Verdict Soft Copy is State Document that Must be Guarded

DG of Badilag Wahyu Widiana (center) stressing the importance of storing and publishing court verdicts as state documents.

Bandung | badilag.net/english

One crucial issue was succesfully identified in the workshop on verdict anonimation in Bandung last week (4/6). During this time, besides there are still weaknesses in terms of doing anonimation, it is still often found that soft copy of the verdict was dispersed. As a result, these verdicts are very difficult to be traced which inhibit anonimation process and verdict publication.

Director General of Religious Courts Body (Badilag) Wahyu Widiana calls this problem as a non-technical issues because technically, verdict anonimation and publication has been regulated in the Decision of Chief Justice (SK KMA) Number 144/2007 on Information Transparency in the Court. Meanwhile, file management was not specifically discussed in the decision which was signed by Prof. Bagir Manan.

"In terms of verdict publication, the problem of anonimation may seem simple, but there are non-technical issues beyond anonimation, like the difficulty of finding file or soft copy of the verdict. This must be solved first," said Wahyu Widiana.

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Responding to Wahyu’s statement, Aria Suyudi, member of the Supreme Court Reform Team, said that soft copy of verdict is actually state document that must be managed and maintained properly. "Therefore, there must be clear standards to result in good management," he said.

This problem began to reveal when a workshop participant did not bring all the soft copies of the verdicts between 2007 and 2009. He acknowledged the difficulty to collect the verdicts as they were stored in separate folders. Besides, there are also difficulties to ensure whether the verdicts had been edited or not.

To overcome this problem, according to Hirpan Hilmi, Caretaker of Head of Badilag Documentation and Information Subdivision, there should be SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) regarding management, storage and security of verdict file. "How the verdict was prepared, read out, and published," he said.

Since soft copy of the verdict is state documents, it is not less important than verdict files in archive room. When damaged or lost, there must be legal responsibility. "We recommend that verdict soft copy is stored on a server or a special computer," Hirpan Hilmi affirmed. (Salman)