A modern and innovative vision of justice serving the Malian people
Malian justice has been faced for several years with a simple problem but with serious consequences: clerks are poorly trained and must put up with working conditions made difficult by a low level of equipment. The notes and hearing reports prove practically unusable in the vast majority of cases. Therefore, dispensing justice on the basis of substantiated and documented cases becomes a challenge for judges.
The country's police stations and gendarmes encounter the same difficulties; the reports of hearings and interrogations are not usable and make the investigation of cases very complicated.
Storage and archiving are also major concerns. The wheels of justice turn slowly, often considerably. Long-term preservation of case files and the documents they contain is essential to ensuring a fair trial. Here too, the stakes are high and the conditions challenging: current facilities and equipment are often unsuitable for storing such documents.
Under the leadership of Mali's Minister of Justice, Mr. Mamadou Konate , a digital transformation project for the justice system was launched. This project centered on a management solution designed to address three major challenges: providing a document digitization solution to centralize all information related to a case file, offering a digital recording and automatic transcription solution, and providing a high degree of customization to adapt to the specific practices of each participating entity.
The ministry then launched a consultation with several software publishers, primarily European, to find an innovative solution that would meet local technical and financial constraints. Jarvis Legal emerged as the fully hosted management solution, open to the ecosystem through its powerful API , and meeting all the criteria set out in the call for tenders.
Jarvis Legal wins tender
We spent many hours building the offer that won over the Mali Ministry of Justice. This was a real challenge, both technical (we had to integrate functions that we did not have at the time) and financial (the project was financed by the Netherlands through its Embassy in Mali). However, we were the only publisher capable of responding to all of the requests made.
Our offer naturally included the management solution for lawyers and legal professionals, ranked #1 for the third consecutive year by Décideurs magazine , but also digital voice recorders and high-performance scanners. These devices were specifically selected for their ability to connect to Jarvis Legal via their APIs.
The work was only just beginning for our R&D team. Many challenges had to be overcome to perfectly integrate these different services and make them easy to use for users.
Rigorous preparatory work
Once the contract was awarded, an initial mission was carried out in the summer of 2017. Its aim was to meet with the people involved in the project and to audit the sites that would be equipped with Jarvis Legal. Although easy to deploy because it is entirely hosted, Jarvis Legal still requires two essential elements to function: an internet connection (a simple ADSL connection is sufficient) and a computer. However, the sites visited were either not equipped or very poorly equipped. The local authorities demonstrated great responsiveness by placing the order for the equipment and internet connections necessary for the deployment of Jarvis Legal.
At the same time, our R&D teams worked on the integration of the APIs for the scanners and digital dictaphones provided as part of the call for tenders. They also worked on the integration of the voice recognition service, capable of continuous improvement thanks to autonomous neural-type learning.
In particular, the challenge of simplifying operations had to be met to ensure that a user could easily scan a document by placing it directly in the right folder. Or he can record a hearing, pleading or deposition and simply drop the file into Jarvis Drive to then start transcribing it, automatically transforming it into a ready-made Word document, all in seconds.
A successful deployment
The deployment mission was carried out in January 2019. It took place over a week, in Bamako and the surrounding towns. The Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice of Mali and the Ambassador of the Netherlands to Mali inaugurated the official launch of Jarvis Legal on this occasion.
Beyond the deployment of the management solution, we took care of the training of future users as well as local administrators. We also supported them in the configuration and personalization of their spaces, each site having its own environment. The equipment has also been deployed on each site.
We were particularly impressed by the concentration and involvement of the speakers on site. It is thanks to them that the project was a success and could be implemented in the best conditions.
Justice better equipped to face the challenges of today and tomorrow
With Jarvis Legal, courts, gendarmes and police stations can now digitize the documents in the files investigated, save them in a single and secure database and thus share common information which will be consultable by authorized people. The latter will therefore be able to rely on reliable and lasting information to make their decisions.
Court reports and depositions are automatically written and saved in the correct file. This is a considerable time saver for all those involved. The quality of information reaches a previously unmatched level of quality and reliability.
Judges finally have access to complete, detailed, and high-quality information , including an indisputable chronology of events and decisions. The information is centralized, ensuring that any authorized person can consult the documents, which are always up-to-date. Court clerks save valuable time, resulting in an unequivocally high-quality outcome.
A first step that calls for others
This project is only the first brick in the digital transformation undertaken by the Malian government. Other needs can be covered by new innovative solutions such as civil status and census but also land registry management. These two examples are formidable levers for the Malian state which can thus better understand the choices which will engage it in the coming decades.