Store data
efficiently to get insights for justice reforms
One rarely
hears any argument about the fact that the Indian judicial system needs to be
reformed. Our courts are logjams of procrastination where cases have piled up
so high that the time taken to arrive at a resolution is often punishment in
itself. And while we might reassure ourselves that the Indian legal system
eventually ensures that justice is done, beyond the wistful hope that this is
the case, there is no data to prove it. While every other sector of the economy
is rapidly reinventing itself, it seems that the judiciary in India is doing as
little as it can to evolve.
We know that the first step along the path to innovation is
digitization. Data provides insights that intuition overlooks. It shines light
on inefficiencies in the system in a way that those who live within it cannot,
allowing us to better understand what it will take to fix them. Unfortunately,
the level of digitization of the Indian legal system is still minimal at best.
To be clear, there is a lot of digital information sloshing around
the ecosystem—our cause lists are maintained digitally, decided judgements are
generally accessible online, and legal research has almost entirely migrated away
from paper to the cloud. However, as much as we have managed to reduce our
dependence on paper, when it comes to using data to explain the shortfalls in
the ways in which our legal system actually operates, we remain uncomfortably
analog in India. We lack metrics on the time taken to complete dispute
resolution, or where delays in the system really lie. We have little
information on the manner in which new regimes like the bankruptcy code and
competition law are functioning, or whether or not statutes like the Protection
of Children against Sexual Offences have achieved the objective of protecting
those they were supposed to.
This is not to say that there is no data at all. As a matter of
fact, raw data exists—for the most part in digital form—on almost every facet
of the legal system. If one cares to put in the effort to find it, this data is
also relatively easy to access. However, at present, they are sub-optimally
organized in silos of unstructured information that do not inter-operate
efficiently with other data sets. If this information is to be organized into a
useful format of sufficient quality so as to be capable of providing useful
insights, considerable effort will be required to reorganize these data sets. A
necessary prerequisite might be to make sure that they are all stored on a
common platform so as to allow greater interoperability between them.
As a first step in this direction, Agami, an organization
supporting legal innovation in India, recently selected a candidate to build a
repository for legal data sets. The project is intended to develop a cloud
storage system on which different types of legal data can be collected, stored
and, where necessary, updated in real time. It is hoped that through the
creation of infrastructure like this, not only will we be able to build a
storehouse of legal data, but at the same time create a community of analysts
and researchers who will both contribute to and partake of a growing body of
legal data.
It is essential that this repository be designed so that the
various databases it hosts are capable of effectively interacting with one
another. For this, not only will the data sets need to conform to a certain
basic taxonomy, there will, to the extent possible, need to be some sort of
functional equivalence between the data elements of disparate databases. This
will serve as a useful form of cross-validation as well as allow for a wider
range of insights to be derived from inter-connected data sets. In order to
avoid double counting, identifiers such as the Company Identification Number
(CIN) should be used to establish linkages between different databases.
None of this will come to pass unless all the data that is
contributed to the repository is open and free to use without any licence
restrictions. While there is no doubt that the contributors will have invested
considerable effort in the collection of the data they contribute, hopefully
they will all agree that the true value of this exercise will only be realized
once the data stored on these platforms is made amenable to full
interoperability.
The benefits of this sort of a dedicated legal database will only be evident at
scale. It is only when different and disparate data sets are allowed to
interact with each other, that we will get unexpected insights. If we can
create the equivalent of a GitHub for legal research, the data stored on the
repository will start to make sense in ways that would otherwise not have been
possible.
To start with, Agami has selected four data sets as the initial
few with which the repository will be populated. These include databases that
cover matters as diverse as contract enforcement analysis, death penalty
sentencing, prevention of child sexual offences, and an analysis of firm-level
litigation at the National Company Law Tribunal, and will use a combination of
manual coding and natural language processing to extract the data and
assimilate it into useful data sets. Hopefully, in time, more researchers will
be inclined to use the platform.
While it is impossible to say exactly what purpose will be served
by getting information as diverse as this onto a single platform, that is
precisely why we need projects like this. After all, we will only find the
unexpected if we make an effort to look for it.
Source | Mint – The Wall Street Journal | 16th
October 2019
Regards
Mr. Pralhad Jadhav
Research Scholar (IGNOU)
Senior Manager @ Knowledge Repository
Khaitan & Co
Mobile @ 9665911593
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