

Number of online payment cases * Average traveling distance for per person by traditional method

Number of online payment cases * Average time spent per person by traditional method

Number of online payment application * Amount of paper consumed by traditional method

3

Online evidence exchange

Number of online evidence exchange * Average number of people involved in online evidence exchange per evidence exchange * Average traveling distance for per person for traditional methods

Number of online evidence exchange * Average number of people involved in online evidence exchange per evidence exchange * Average time spent by per person by traditional method

Number of online evidence exchange application * Amount of paper consumed by traditional methods

4

Online court sessions

Number of online court sessions * Average number of people attending each court session * Average traveling distance for per person using traditional method

Number of online court sessions * Average number of people attending each court session * Average time spent per person using traditional method

Number of using online court sessions * Amount of paper used using traditional method

(continued)

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Table 10.1 (continued) Number Application

Traveling distance reduction

Time saving Paper saving

5

Online mediation Number of online mediation * Average number of people mediated each time * Average traveling distance for per person by traditional mediation method

Number of online mediation * Average number of people mediated each time * Average time spent per person for traditional mediation

Number of using online mediation * Amount of paper consumed by traditional mediation method

6

Contacting judges

Number of contacting judges online * Average number of participants involved in online contacting per time * Average traveling distance for per person by traditional method

Number of contacting judges online * Average number of participants involved in online contacting per time * Time consumed by traditional method

Number of contacting judges online * Amount of paper consumed by traditional method

7

Cross-domain filing

Number of cross-domain filing cases * Average number of people involved in cross-domain filing per case * Average traveling distance for per person by traditional methods

Number of cross-domain filing cases * Average number of people involved in cross-domain filing per case * Average time spent per person by traditional methods

Number of using cross-domain filling * Amount of paper consumed by traditional method

8

12368 Litigation Service Hotline

Number of calls answered by 12368 hotline agents and self-service voice * Average traveling distance for per person in traditional way

Number of calls answered by 12368 hotline agents and self-service voice * Average time spent per person in traditional way

Number of using 12368 litigation service hotline * Amount of paper consumed in traditional way

(continued)

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Table 10.1 (continued) Number Application

Traveling distance reduction

Time saving Paper saving

9

Online Creditors’ Meeting for Bankruptcy Cases

Number of people attending the online creditors’ meeting * Average traveling distance for per person in the traditional way

Number of people attending the online creditors’ meeting * Average time spent by per person in the traditional way

Number of using online creditors’meeting * Amount of paper consumed in the conventional way

10

Online judicial auction

Number of people registered to participate in online judicial auction * Average traveling distance for each person participating in traditional auction

Number of people registered to participate in online judicial auction * Average time for each traditional auction

Number of using online judicial auction * Amount of paper consumed by traditional means

the work of the Supreme People’s Court at the Third Session of the 13th National People’s Congress, which revealed that smart courts had “played an important role” during the epidemic prevention and control period. Based on the data of the National Smart Court application system in 2020, the Supreme People’s Court organized and evaluated the economic benefits of the National Smart Court in promoting green development. In terms of serving the people, which are reflected in reducing people’s travel and generating economic benefits, in 2020, the courts at all levels throughout the country filed more than 10.8 million cases online through the electronic litigation platform, had more than 7 million payments online, conducted more than 1.7 million evidence exchanges online, held more than 860,000 court sessions online and mediated more than 4.4 million online sessions. Courts across the country have received more than 2.31 million calls from the parties through the 12368 hotline for litigation service. The National Enterprise Bankruptcy Information Disclosure Platform held a network creditor meeting involving more than 280,000 creditors. The informatization supports the needs of all parties and saves trouble for them. Compared with traditional litigation methods, it reduces the number of people’s trips by approximately 88 million times, reduces the number of trips by approximately 6.3 billion kilometers, and saves travel costs by approximately 4 billion yuan, which is equivalent to saving more than 200,000 tons of standard coal and reducing carbon emissions by more than 420,000 tons. Saving approximately 270 million pieces of paper weighing approximately 1200 tons is equivalent to preserving more than 20,000 trees and saving printing costs of more than 130 million yuan. It saves approximately 120 million hours of travel time for the people, which is equivalent to the annual working time of more than 60,000 people. In 2020, the courts at all levels throughout the country

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Table 10.2 Evaluation table of economic and green benefits generated by informatization serving the trial execution continued table Number Application

Traveling distance reduction

Time saving

paper saving

1

Cross-court access Number of of electronic files cross-court access of electronic files * Traveling distance for traditional way

Number of cross-court access of electronic files * Time consumed by traditional means

Number of cross-court access of electronic files * Amount of paper consumed by traditional means

2

Remote execution of commanding

Number of remote execution of command * number of people using remote execution of commanding * the traveling distance required for on-site command

Number of remote execution of command * number of people using remote execution of commanding * the time needed for on-site command

Number of remote execution of command * The amount of paper consumed by traditional means

3

General-to-general execution and inquiry online-inquiry

Number of property inquiries using general-to-general execution and inquiry online * number of execution judge required by the traditional means * traveling distance required by the traditional means

Number of property inquiries using general-to-general execution and inquiry online * number of execution judge required by the traditional means * time consumed by the traditional method

Number of property inquiries using general-to-general execution and inquiry online * the amount of paper consumed by traditional means

4

General-to-general execution and inquiry online-deduction and freezing

Number of property deduction or freezing using general-to-general execution and inquiry online * number of execution judge required by the traditional means * traveling distance required by the traditional means

Number of property deduction or freezing using general-to-general execution and inquiry online * number of execution judge required by the traditional means * The time consumed by the traditional method

Number of property deduction or freezing using general-to-general execution and inquiry online * Amount of paper consumed by the traditional method

(continued)

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Table 10.2 (continued) Number Application

Traveling distance reduction

Time saving

paper saving

5

Point-to-point execution and inquiry online

Number of property inquiries using the Point-to-point execution and inquiry online * number of execution judge required by the traditional means * traveling distance required by the traditional means

Number of property inquiries using the Point-to-point execution and inquiry online * number of execution judge required by the traditional means * Time consumed by the traditional method

Number of property enquiries using point-to-point execution and inquiry online * Amount of paper consumed by traditional method

6

Intraprovince execution delegation

Number of intraprovince execution delegations * Average number of participants by traditional method * Traveling distance by traditional method

Number of intraprovince execution delegations * Average number of participants by traditional method * Time consumed by traditional means

Number of interprovince execution delegates * Amount of paper consumed by traditional means

7

Cross-province execution delegation

Number of cross-province execution delegation * Average number of participants by traditional method * Traveling distance by traditional method

Number of cross-province execution delegation * Average number of participants by traditional method * Time consumed by traditional means

Number of cross-province execution delegation * Amount of paper consumed by traditional means

8

Remote arraignment

Number of using remote arraignment * Average number of participants by traditional method * Traveling distance by traditional method

Number of suing remote arraignment * Average number of participants by traditional method * Time consumed by traditional method

Number of using remote arraignment * Amount of paper consumed by traditional method

9

Remote training

Number of remote training * Average number of participants per training * traveling distance by traditional method

Number of remote training * Average number of participants per training * time consumed by traditional method

Number of remote trainings * paper consumed by traditional method

(continued)

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Table 10.2 (continued) Number Application

Traveling distance reduction

Time saving

paper saving

10

Number of video conferences * Average number of participants per video conference * Traveling distance by traditional means

Number of video conferences * Average number of participants per video conference * Time consumed by traditional means

Number of video conferencing * Amount of paper consumed by traditional means

Video conferencing

Table 10.3 Evaluation of paperless office effectiveness promoted by informatization Number

Application

Traveling distance saving

Time saving

Paper saving

1

Online circulation of electronic document

Number of official documents handled online * traveling distance by traditional method

Number of documents handled online * Average circulation times of each document * Average circulation time by traditional method

Number of documents handle online * Average page number of each document

2

Electronic service of documents,

Number of documents served by electronic service * traveling Distance by traditional service

Number of documents served by electronic service * average time spent on each traditional service

Number of documents served by electronic service * Average page number of document served

3

Electronic signatures

The number of documents sealed with electronic signature * traveling distance by traditional method

Number of documents served by electronic service *The time spent on each seal by traditional method

Number of documents served by electronic service *average page number of each sealed document

auctioned 573,000 objects through online judicial auctions, 939,000 times in total, and a total of 390,000 people participated in the auctions, with a turnover of more than 400 billion yuan and a commission savings of 12.36 billion yuan. In terms of serving trial execution, which is reflected in reducing police travel and generating economic benefits, in 2020, the courts throughout the country supported more than 3.4 million cross-court access to case electronic files through the indepth application system of electronic files. Courts across the country have used the Supreme People’s Court’s “general to general” investigation and control online system to inquire about cases more than 1.6 billion times, conducted deduction and freezing more than 33 million times, and used the local court’s “point-to-point”

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investigation and control online system to inquire about cases approximately 110 million times. Through the execution delegation management system developed by the Supreme People’s Court, more than 590,000 cross-regional and provincial execution delegations and 750,000 cross-provincial execution delegations have been carried out. Courts across the country have held more than 30,000 remote video conferences and more than 15,000 video training sessions. All kinds of information technology means have greatly changed the traditional method of trial execution and improved the effect of trial execution. In particular, the execution and inquiry online, which is connected with more than 10 units, such as the People’s Bank of China, the Ministry of Public Security and more than 3900 banks, allows people to inquire approximately 25 items of information belonging to 16 categories, such as bank deposits, covering all forms of property. Without the support of information technology, the court enforcement staff needs to go to the site to inquire about the property of the executed person and go to the place where the executed person is located to carry out the execution in different places, and the online inquiry cannot be achieved at all. With informatization, more than 7.2 billion person-time court staffs travel on official businesses, and more than 87 billion kilometers of travel distance are saved, the travel costs of which are worth more than 70 billion yuan, equivalent to consuming more than 4.3 million tons of standard coal and emitting more than 8.9 million tons of carbon dioxide. In addition, approximately 13.2 billion pieces of paper, weighing approximately 58,000 tons, equivalent to 980,000 trees, and more than 6 billion yuan on printing are also saved. For court staffs, more than 14.5 billion working hours are saved, which is equivalent to 7.28 million people’s annual working hours. It can be seen that under the traditional working mode, the human and financial resources of the people’s court are far from achieving the effect of trial execution under the condition of informatization, which can be said to promote the fundamental change of trial execution mode. In the promotion of paperless office, in 2020, the national courts used the online office platform to handle approximately 7.1 million electronic documents. More than 24 million documents were served electronically. More than 88 million documents were sealed by electronic signatures, which promoted paperless office handling and improved work efficiency, saving more than 1 billion pieces of paper, weighing approximately 4500 tons, equivalent to protecting 76,000 trees and saving more than 500 million yuan in printing costs. Overall, in 2020, the people’s courts reduced the travel time of people, improved the efficiency of trial execution and promoted paperless office by means of information technology. If they participate in litigation and carry out trial execution in traditional ways, the people and the court staff will need to travel more than 7.6 billion times and 93.5 billion kilometers. It is equivalent to consuming 4.61 million tons of standard coal and emitting 9.41 million tons of carbon dioxide. It needs to consume more than 60,000 tons of paper, equivalent to 1.08 million trees. In the traditional way, if we want to achieve the working effect under the condition of informatization, we need to spend approximately 7.4 million people’s annual working hours, and we need to spend more than 95 billion yuan on travel costs, printing costs and judicial auction commissions.

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10.7 Winning Worldwide Recognition The construction of China’s smart courts has attracted the attention of the world’s legal and information technology counterparts. The judicial openness and litigation service platform of Chinese courts directly covers and serves global users through the Internet. Visitors to the judicial openness platform are all over the world, and many users of the litigation service system are in foreign countries. Users from all countries can feel the openness, transparency and convenience of these online systems. Smart courts have increasingly become an important symbol of the progress of China’s judicial civilization. In recent years, Judges of the supreme courts and local courts of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, South Africa, Benin, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, Mongolia, Azerbaijan and many other countries; scholars of law schools of world-renowned universities such as Harvard University, Columbia University and Oxford University; United Nations and World Bank Officials from international organizations such as the Bank visited the Supreme People’s Court and local courts of China, focusing on the construction of court informatization and experiencing the fruitful results of the construction and application of smart courts, all of which were highly praised. The guests were amazed and excited to see that the large screen of the Supreme People’s Court displayed the real-time changes and updates of the closing and closing data of courts at all levels throughout the country and that they could watch the court sessions at any time and grasp the application status of various information systems. Everyone was amazed and excited and fully realized the profound changes brought about by smart courts to judicial work. The Supreme People’s Court has also organized meetings with chief justices of multilateral courts in Central and Eastern European countries, Portuguese-speaking countries and regions, SCO countries and BRICS countries, all of which have taken informatization as an important topic, studied and discussed the important impact of information technology on modern justice, and introduced and exchanged the main practices and practical effects of court informatization construction. Delegates at the meeting attached great importance to the important role of informatization in promoting judicial work, and through conference discussions and field research, they felt the great achievements of the construction of China’s smart courts and fully affirmed the important contributions made by Chinese courts to the world’s rule of law civilization in the information age. In November 2016 and December 2019, the Supreme People’s Court hosted the “Smart Court and Internet Rule of Law Forum” and “World Internet Rule of Law Forum” belonging to the Third World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, where chief justices and judges from all over the world gathered to study the opportunities and challenges facing judicial work in the Internet era. Delegates at the meeting expressed their affirmation and gratitude for China’s establishment of a platform for the exchange of court informatization and network rule of law, especially their admiration for the achievements of China’s court informatization

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construction. The multilateral agreements adopted by the participating countries actively promote the efforts of all countries to continuously expand and deepen exchanges and cooperation in the field of court informatization and the rule of law in cyberspace and strengthen the exchange of experiences and result in the use of information technology to promote judicial openness, litigation services, case trials, court management and case studies. We will promote the establishment of a more regular exchange and cooperation mechanism for the informatization work of courts in various countries. I. Comparison of Main Indicators between China and Foreign Countries The informatization of courts in the world started earliest in developed countries. In the 1960s, American courts began to promote the electronization of legal documents, which made information technology closely integrated with court work. Other countries are also fully aware of the important opportunities that informatization brings to courts, and the use of computers to support judges in handling cases has been widely popularized around the world, and online litigation has also been realized in many national courts. To evaluate the overall level of court informatization, we should consider it comprehensively from the aspects of network coverage, business support, data aggregation, publicity degree, scope of collaboration and smart services. The network coverage reflects the scope of the direct impact of the court’s information system. Since the Internet can cover the whole world, the court’s internal working network has become the main indicator used to measure the role of internal information systems. It is understood that at present, only approximately 200 federal courts in the United States are connected to each other through network, while the Russian Vayuan network connects 2496 courts nationwide. China’s court network covers more than 3500 courts, more than 10,000 people’s courts and 44,000 science and technology courts at all levels, with the largest network coverage, number of nodes and scale of system integration in the world. Business support reflects the basic way of court information serving users. It is understood that at present, by means of information technology, American courts mainly support five businesses, such as electronic document management, Russian courts support five businesses, such as remote video conferencing, and Indian courts mainly support seven businesses, such as online litigation. Chinese courts have promoted the online processing of all businesses, with 91 types of businesses supported by information technology, far exceeding the traditional areas of information technology such as process management, information management and online services. Data aggregation reflects the main information resources owned by court informatization. It is understood that at present, the PACER system of American courts collects 1 billion documents, the IT system of Korean courts stores 100.95 TB data, and the National Judicial Data Network of India collected 31.41 million cases. The judicial big data management and service platform of Chinese courts gathers 218 million pieces of case information and 6.743 billion data files, and the IT system of the Supreme People’s Court stores more than 4 PB of data, which is the largest scale of trial information resources in the world.

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The publicity degree reflects the main effect of the court’s use of the Internet to support transparent judicial justice. It is understood that at present, the courts of the United States, Russia and Britain have made outstanding progress in publicizing judgment documents, the courts of South Korea have made progress in publicizing cases, and the Brazilian courts have made outstanding progress in live television trials. Chinese courts use the Internet to achieve the unified construction of four judicial open platforms, namely, trial process, live broadcast of trial, judgment documents and execution information, and to fully open 598 core judicial elements in the whole process of cases, which is leading globally in terms of both the comprehensiveness of open elements and of the unity of open portals. The scope of collaboration reflects the ability of the court and other relevant departments to cooperate with each other through informatization. At present, there are no reports on large-scale collaboration between foreign court information systems and other industries. Chinese courts have coordinated with 4029 departments of 30 industries across the country to provide strong support for improving the quality and effectiveness of judicial work. Smart service reflects the court’s ability to use information technology to assist in improving the quality and effectiveness of work. It is understood that at present, some courts in the United States use pretrial risk assessment, recidivism risk assessment, court voice recognition and other functions to support trial work. Chinese courts have widely used major artificial intelligence technologies such as speech recognition, image processing, video processing and natural language processing to support litigation services, trial execution and judicial management. In summary, according to the Blue Book on Rule of Law, China Court Informatization Development Report No. 3 (2019) produced by the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese courts have built a leading model of smart courts with the widest network coverage, the most business support, the largest data aggregation, the strongest openness, the widest scope of collaboration and the latest smart application in the world. It has promoted the overall reform of the court’s trial execution mode and effectively promoted the modernization of the trial system and trial capacity. II. Demonstrating China’s Judicial Civilization Judicial civilization refers to legal culture and its various manifestations established by national judicial organs in the process of dealing with various cases for a long time, and it is an important part of law civilization and political civilization. Judicial civilization includes judicial concepts, judicial systems, judicial conditions and judicial behavior. The level of judicial civilization reflects the degree of institutionalization, standardization and procedure management of social legal culture and legal operation. It can be seen that judicial civilization is not only the achievement accumulation of long-term judicial practices but also an important guarantee for promoting the rule of law civilization and achieving judicial justice. To further advance comprehensive law-based governance in an all-around way and promote the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity, we must constantly improve

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socialist judicial civilization with Chinese characteristics and provide a strong legal guarantee for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The construction and application of smart courts in China, relying on modern artificial intelligence, focuses on justice for the people and judicial justice, adheres to the integration of judicial law, system reform and technological change, supports judicial trial, litigation service and judicial management in a highly informatized way, and realizes the whole business online management, the whole process open according to law and all-round smart service. It has created many practical and effective advanced models in terms of judicial concept, judicial system, conditions and behavior. In terms of judicial concepts, China’s smart courts demonstrate the advanced concepts of judicial reform and information construction serving as “two wheels of a car and two wings of a bird” in promoting the modernization of court work so that information can run more and people can run less, truly achieving the rules that transparency is the best way to prevent corruption and that information technology should be efficient and fair. In terms of the judicial system, while building judicial information systems in accordance with laws and regulations, China’s smart courts have also promoted institutional innovation, resulting in a series of new judicial systems, such as Internet trial rules, Internet-based judicial openness provisions, guidance on synchronous generation and in-depth application of electronic files with cases, and compulsory retrieval provisions for similar cases in the trial process. In terms of judicial conditions, China’s smart courts have provided a new information infrastructure, business application system, data resource service, information security guarantee and information operation and maintenance guarantee system, which has brought a new look to the office, case handling, learning and communication environment of courts at all levels throughout the country and doubled their support capabilities. In terms of judicial acts, the trial judge can obtain the key points, legal references and similar case recommendations of the trial cases actively pushed by the smart assistant system when he opens the computer, the executing policemen can control all kinds of property information of the executed persons in all parts of the country by clicking on the mouse, and the judicial administrators can keep abreast of all kinds of trials in the courts under their jurisdiction through the big data platform. People can complete litigation formalities through Internet courts and mobile microcourts, and informatization has completely changed the traditional mode of judicial behavior. Smart courts, in particular, integrate the organization, construction, operation and management of courts into advanced information systems, which undoubtedly fully improves the institutionalization, standardization and procedure management of legal culture and legal operation and demonstrates the great superiority of socialist judicial civilization with Chinese characteristics. Wang Guiguo, a professor of international law and comparative law at Tulane University in the United States, wrote a commentary entitled “Respecting Tao and Virtue: The World Bank’s Praise of China’s Justice”, pointing out that Chinese courts, in light of their own social development, have improved the quality of judges and established justice with Chinese

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characteristics by effectively combining justice with high-tech and new technology. It occupies a place in the torrent of the rule of law in the world. III. Enhancing China’s Judicial Credibility Judicial credibility reflects the public’s trust of and respect for the judicial system, judicial organs, and the process and results of the operation of judicial power. Continuous improvement of judicial credibility is an inevitable requirement for comprehensive law-based governance and plays a very important role in the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. Enhancing judicial credibility objectively requires not only the judicial organs to achieve judicial justice and authority but also subjective recognition from the public, both of which are indispensable. The information construction and application of smart courts can play a positive role in promoting both judicial organs and the public and greatly enhance the credibility of China’s judiciary. To enhance judicial credibility, first, we need to ensure that the people’s courts exercise judicial power independently according to the law. The information-based case handling method implemented by the smart court enables every case handler to obtain the required case handling information and convenient auxiliary means in accordance with the law and regulations and allows the case handlers to use the information system to fill in and record the irregularities of leading cadres interfering in judicial activities and handling cases at any time. It provides extremely convenient conditions and sufficient protection mechanisms for judges at all levels to handle cases according to the law. Enhancing judicial credibility requires optimizing the allocation of judicial powers and promoting strict justice. The information system of smart court construction can contribute to standardizing the functions and powers of the court’s internal filing, case division, trial, collegial discussion, judgment, execution and supervision in the form of nodes and procedures, and the case handlers must perform their duties in accordance with the strict requirements of the authority setting, which obviously further strengthens the judicial power of the legal system. At the same time, since the judicial procedure can be constantly tested and revised in the actual operation, it can undoubtedly better promote the improvement and optimization of the allocation of judicial powers. To enhance judicial credibility, it is necessary to ensure people’s participation in justice. A smart court, through a series of judicial open platforms, realizes the publicity of trial information on the Internet, the sharing of judgment documents from the parties to society, the active push of process information, the open of court hearing from theatre to online visibility, and the transparency of execution information from partial exposure to the whole process, which supports the construction of an open, dynamic and transparent system. It has effectively satisfied the people’s right to know, participate, express and supervise. Enhancing judicial credibility also requires strengthening the judicial protection of human rights. A smart court information system not only provides strict and standardized procedures for court staff but also fully guarantees the right of litigants and agents to know, state, defend, apply and appeal through litigation services, electronic

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litigation, science and technology courts, appeal letters and other platforms. It also provides unprecedented support for the timely realization of the rights and interests of the winning parties through the implementation of information technology. Enhancing judicial credibility also requires strengthening the supervision of judicial activities. Smart courts carry out online case handling, which has the natural attributes of leaving traces throughout the whole process, thus providing a rich and comprehensive way of implementation for judicial management and supervision. Online evaluation, online supervision and case retrieval have become powerful means to implement the judicial responsibility system while delegating power without laissez-faire so that judicial power is subject to increasingly stringent review and supervision. Smart courts have indeed won the high recognition from many of their counterparts in the world for China’s judicial credibility. Many visiting chief justices and justices of Western countries have said that due to different judicial systems, it may be difficult for other countries to adopt the way of court informatization such as China, but they firmly believe that this way will be able to better promote judicial justice. IV. Providing China’s Smart Court Solution The wave of informatization has promoted courts around the world to explore the use of computers, the Internet, big data and other technologies to change traditional working methods and improve the quality and effectiveness of judicial work. However, due to the differences in social systems, economic conditions and technological levels, there are great differences in the concepts and practices of court informatization in different countries. As long as we carefully study the construction and application practice of China’s smart courts, we will find that China’s courts are far ahead of the world in the breadth, depth and effectiveness of informatization. The chief justices of many countries who visited China said that “Internet + Justice” is one of the greatest achievements made by China’s courts and that the informatization level of China’s courts has reached the world’s leading level. Chinese courts have provided a model scheme worthy of full reference for the informatization of world courts. First, China’s smart courts demonstrate the institutional advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics. In many countries, due to institutional constraints, network connectivity, data aggregation and judicial openness can only be confined to a few courts, making it difficult to form a national chess game pattern. However, as the famous Metcalfe’s Law states, “the value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of Internet users”. Chinese courts rely on the national network power, digital China and the construction of a smart society, and the private network connects all courts and dispatched tribunals throughout the country. Data aggregation, judicial openness and so on are organized and implemented by the national courts, forming the largest judicial information database in the world, which results largely from the overall advantages of the Chinese national governance system. Second, China’s smart courts have always adhered to the people-centered development idea. In many countries, court informatization mainly focuses on the use of computers and databases to improve the internal efficiency of the court, but few

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measures are taken to serve the people. China’s smart courts have always taken justice for the people as their main purpose, focusing on the construction and continuous improvement of information systems that directly serve the public, such as judicial open platforms, litigation services online, litigation service hotlines and litigation service halls, which not only serve the people but also promote the improvement of trial quality and effectiveness. Third, China’s smart courts actively embrace the achievements of advanced information technology. Many people believe that courts, as judicial organs to settle disputes, should be relatively conservative in the face of new things, so the application of information technology in courts in many countries is relatively passive and lagging behind. Chinese courts are keenly aware of the rare opportunities brought by the development of information technology for justice for the people and judicial justice and have achieved remarkable results by adhering to the principle of technology neutrality and with a forward-looking layout, actively applying advanced technological achievements such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. In October 2019, when introducing blockchain, Chinese scientists emphasized that the application of blockchain in Chinese courts was also in the forefront of government departments. Fourth, China’s smart courts have promoted overall changes in all aspects of judicial work. Many courts at all levels have used information technology to meet the urgent needs of some departments or businesses and have achieved satisfactory results. However, few courts in other countries regard informatization as the main engine to promote the modernization of courts and cover all aspects of court work. China’s courts regard informatization as a profound self-revolution, and the 91 informatization businesses that have been realized fully serve the people, trial execution, judicial management, honest justice and social governance, greatly improving the informatized thinking mode, working habits and using skills of all court staffs.

Chapter 11

Outlook

The Smart Court System project has brought fundamental changes to Chinese courts. At the same time, we should also realize that due to the objective law of development, there are still many shortcomings and gaps in this system to meet the growingly diversified judicial needs of the people and the increasingly urgent needs of court staffs for work quality and efficiency improvement. To put it in a specific way, first, the application of smartness urgently needs to be deepened. For the vast number of users, the meaning of informatization lies in improving work quality and efficiency. Only through automation and smart technology to greatly reduce the workload of the general public and the court staff can the initiatives of smart application be boosted. At present, Smart Court has done a lot in judicial artificial intelligence and has got remarkable outcomes. However, there are still many weak links to be connected promptly in view of the pain points and difficulties. Second, system integration urgently needs to be strengthened. Although courts at all levels have carried out much work on system integration and have achieved remarkable outcomes, problems such as insufficient functions, disintegration, unshared information and disunified portals are still quite common, which brings many inconveniences to the vast number of users and poses great difficulties in improving and upgrading the system. Hence, the overall system is to be designed to push its integration and optimization. Third, ubiquitous services need to be sped urgently. In the era of mobile Internet, the social life of the people is increasingly free from time and space limitations, and this limitation is certainly to be broken in the judicial field as well. With the help of mobile Internet technology, the Smart Court is enabled to provide a host of remote and video judicial services, but there is still a large gap in the performance of listed services, service flow and service quality. Greater efforts must be made to strengthen the integration of mobile Internet and current applications to ensure the accessibility of judicial services. Fourth, cross-border integration urgently needs to be expanded. As an integral part of social informatization and smartness, the Smart Court, with many of its achievements, benefits from the collaborative informatization support of other industries and makes paramount contributions to the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. However, there is still broad © People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1_11

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space for expansion to other departments or extension to daily social activities. Only by integrating with production and life can the smart court better play its role in safeguarding social fairness and justice. Fifth, the user experience needs to be improved urgently. Being easy to use, handy to use, and reliable to use are basic requirements of the majority of users for information systems. With technology development and system improvement, the user experience of the Smart Court has been continuously optimized. However, due to the limitation of technology and funding, the user experience of many backbone systems is still very deficient, which makes it difficult to meet the requirements for convenient and fast applications. The historical process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has promoted the vigorous development of various undertakings, and the practice of the Smart Court System has laid a solid foundation for further improvement and perfection. The rising big data, cloud computing, block chain and artificial intelligence technology have brought good opportunities to solve the problems mentioned above. As long as we maintain the high morale and attitude of downto-earth work, we will surely usher in a bright future for the sustainable development of the Smart Court.

11.1 Deep Application of Artificial Intelligence The basic attributes of the trial work for the people’s courts are fact search and law search. The common working mode of judicial personnel is mass information collection, processing, induction and application. The sufficiency of the obtained information ensures the accuracy of fact identification and law application impartiality. It has been estimated that high-level judicial personnel can only skillfully understand and use more than 2,000 cases, while modern information systems not only store thousands of cases and legal provisions but also provide a very rich means of query and retrieval and can instantly provide specific information for the searcher. With the help of smart technologies such as machine learning, knowledge mapping and neural networks, the smart judicial system can also provide various targeted and accurate information services to meet judicial needs, support the work of various judicial personnel, and improve the quality of trial execution while reducing a large number of routine workloads. It can also provide similar smart litigation services to the general public to facilitate the swift understanding of expected outcomes and the best solution to any disputes, which not only reduces unnecessary litigation but also improves the judicial credibility of state institutions. Therefore, advanced countries in the world all regard judicial smartness as a cardinal direction of smart technology, and the real-time aggregation and credible governance of massive, diverse and heterogeneous judicial data distributed in a wide area that are approached and achieved by Chinese courts and multiformat judicial artificial intelligence technology driven by integrated judicial knowledge engines have laid a solid foundation for all-around

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smart services. In view of the various pressing needs encountered by the court staff and the people in their daily work activities, in accordance with the unified judicial smart engine framework, we should improve the breadth of data aggregation, increase the intensity of knowledge generation and accumulation, and enhance the service range of judicial smartness to further deepen smart application and become a key driving force for the Smart Court system project. I. Smart Litigation Service The key to smart litigation service is to accurately know and understand the appeal of the service object and then provide the most accurate and comprehensive judicial information service, so this system is to some extent a “psychologist” standing at the forefront of any dispute. People from all walks of life have different life experiences and legal knowledge levels, so the ways and methods of expressing their appeals to the court will be quite different. The smart litigation service system will first be able to identify the specific identity, occupation, literacy and law familiarity of the service object based on the first impression through the rich accumulation of population data resources and an efficient and fast identification system and recommend tailored service modes according to different objects as fast as it can, creating the necessary premises for correct appeal understanding and precise services. Generally, the public will turn to the court only when they encounter disputes that are difficult to resolve, so people under such a situation often use various accessible means and ways to reflect and appeal to the court. The smart litigation service system will be able to accept and adapt to the information input of service objects in different forms, chaotic sequences and fragmented content by means of characters, texts, voices, images and videos, and correctly and completely grasp and understand the overall appeal and psychological characteristics of service objects with the identification of characters, voices, images and natural language understanding technology to provide targeted services for them. Based on a powerful knowledge base of laws and regulations, a multidispute resolution knowledge base, judicial process knowledge base, trial execution case base, judicial trial information resource base and humanized service interface, combined with the specific appeals, identities and occupations, literacy and even personalities and emotional status of service objects, the smart litigation service system provides general consultants with legal dispute analysis based on their legal cognition; provides clients in various disputes with mediation institutions, procedures, cases, services and possible solution estimation as much as possible; provides possible litigation clients with judicial procedure notification, litigation outcome expectation and litigation risk assessment; provides possible litigation clients with convenient and comprehensive case registration and file submission services; provides lawyers and litigation agents with professional and customized judicial flow services; and provides petitioners with efficient and smooth interactive communication channels with relevant judicial departments. Meanwhile, it can also accurately and comprehensively gather the trend of litigation-related services and support judicial management and decision-making.

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II. Smart Judgment Smart judgment is a smart auxiliary support throughout the whole trial process from the acceptance of the complaint to the judgment, and its key point lies in the comprehensive consideration of the case facts, the dispute focuses, the law application and the judgment scale. The smart judgment system relies on the information support of every link in the smart trial process and can also provide the most important reference for trial personnel to settle disputes. First, the smart judgment system can accept and process various types of litigation files through means such as online input, scanning and uploading or voice recognition, complete the identification and standardized classification of all files through highaccuracy character recognition processing compatible with printing, handwriting and mixed modes, and summarize and extract specific case information and client appeals. Based on the natural language understanding technology and the everaccumulating knowledge base of evidence and rules, the smart judgment system can intelligently process the case information, judge and identify the integrity, rationality and authenticity of the evidence chain and fact chain by means of context correlation, and provide sufficient auxiliary support for judges to determine the case facts. On this basis, the system can further sort out and summarize the dispute focuses in light of client appeals and support the officials to sort out clear trial clues. Based on the comprehensive and systematic legal knowledge base, the smart judgment system can support judges for automatic search, retrieval, law and regulation correlation while automatically collecting detailed case descriptions and dispute focuses from the system and accurately and orderly pushing all relevant legal provisions to judges to provide a sufficient and necessary legal basis for trial and judgment. Based on the judicial big data system, which includes almost all the case information in the country, the smart judgment system can actively push the label index with the case characteristics and the details of cases sorted according to different dimensions, such as similarity, authoritativeness or regionality, to the judges targeted at case facts and dispute focuses of various cases to provide strong support for judges to clarify their judgment views and unify their judgment standards. Through the direct guidance of the legal basis and the reference and comparison of similar cases, the smart judgment system can provide various judges with possible judgment results, scopes of change, deviation estimation and references and provide direct support for fair judgment and deviation avoidance in light of case facts and dispute focuses. On this basis, it can automatically generate judicial judgment documents covering all case facts, dispute focuses, legal views and judgment reasons and submit them to trial judges for review, revision and ruling to minimize the workload of the officials. The smart judgment system can also effectively support case information consultation for the general public, as well as trial supervision and uncorrupted judicial management for management departments.

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III. Smart Execution Compared with trial activities, execution is more normative and procedural, which can give fuller play to smart advantages, improve automation and accuracy levels, and provide a powerful tool for an “effective solution to execution difficulty”. A smart execution system will use knowledge mapping technology, based on case execution rules, legal knowledge, regulatory cases and document templates, to build an execution business knowledge base and execution smart service engine and support smart execution in the whole process. From the beginning of execution filing, the smart execution system can automatically acquire, backfill and check all case information through on-site login, online transmission and instant generation of electronic files. Based on the classification and identification model of execution cases, the label portrait rules of executed persons, the automatic circulation model of execution measures, and the simple diversion model of execution cases, it can automatically generate and push compliant, efficient and optimized case execution plans to executives, support intensive and efficient case solutions and automatically initiate all-the-way controlled execution measures. With the help of the mining and analysis model of litigation-related property, the comprehensive portrait of the executed, the property clues of the executed, the whereabout clues of the executed, the risk prediction of the executed, the automatic correlation model of the clients and the knowledge base of property value evaluation, the smart execution system can provide the officials with comprehensive and accurate property investigation, freezing and deduction of the executed. Under the controlled state, it can start the orderly disposal of the executed property in the optimal mode to support the capture of all executed property. Based on the execution business knowledge base and service engine, which consist of the execution case compliance norms, the execution case deadline requirements, the execution case guidance rules, the execution complexity determination elements, the template base of execution documents and the template standard of public information, the smart execution system can provide the officials with automatic generation of complete case documents, automatic reminder of execution nodes, and early warning of overdue execution activities to fully reduce the heavy workload of court staffs. As an important part of the smart execution system, smart mobile execution equipment, including the execution command vehicle, the execution UAV and the execution individual soldier system, will integrate smart auxiliary functions, such as communication support, execution command, law enforcement records, on-site photography and information return, to realize smart association with the execution business and provide smart support for promoting network-only execution, all-the-way traces and unified command. Based on the judicial supervision knowledge base and service engines, which consist of the execution complexity assessment model, execution normative identification model, execution deviation early warning model, judge behavior analysis

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model and serious violation identification model, the smart execution system can provide judicial supervision departments with smart and online supervision functions such as automatic early warning of execution risk, automatic freezing in case of violations and automatic verification of final cases to ensure legal, uncorrupted and efficient execution. IV. Smart Management In the practices of smart court construction, there is great room for improvement in the smart application of various management businesses. Smart management systems will provide automatic, accurate and efficient auxiliary management means for all kinds of managerial personnel based on the correlation and integration of judicial business knowledge bases and management decision-making knowledge bases and the continuous development of smart service functions. Revolving around the core work of the people’s court, the smart management system will first focus on judicial management and judicial supervision, based on the model base of trial situation, the model base of judicial business index system, the rule base of cases, the duty and code of conduct base of officials, the judicial risk identification base, the case complexity model base and the deviation base of judgment results, provide all-the-way, blind-area-free, visualized and accurate decisionmaking support for all kinds of managerial personnel through importing detailed case data and case procedure information to realize online automation, static and smart business situation analysis and review supervision. Smart management systems will also greatly promote the transformation and upgrading of office automation systems from document approval and transaction circulation to smart assistance and smart management, based on administrative business procedure rule bases, administrative business classification document template bases, office document archive bases and multibusiness policy research knowledge bases, etc., actively pushing smart solutions such as business solution plans, document drafting, task decomposition, business procedure recommendation and work schedule optimization to all kinds of administrative office personnel to reduce administrative affairs and support the improvement of work quality and competence of all kinds of business personnel. Through trial execution, judicial administration, judicial research and informatization data, which are highly related to judicial personnel data in the big data management and knowledge service platform of the people’s court, based on the performance evaluation base of department staff allocation regulations, work duty decomposition model, workload evaluation model, work quality evaluation model and personnel evaluation rules, smart management systems can support the quantitative, automated and real-time performance management and evaluation of court trial business chambers, comprehensive business departments and all kinds of personnel and provide strong support for personnel cultivation and team building.

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With the integration of judicial big data and economic and social development data and the accumulative professional expertise and index system for all aspects, smart management systems can expand to form a smart antenna for multiple fields, acutely perceive the key issues facing the national governance system, automatically mine relevant big data and knowledge resources, actively generate and push the corresponding high-quality analysis and research reports, and provide smart services for the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity.

11.2 Collaboration Advancement by Comprehensive Integration The numerous information systems within the Smart Court nationwide constitute a very complex system, so the realization of interconnection, information sharing and collaboration within the systems is not only the always-seeking goal of system engineering integrators but also a scientific and technological problem with many difficult challenges, including information science theory, means and tools of engineering support, and management and coordination problems between different departments and organizations. All of these problems can be commonly seen not only in the construction of court informatization but also in the informatization construction of almost all fields and cannot be expected to disappear overnight but can only be solved step by step through persistent system engineering practice. Through the Smart Court system project, we have made a breakthrough in the top-level design and quality improvement method of the Smart Court system project based on information relationships and information measurement and guided and promoted the development planning, overall design, quality and effectiveness evaluation and overall improvement of the national Smart Court information system with the application of the pioneering information model, information relationship and information measurement theory and method, as well as the “trinity” quality and efficiency operation and maintenance system. We have also made a breakthrough in the so-called “four crossing and one connection” integrated collaboration technology of smart court information systems, comprehensively utilized big data sharing and exchanging, internetwork security and interoperability, unified deployment and linkage, on-demand data service and information off-line docking technology and mechanism, researched, developed and popularized nine types of integrated backbone business systems nationwide, such as trial execution, judicial openness and judicial personnel, solved the problem of comprehensive integration in the national smart court information system across business, network, hierarchy, department, online and offline, and created a good foundation for improving Smart Court integration. With the active promotion of mature technology application combined with

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the ever-growing system engineering theories and methods, the full-strength undertaking of the overall design and integration evaluation of the Smart Court information system above the high people’s court will surely accelerate the advancement of comprehensive integration and collaboration. I. Basic Integration On the basis of the original five network systems, various information infrastructures of Smart Court will be further integrated into three network systems: court private network, Internet and classified network. With the further popularization of cloud computing facilities and deep integration with communication networks, cloud and network integration will become the main trend of information infrastructure development of people’s courts at or above the high level. Cloud resources and services will become an integrated infrastructure providing unified communication, computing and storage support capabilities, providing relatively independent basic services for various application systems, maximizing the overall resource advantages of courts at all levels nationwide, and providing necessary preconditions for system integration. With the rapid promotion of 5G broadband mobile communication throughout the country, the mobile private network of the court will be able to use more bandwidth and content resources to support high-intensity information encryption so that the confidentiality degree of data transmission in the mobile private network is no less than that in the fixed private network. Thus, breaking through the physical communication bottleneck between the court private network and the mobile private network and promoting the incorporation of the mobile private network into the court private network will provide unprecedented conveniences for the general court staffs to access office cases at any time. With the general improvement of the information security level of various departments and the establishment and application of the unified exchange and sharing platform of national government data, the external private network, which is widely connected with external cooperation departments, will gradually be intensively simplified into a standardized general network interface to provide safe and smooth exchange services for information sharing across departments. With the popularization of 5G and the rapid development of satellite Internet technology, the Internet will provide more comprehensive, inclusive and balanced service support for courts nationwide, especially in remote areas, which is conducive to the high-level integration of Internet services in Smart Court. Meanwhile, due to the further development of internetwork security isolation and exchange technology, the interaction bottleneck between the court private network and the Internet will be further overcome to achieve a higher degree of coupling between the Smart Court intranet and outer net. As the national e-government is approaching its intranet construction goal, the court classified network will gradually expand to the whole country to form a national integrated classified network system and support the exchange and sharing of classified information in and among courts at all levels.

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Informationalized institutions such as science and technology courts, litigation service halls, digital trial committees, executive command centers, litigation service guidance centers and information management centers will also comply with the integrated support capabilities of communication, computing and storage cloud networks, simplify the access channels, broaden communication bandwidth, and greatly expand information processing capabilities to support higher levels of application system integration and provide integrated, specialized and customized information services for all kinds of users. II. Data Integration Based on the overall design of system engineering, the deepening application of various business systems and the aggregation, filtering and association of various data, the Smart Court data resources will be greatly improved in breadth, detail, richness and authenticity, and the relevancy of data content will be widely expanded. The resources constitute an integrated data platform capable of fully supporting the comprehensive integration of various application systems, the generation of multiservice judicial knowledge learning and the comprehensive application of judicial artificial intelligence and lay an important foundation for the comprehensive integration of smart court information systems. The trial execution data will take the case as the unit, run through all links such as litigation, mediation, investigation, prosecution, filing, service, trial, execution, appeal, petition and commutation and parole, gather different information forms such as basic information, file materials, court audio and video, letters and calls, cover all levels of first instance, second instance and retrial, form comprehensive and complete data collection to support the accurate reflection of case details and the collaboration in all case links. Judicial personnel data will fully gather the basic information of court staffs and take this as the main line, apply the person information in charge of the case through various businesses, and correlate various work processes, personnel duties and outcome data, thereby reflecting the allocation, work dynamics and specific outcomes of court organizations and court staff to not only support the performance appraisal but also help online supervision and support the cultivation, training and deployment of court staffs. The judicial affair data will fully gather the data of personnel flow, business flow, document flow, material flow and financial flow related to court administration, judicial publicity, the party and the public work, education and training, and logistic equipment. On the basis of full internal correlation, these data will also be highly related to data of trial execution, judicial personnel and judicial research informatization to comprehensively reflect the administrative operation of the court and its specific outcomes about the main business of trial execution and support the quantitative and precise management of the administrative departments. Judicial research data will fully gather inside-outside court data collection, such as judicial statistical data, judicial thematic research reports, economic and social development reports and public opinion analysis reports related to judicial activities, and fully correlate with trial execution data to form a data set with in-depth research

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value to not only support the delicate judicial management inside the court but also support national and social governance from a judicial perspective. External data will fully gather data resources from national shared data resources, and other various data resources from external collaborators, policies and regulations closely related to judicial work, personnel identity, intellectual property rights, macroeconomic and social operations, etc., fully correlate with trial execution data to form an inline-extension data set as an important basis for supporting cross-sectoral collaboration of trial execution work. The information management data will fully gather all kinds of data resources, such as the Smart Court information system planning and design, installation and deployment, operation status, resource load, user distribution, user experience, operation quality and efficiency, and fully correlate with the data of trial execution, judicial personnel and judicial government affairs to form a comprehensive data set reflecting the construction and operation of the entire information system, support quantitative, in-depth and accurate evaluation of the construction and application of Smart Court, and evaluate the improvement and promotion of various court businesses under the condition of informatization. III. Knowledge Integration With the exploration and application of judicial smartness in various business areas, knowledge integration will become the main support of integrated judicial smartness and will also lead to the transformation and upgrading of Smart Court. Based on the full integration of judicial big data resources, a unified judicial knowledge base on legal rules and past judicial cases and a judicial knowledge service engine fit for different applications on this basis will be constructed through large-scale manual labeling, automated deep learning and domain knowledge association and integration to support various smart applications. In view of the preliminary knowledge accumulation of smart applications such as online litigation services, file processing, legal retrieval, document generation, case pushing and judgment assistance, a relatively complete judicial knowledge base frame will be formed, and it will be optimized and perfected according to the relatively standardized and rigorous logical structure of legal knowledge to promote the formation of a consistent and universal judicial knowledge mapping system and lay an important foundation for deepening and upgrading smart court knowledge integration. It relies on massive and highly related judicial data resources and is in accordance with the guidance of the judicial knowledge mapping system. Experts and research and development personnel from law and information technology departments are organized to jointly carry out reading analysis and processing annotation to form machine-recognizable and learnable documents, files, audio and video data resources, integrate a variety of machine learning and deep learning algorithms, combine the low-level features of the current knowledge mapping to form more abstract high-level representation attributes, and then extract rich and practical internal judicial laws and legal language expressions. This will be able to continuously enrich the content of the

11.2 Collaboration Advancement by Comprehensive Integration

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judicial knowledge map and contribute to forming an integrated judicial knowledge base that conforms to legal rules with comparisons of past judicial cases. Of course, knowledge integration will not be achieved overnight, nor will it be once and for all. It will continue to weed out the old and bring forth the new with the progress of people’s cognition and the development of technology. Therefore, in the process of building the knowledge base, we must organize a wide range of legal researchers and judicial practitioners to jointly carry out the test and evaluation of knowledge generation, timely discover and correct the deviations in both theory and practice, and ensure the correctness and rationality of the knowledge system. Meanwhile, the construction of a unified judicial knowledge base does not exclude in-depth knowledge learning and aggregation for specific business and specific scenarios, and any in-depth and practical knowledge accumulation will lay a better foundation for the subsequent higher-level knowledge integration. IV. Integration Application Based on the strong support of basic integration, data integration and knowledge integration, all kinds of application systems of Smart Court will be drastically integrated on the current basis in accordance with the principle of “only integ ratio without division, only reduction without increase”. Smart service, smart trial, smart execution and smart management systems will form an integrated application system with data management and knowledge service as the core, with electronic litigation, trial case solution, execution case solution and office automation as the main line, with a series of smart auxiliary applications as the access, fully realizing information sharing, business collaboration and operation linkage among them. All kinds of business applications will support information sharing according to user access permissions in accordance with security regulations. Court staffs will break the business application barriers, share all kinds of business information of the work, and strive to achieve one-time entry and whole-network sharing to eliminate information isolation, unnecessary workload caused by multiple entries, and unavoidable human errors. Through electronic litigation, lawyer services and judicial open platforms, the general people will easily access the information online that should be informed or made public according to law, such as trial procedures, evidence and materials, litigation files, judicial activities and outcomes, to minimize the toil of clients and agents. Political and legal departments and government departments will share all kinds of judicial and government information on demand through their respective business application systems based on the secure exchange system to effectively break the information barriers between departments. All kinds of business applications will also fully support business collaboration among departments in accordance with the overall work requirements. Based on the active push mechanism, all kinds of application systems can obtain the required input of other business information and support online collaboration for users across departments. Through using visual work situation presentation, each business department will grasp and understand the working progress of the collaboration department without ambiguity and form an optimized and coordinated business collaboration mode. Through the visual management center, the management and decision-making

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departments will learn about at any time, access, monitor, analyze the comprehensive situation of court work such as convincing, litigation, trial, execution and management, as well as the cooperation with relevant external collaborators, timely organize cross-department coordination for problems, and give full play to the advantages of centralized and unified institutional mechanisms. Various business applications will also highly support the operation linkage of various application systems in accordance with business work rules. Based on the integrated knowledge base and the knowledge service engine for business scenarios, the smart cross-business event trigger logic is established and continuously enriched to support the automatic operation linkage between the staff of each link, each business field and the superior and subordinate courts and fully support the agile response and efficient solution of various businesses of the Smart Court. V. Portal Integration Through the overall design of system engineering and standard and normative research and development, the Smart Court will provide integrated, personalized and customized unified entrance portals for specific users on the court’s private network, Internet or classified network, according to the respective characteristics of PC, mobile end and different operating systems, to provide initial conveniences for users to familiarize themselves with the smart court information system entry, operate and use the system, and obtain all kinds of information they need. From the unified entrance portal, all kinds of users will prove their identity through the unified identity authentication system by means of user name and password, digital signature, encryption Key, biometric identification, etc., and obtain the corresponding application system access authorization control to not only reduce the tedious operation of switching login between different systems but also enhance the linkage and collaboration of various application systems for specific users. The unified entrance portal will provide the greatest convenience for users who have passed the unified identity authentication to enter all authorized access systems through beautiful and coordinated user pages, concise and clear content displays and simple and clear operation tips. All application systems will be reasonably clustered and decomposed layer by layer according to different characteristics, such as service attributes, geographical characteristics and user identities, to ensure that different types of users can have quick access. The unified entrance portal will learn to identify the nature of the user’s daily work and operation habits according to user identity and accordingly build and push the work homepage to meet the personalized needs of specific users to not only support quick access to the daily application system that users frequent but also facilitate users fully browsing the information they care about through an optimized page layout. It can also remind users of unexpected schedules, agendas and procedures that entail special attention and solution according to organization and business requirements and effectively play the role of the portal as the “first assistant” of users. The unified entrance portal will also provide page setting tools and information content themes to support users in flexibly setting customized page layouts and service content under the unified provisions in line with the Smart Court portal style

11.3 5G Ubiquitous Services Acceleration

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and the available content resource framework to better exhibit the people-oriented service tenet. Accordingly, all kinds of application systems will improve and perfect the link entrance, operation interface, authorization control and security protection mechanism according to the standard of the unified entrance portal to ensure the feasibility, collaboration and security of portal integration of the Smart Court.

11.3 5G Ubiquitous Services Acceleration With the faster and faster pace of modern production and life, undoubtedly people increasingly hope that smart courts can provide ubiquitous judicial services that are accessible and reachable. Ubiquity will eliminate the spatial gap so that all kinds of users can be directly connected to the Smart Court and receive the support and service of the court information system wherever they are. Ubiquity can also shorten the time delay to avoid work halt due to the inaccessibility of collaborators and to significantly improve the efficiency of judicial activities. Ubiquity can also popularize information applications, break the cognitive limitations of applications caused by network access and office conditions that used to happen all the time, and promote business applications that cover all groups and departments. Ubiquity will also promote the solution to the long-standing problem of regional imbalance and make use of the general improvement of physical conditions in remote areas and grassroots people to achieve the general improvement of information construction and application capabilities. Ubiquity will also test each application effectiveness and shortcomings of the Smart Court more strictly due to extensive and comprehensive access applications and promote continuous improvement and perfection through a problem-oriented method. The fast-growing fifth generation mobile communication technology, namely, 5G technology, provides a very broad prospect for ubiquitous services. Its high speed, high capacity, low delay, low energy consumption, low cost and large-scale equipment connection not only create a precondition for the universal mobility and ubiquity of various applications and services but also lay a technical foundation for using abundant bandwidth resources to strengthen the encryption protection of wireless signals, support the full experience of court intranet business and expand excellent experiences to mobile terminals. I. Ubiquitous Litigation Service System The ubiquitous litigation service system will provide zero-distance access to one-stop multi dispute solutions and litigation services for the general public. The 5G China Mobile Micro Court will give full play to the advantages of highquality mobile communication, with mobile terminals as the main part, PC terminals and special litigation service machines as the supplement, and build a ubiquitous litigation service window that is unified in courts at all levels and universally known in the general public. It provides one-stop multidispute solution and litigation service

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support throughout the whole process from legal consultation, dispute mediation, case trial, and judgment execution to complaints and petitions for the general litigants, lawyers and the general public and substantially becomes a powerful dispute-solution gadget that is portable and highly trustworthy. Along with 5G technology that has eliminated the limitation of the geographical distribution and working hours of participants with high-definition and highfidelity video information, the ubiquitous multidispute solution can provide a mediation atmosphere face to face and dock specialized mediation agencies and business systems for different types of contradictions and disputes. It is connected with professional mediators, striving to create the most thoughtful and humane dispute-solving scenarios and better reflecting the guiding ideology of alternative-dispute-solutionprioritized mechanisms. Using the immersive scenario effect provided by 5G, the ubiquitous litigation service system will ensure that the public can feel like visiting the court litigation service site staying indoors or at a distance, consult the court staff face to face, click to submit electronic litigation documents, smoothly access the court case files, and even conduct multiparty cross-examination, which greatly avoids going to the court to and fro for litigation affairs. The remote court trial supported by 5G high-speed network communication will fundamentally solve the current phenomenon of being delayed and occasionally being stuck, ensuring that the participants in the trial in different places can be personally on the scene, fully and smoothly cross-examine evidence, state and reply, exercise lawful litigation rights, and promote the normalization of remote trials. Meanwhile, with the use of virtual reality, holographic projection and other technologies, through video simulation, the remote trial will build a real trial scenario, making all participants feel like they are in a solemn court to reduce the litigant toil to and fro and strive to maintain the judicial authority of the remote trial simultaneously. The ubiquitous litigation service system will also seize the opportunity of 5G technology to promote the formation of a social credit network system with interconnection of all things and high mutual trust, realize the fundamental reform of judicial service with electronic mode as the main part and traditional paper as the supplement, and thoroughly solve the service problems that have long affected judicial work while facilitating the general public. II. Ubiquitous Court Work Platform Based on 5G broadband communication and the evolving edge computing technology, it will fully support the end-to-end encrypted transmission of business information within the court, promote the extension of the court’s private network to mobile terminals, meet the basic needs of real-time business, smart application, security and confidentiality, etc., and build a ubiquitous court work platform to support the general court staffs in being free from time and space limitations, especially in business trips and emergencies, to help court staffs solve work very conveniently, greatly improving the work quality and effectiveness of the people’s courts.

11.3 5G Ubiquitous Services Acceleration

487

The ubiquitous court work platform will not only inherit the functions of the current court mobile office case solution system and provide superior operation experience for court staffs under 5G conditions but also give full play to the advantages of end-to-end security protection of information, break the bottleneck of security isolation and exchange, and expand the originally unexpandable application functions and originally untransmittable sensitive data to mobile terminals. As a result, a new office case solution mode with mobile terminals as the main part and desktop terminals as the supplement will be formed to give rise to the thriving development of the ubiquitous court work platform. The ubiquitous court work platform, as a necessary and portable tool for court staffs, will deeply integrate general administrative management and professional department work, especially the main business of trial execution, and will become smart assistance for court staffs to arrange schedules, record meetings, browse news, examine and approve documents and solve cases. It will also connect and integrate with video conferences, science and technology courts, remote interviews, remote interrogations, digital trial committees, executive command centers, litigation service guidance centers, information management centers and security command centers, on the basis of which video conferences, remote consultations, education and training will become the basic forms of group activities of courts at all levels. Remote trial, remote interview and remote interrogation will also become the normal mode of law enforcement and case solution for court staffs , and managerial personnel at all levels can also take control of the macro and micro court working state at any time. The ubiquitous court work platform will also develop into an indispensable smart virtual assistant for court staffs, giving full play to the advantages of connecting all kinds of information systems of the Smart Court and integrating multiple functions, such as communication, shooting, retrieval, identification, projection, push and alarm. In light of ourt staffs’ duties, tasks undertaken and scenarios faced, it can conduct autonomous estimation and evaluation and put forward auxiliary plans to support court staffs for decision-making and implementation without taking up officers’ time. III. Ubiquitous Learning and Training System The ubiquitous learning and training system supported by 5G will comprehensively enhance the experience and effectiveness of full-time learning and training for court staffs. Based on the portable high-performance smart carry-on terminal, court staffs will be able to access online learning reference materials formed by the integration of huge resources of courts at all levels at any time, no matter where they are, including online policy guidance, rule of law theory, judicial practice, encyclopedic knowledge, and even daily life. In addition, according to personal preferences, court staffs can accept rich and colorful forms of expressions such as documents, pictures, audio, video, animation, and 3D virtual reality to truly possess a personal knowledge treasure to support uninterrupted learning and lifelong learning. Using the end-to-end high-speed interflow provided by 5G, combined with smart interactive teaching technology, court staffs will always have one-to-one virtual

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instructors’ tutoring through the ubiquitous learning and training system so they can ask questions of interest at any time and interact with instructors immediately. Instructors can also quote and link extensively on teaching-related content according to the needs of students so that general courses and personalized teaching can be closely integrated to greatly improve the breadth and depth of online teaching and training. Using virtual reality technology supported by 5G, the ubiquitous learning and training system will provide an immersive training and practice mode for the vast number of court staffs in different places through site simulation, such as virtual emergency disposal sites, virtual courts, virtual mediation rooms and virtual execution sites. It can comprehensively and flexibly set up judicial scenarios under a large number of complex conditions for the right solution. It can also repeatedly train the solution ability of court staffs in the same situation and will definitely become the normal mode of court staffs’ practice and testing. The ubiquitous learning and training system will also use a large amount of audio and video feedback information collected in teaching and training to accurately analyze and judge the cognitive understanding and practical mastery of the trainees and accordingly implement individualized measures to improve the comprehensive effectiveness of court learning and training. IV. Ubiquitous judicial publicity system Based on the Tianping Sunshine Integrated Media Communication Platform, combined with the application of a 5G communication network, a ubiquitous judicial publicity system integrating courts at all levels is established, innovating and empowering news gathering, content editing and media publishing continuously, providing strong support for the news dissemination, authoritative publication, law popularization and judicial publicity of the people’s courts, and spreading and penetrating more widely into the center of the public. The 5G Internet of Everything will make almost everyone own high-performance smart portable terminals and become qualified news gatherers. Court staffs, regardless of their location or position, can easily collect and record what they see and hear and upload it immediately. In particular, a vast number of court staffs in remote areas can usually transmit little-known judicial activities to metropolitan cities and news centers through high-speed information bridges to make the judicial culture with local conditions and characteristics brilliant. From all walks of life and different perspectives, the general public can transmit the observation, feeling and understanding of national rule of law to the people’s courts in a variety of convenient and feasible ways in a timely manner, forming a more universal source of voice and supervision. In the face of extensively collected, rich and colorful news information, the ubiquitous news publicity system will fully integrate big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence technology, automatically realize the rational classification and orderly management of all media information through a smart integrated editing system,

11.4 Blockchain Cross-Border Integration Promotion

489

reduce a large amount of human cost consumption, and overcome the information explosion that cannot be met only by manpower input. A smart integrated editing system will also fully decompose structured, fragmented and labeled media information according to the characteristics of news and knowledge and form retrievable, relatable and combinable news knowledge materials. On this basis, the ubiquitous judicial publicity system will support professional editors in integrating high-level news and knowledge media integration processing anytime and anywhere and form popular judicial publicity products according to the needs of the audience. In view of the content characteristics and audience habits of news knowledge, the ubiquitous judicial publicity system will provide products fit for diversified smart terminals. For the general public, it can provide formal and authoritative news publicity or knowledge services through pages, videos and other means. Legal professionals can provide relatively profound professional services by means of retrieval, association and push. For nonprofessionals, it can provide popular knowledge services in a visual and simple way, such as animation and voice interpretation. For the audience who want to visualize the court work, 3D scenes, virtual reality and other services can be used to fully deepen the people’s vivid impression of judicial justice and of justice for the people.

11.4 Blockchain Cross-Border Integration Promotion In the era of rapid technological change, economic transformation and development, and accelerated social evolution, various contradictions and disputes are highlighted. In the new century, the number of cases accepted by the people’s courts has been increasing, which not only reflects the growing popularity of the idea of law-based governance but also reflects the synchronous development of contradictions and disputes with the economy and society. As a national judicial organ, the people’s court guards the last line of defense for fairness and justice. Whether it is to put the alternative dispute solution mechanism ahead or to make the people feel fairness and justice in every judicial case, the people’s courts are required to fully integrate into the overall situation of economic and social development, to take the initiative with the spirit of innovation and courage, and to provide strong judicial services and guarantees for the healthy development of all walks of life through cross-border integration. In this process, whether for horizontal collaboration with government departments, enterprises and institutions or for vertical information extension from litigation activities to dispute solutions and daily production and life, a fundamentally sufficient mutual trust guarantee mechanism is required. The interaction between the Smart Court and political and legal departments, the national credit information system, and the financial and real estate management departments is based on a series of preliminary agreements and effective mutual trust mechanisms. The distributed storage, decentralized management, traceable verification and other capabilities of blockchain technology will provide strong support for Smart Court to achieve a wider range of cross-border integration.

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I. Alliance for Certification and Verification The Smart Court will build a mutual trust alliance with multiple participants, such as judicial institutions, government departments, enterprises and institutions, and other organizations. Through the blockchain, the judicial elements are certified, stamped with time and recorded in the block in the form of transactions and distributed to save to all alliance participants in a chain structure that supports reverse block-by-block verification. Such extensive data consistency and traceability will greatly reduce the possibility of data loss or arbitrary tampering and lay a solid foundation for the authority and credibility of judicial activities and the verification and evidence of daily affairs. The alliance blockchain of the certification and verification will support the preservation of litigation file information with large judicial credibility, such as evidence, transcripts, files, audio and video files collected by courts at all levels in the process of trial execution, to ensure that at any time, once the litigant parties raise doubts about judicial activities, they can have authoritative and credible appraisal opinions through the multiparty verification procedures of the alliance. Especially for Internet trials and electronic litigation, any materials submitted by litigants or agents online will be transmitted to the alliance chain at the first time to certify and verify, which will fully reflect the nontampering of evidence in the court’s trial process and further enhance the credibility of online judiciary. To prevent disputes that are difficult to solve in their daily work, departments and personnel from all walks of life can also apply to join the certification and verification alliance and transmit important business nodes or evidence materials to the alliance chain at any time to certify and verify to ensure that they can obtain and verify the required credible evidence materials through the alliance chain when contradictions and disputes arise. In doing so, the alliance can directly support the possible mediation and litigation procedure, which can not only effectively avoid unnecessary contradictions and disputes but also create smooth conditions to obtain and verify for the people’s court to solve contradictions in time and serve social governance. II. Trusted Operating Platform The Smart Court will make use of the increasingly mature and widely popularized achievements of blockchain construction to build a trusted operating platform that is based on a private chain and gradually expands to an alliance chain and build a judicial business application system supporting highly sensitive operations to make the uplink verification a necessary condition for each step of business operation, forming a closed-loop process of operation, verification and reoperation. This will minimize illegal operations and covert operations, providing a more credible judicial support mechanism for economic and social operations. The trusted operating platform will provide operational support for business applications involving highly sensitive operations, which cover courts at all levels throughout the country and are highly related to the interests of the clients, such as

11.4 Blockchain Cross-Border Integration Promotion

491

execution of investigation and control, punishment for dishonesty, judicial supervision and trial of major cases. Through the interface service with the general operating system API and a similar system, the platform can conveniently support the uplink and verification of every complete operating step. Therefore, it can continue to deepen the highly sensitive risk prevention and control mechanism, which takes the internal supervision of higher and lower courts as the main part and combines it with the external supervision of public trust institutions. Similarly, the allied trusted computing platform can also expand and integrate all sectors of society, gradually support highly sensitive operational application systems in political and legal departments and other industries, promote efficient operation and mutual supervision among political and legal departments, and play an important role in building a highly credible social operation system and effectively preventing and controlling major economic risks. III. Smart Contract System The Smart Court will define the contract agreement that can be fulfilled automatically in digital form based on the judicial blockchain, convert the written provisions and terms formed by the traditional contract into a set of rules and procedures that can operate automatically and trigger predetermined events, and automatically start to provide corresponding judicial services or enter into corresponding judicial procedures when the agreed conditions are met through the event inspection and evaluation and automatic trigger mechanism. In this way, it can further integrate into the economic and social operation links, reduce a large number of offline operations and human interference factors, improve the efficiency of market, production and operation, reduce the cost and cycle of judicial rights protection, and greatly improve the level of credible collaboration across departments and business processes. Through the smart contract system of the judicial block chain, case officers and file managerial personnel can jointly formulate and set up the automatic filing operation of case electronic files in advance. The system automatically inspects whether the relevant files meet the filing standards in the case solution process and automatically converts the standard-compliant files to achieve automatic filing management. The civil mediation document with enforceable content, which is settled by mediation, forms an uplink smart contract for the first time. When the clients fail to perform the mediation agreement as scheduled, it can automatically transfer to the execution procedure according to the credible mediation document. For property with judicial preservation, a smart preservation contract can be set up and can automatically renew insurance or automatically remind preservation judges and clients to renew insurance reviews according to the case situation when the preservation period expires to fully reduce the burden of property preservation and protect the rights and interests of clients. Applications of cross-departmental smart contracts similar to those mentioned above will provide a new way to reduce the workload of court staffs and improve judicial efficiency. Through the smart contract system supported by the judicial block chain alliance, the e-commerce process can fully adopt the automatic circulation procedure based on judicial protection. The circulation of money or goods to any specific link will

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inevitably lead to the corresponding value conversion. If there is a breach of contract, it will trigger the corresponding dispute solution until it reaches the judicial rights protection procedure. For offline business contracts, major contract nodes can also be set up with the consent of participants and in accordance with laws and regulations and can be included in the scope of system preservation supervision. In the case of the given conditions, it can be automatically transferred to the link of capital or property default disposal with judicial protection. All kinds of social activity contracts can also formulate the process links that need to be monitored according to the specific situation and convert them into the corresponding contract rules and control conditions. Once a breach of contract occurs, it can automatically obtain the corresponding judicial support and protection. These systematic applications, which deeply integrate court work with all walks of life, will certainly open up a very broad space for the people’s courts to serve economic development and the construction of a social integrity system.

11.5 Great Improvement of User Experience with System Optimization The Smart Court information system has provided a variety of information services for a vast number of court staffs and the general public and has achieved remarkable outcomes. Meanwhile, the majority of users expect quite right that all kinds of systems can be as easy to use, stable and reliable as many mature commercial software. However, due to various reasons, such as low technical level, insufficient investment, user scale and functional complexity, there is still a large gap in user experience between the Smart Court information system and many mainstream commercial software programs, which also greatly affects the application of the Smart Court. A full understanding of the vital role of user experience can promote our efforts to master and apply more advanced information technology, take the high-quality experience of the general public and court staffs as the guiding direction, focus on interface optimization, system integration, strict evaluation, information security and popularization to strengthen the improvement of current and new research systems, and surely promote Smart Court to achieve a new leap forward. I. Being Simple and Easy to Use The Smart Court information system will provide a simple and clear application window for all kinds of users through the operation interface with a unified style, reasonable layout, clear hierarchy and multimedia support, help new users quickly master the system, and enable skilled users to quickly enter the function. Changing the thinking pattern of valuing function development and neglecting interface design in the past, the system takes the design and optimization of the operation interface as an important link of the research and development. Based on the principle of ergonomics, the mature experience from previous systems and the

11.5 Great Improvement of User Experience with System Optimization

493

common pain problems brought by users, each newly developed, the system will adopt engineering methods such as standard specification, drawing design, comparative demonstration, prototype development, test verification and user evaluation for every newly researched, refined or integrated information system operation interface and will strive to enhance the initial intimacy of users with repeat scrutiny and careful polishment. The system fully inherits the current achievements of the construction of the Smart Court; scientifically designs the style, layout and hierarchical structure of the operation interface targeted at different characteristics of business categories, application sites, terminal types and user objects; compiles a series of technical standards; organizes the research of corresponding common technical products on this basis; uses standards to guide and standardize the interface design; and supports system research and development with mature product modules to provide full technical support for optimizing and improving the operation interface of the Smart Court information system. The Smart Court information system will also explore the use of audio, video, animation and other multimedia technology to integrate with user interface nesting. Through instant smart voice prompts, it provides help and guidance for possible user problems. Through visual scene navigation, it shows the complete operation process in the form of intuitive video or animation, guides users to quickly enter the expected interface, and supports the entry into the actual operation page at any time to help all kinds of new and old users grasp the overall picture of the system as soon as possible and become experts who are familiar with and willing to apply the system as soon as possible. II. Integration and High Efficiency Based on all the achievements of basic integration, data integration, knowledge integration, application integration and portal integration, the Smart Court information system will solve many inconveniences brought to users by the scattered and disorderly internal office, trial, execution systems and external litigation service, mediation, petition and other systems and break the functional barriers and data barriers between networks and businesses. It supports all kinds of users for one-network and one-station stops, and through efficient and concise business processes, it becomes convenient for all kinds of users to get what they want and what they need, which brings remarkable conveniences as well. Through the unified identity authentication system, users have a unique identity when they enter the network and are able to access all authorized systems without many unnecessary logins. Through the integrated entrance portal, users can quickly access the expected business applications under clear guidance, saving many tedious searches and hierarchical retrievals. Through the personalized operation interface, skilled users can quickly obtain the expected information and get into urgent affairs according to their personal concerns, current working status and errands given by colleagues, thus saving many ineffective step-by-step operations. Through the integration of different terminals, such as PC, Pad and mobile terminals of various information systems, users can obtain the most suitable page presentation and operation

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mode to achieve the best working experience. Based on the business collaboration supported by application integration, users can quickly obtain interrelated business information according to their needs, make overall use of and keep data and business resources, effectively reflecting the convenience of one-network stop. Based on the business linkage supported by application integration, the user can trigger other colleagues’ related business after completing his own work, which saves tedious contact between them and fully realizes the efficiency of one-click linkage. III. Stability and Reliability The Smart Court information system will take stability and reliability as the fundamental prerequisite for providing convenient services to users. Reliability indicators are included in the important decision-making basis for the links, including planning, design, procurement, research and development, acceptance and deployment. The stability and reliability of infrastructure, application systems, data resources and security can be comprehensively improved through the process of reliability design, evaluation and testing, effectively promoting the high-quality development of information systems. Based on the reliability indicators of individual equipment such as computers, servers, databases, communication networks, display and control terminals, a hierarchical evaluation model of information infrastructure reliability is constructed to demonstrate, calculate and evaluate the reliability level of infrastructure step by step from bottom to top and to continuously test, evaluate, replace and optimize it through quality-efficiency operation and maintenance, making the stable and reliable information infrastructure become the strong support of the whole information system. In view of the weak links in the stability and reliability of some business application systems, stability and reliability will be considered important indicators for system demonstration, research and development. Potential risks must be analyzed in the demonstration process, closed-loop response solutions to relevant key problems must be taken in the design process, and potential risk points must be evaluated in the development and testing process, striving to improve the stability and reliability of the system via effective quality management of qualified research and development manufacturers. Third-party testing and evaluation will be promoted to establish and continuously expand the Smart Court laboratory, form a test environment and test sample set that meets the requirements of Smart Court construction, and strictly follow the standardized evaluation process before the online deployment targeted at key information system products. According to the business and technical indicators of the system, routine testing of interface, function, performance and interface, strength testing of key risk points, and stress testing under reasonable extreme conditions should be carried out in an orderly manner to provide normative and quantitative decision-making reference for exposing major problems, eliminating potential risks and evaluating system stability and reliability, and ensuring that the online system can provide stable operation, timely response, agile operation, and continuous and reliable business services for all kinds of users.

11.5 Great Improvement of User Experience with System Optimization

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IV. Security and credibility The smart court will focus on strengthening data security, take effective security measures for data collection, storage, processing, use, provision and disclosure in the process of information system operation, strictly protect state secrets, strictly protect the legitimate rights and interests of individuals and organizations, and provide safe and credible service support for all kinds of users. The Smart Court information system will take judicial big data as the center; establish and improve the whole process data security management system; build centralized, unified, efficient and credible data security monitoring and early warning, risk assessment, situation report and information sharing mechanisms; detect data security defects and loopholes in a timely manner; support data security risk information acquisition, analysis, study and early warning; strictly prevent the illegal use, destruction, tampering and embezzlement of judicial data resources; and ensure that state secrets, user sensitive data and personal privacy information are effectively protected and legally used and continue to be in a controlled security mode to effectively eliminate the worries of all kinds of users who actively apply the Smart Court. While strengthening data security, the Smart Court will continue to improve infrastructure security and use the rapid improvement of computing, communication and storage capabilities to continuously optimize the user experience under the conditions of security isolation and border protection. It will continuously improve the security of the application system to ensure that the normal requests of legitimate users can be fully, timely, accurately and safely answered and served. The Smart Court will also follow the basic principles of promoting security through development and ensuring development through security, continue to extend the channels of judicial services, broaden the types of business services, expand the scope of information services, and strive to improve the availability and accessibility of various types of judicial data on the premise of ensuring data security. Various means should be used to fully support all kinds of users to actively apply the court information system and obtain the expected judicial information lawfully to continuously improve the sense of acquisition, satisfaction and trust of the vast number of users. V. Extensive Popularization The Smart Court will strengthen the popularization and promotion of information systems through various channels and strive to change the past situation in which many important achievements are “kept in the hidden room without being known to others” so that the majority of court staffs can understand and master the systems or functional applications closely related to their own work as much as possible and help the public be more fully aware of and familiarized with many judicial information services that the Smart Court can provide. Artificial intelligence, comprehensive integration, ubiquitous services and crossborder integration and other important initiatives will provide users with full convenience while more widely attracting general court staffs and people to popularize the

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application of smart court achievements. A simple and easy-to-use operation interface, integrated and efficient operation mode, stable and reliable operation status and safe and credible application services will also fully mobilize the desire and enthusiasm of all kinds of users to actively apply the Smart Court information system. On this basis, the builders of Smart Court will spare no effort to publicize and promote the achievements and functions of Smart Court, help potential users understand the new functions and services as soon as possible through timely product promotion, enable users with a certain basis to grasp the operation and application of the system in depth through targeted operation training, guide the people through on-site service to consciously use online means to solve litigation matters and reduce their travel, formulate a chain-like dissemination effect of outcome promotion through the high-frequency and high-quality application experience of lawyers and other legal professional groups, solidify the theory foundation of the new generation of law professionals through the course of law informatization in colleges and universities, listen to the experience and suggestions of users to find blind spots and gaps, and promote improvement and upgrading through forums, seminars, third-party evaluation and other forms, comprehensively and systematically publicize the application outcomes of the construction of Smart Court, expand public awareness through news media, and strive to promote the construction of smart courts to benefit the vast number of users and then promote the continuous optimization and improvement of Smart Court through the comprehensive feedback of the application outcomes from users to keep sustainable and healthy development of Smart Court.

Epilogue

This book series is compiled by the staff member of the Information Center of the Supreme People’s Court. It systematically summarizes the achievements that have been made in the construction of smart courts nationally since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, comprehensively reflects the informatization construction of the people’s courts, and truly shows the efforts and thinking of the people’s court staff at all levels in promoting the informatization development of the people’s courts and the construction of smart courts. In the process of compiling this book series, the writers grasped the right direction, sought truth from the facts, highlighted key points and focused on the quality. Members participating in the compiling of the book include the leaders of the Supreme People’s Court and the staff of its relevant departments, and the leaders of local courts across China and people from the relevant departments. In terms of the whole planning and designing of the book, it consists of four series, namely, the general part, practical part, thematic part and local part, which will be started as a whole and published in parts. The book series aims to summarize, sort out and inherit the practices of the construction of the smart courts in aspects including litigation service, trial and execution, judicial management, clean justice, social governance and so on, in combination with the innovation achievements gained in the basic theory, key technology, core equipment and application practices of the systematic project of smart courts, exploring the development tendency of the deep integration of the smart courts construction and the judicial operation, system reform and the technology revolution, and digging into deeply the application of the big data and artificial intelligence in the judicial field. In addition, this book can fill in the gaps between judicial reform and informatization and between the litigation system and informatization, promote the full integration of judicial practice rationality and information technology logic, and provide a theoretical reference and practice basis for the opening of a new path for the development of socialist judicial informatization with Chinese characteristics. With the great support and under the careful guidance of the leaders of the Supreme People’s Court and the staff of its relevant departments, with the full cooperation and

© People’s Court Press 2022 J. Xu et al., Introduction to the Smart Court System-of-Systems Engineering Project of China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2382-1

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large assistance of the leaders of the local courts and the staff of its relevant departments, the compiling of this book series has been completed on time according to the working plan. The staff of People’s Court Press who are responsible for the compiling work of this book have done a lot of detailed work including editing, proofreading and publishing work. Therefore, I would like to express my sincere thanks to those leaders and staff members who have made contributions to the publishing work of this book series! Editor April, 2021

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