[LINK] e-discovery for royal commission into the Victorian brushfires

[Tom Worthington]

The Federal Court of Australia finally issued their much delayed 
Practice Note No 17: "The use of technology in the management of 
discovery and the conduct of litigation" on 29 January 2009 
<http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/how/practice_notes_cj17.htm>.

Justice Teague might consider these guidelines of use for his royal 
commission into the Victorian brushfires 
<http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/premier/fires-royal-commission-to-have-wide-terms-of-reference.html>.

The guidelines set out the use of electronic documents in court 
proceedings. This is intended to be used a significant number of the 
documents in a case are electronic (usually 200 or more) and so 
handling them electronically will speed up the process and lower 
costs. The Royal Commission may have hundreds of thousands, or 
millions, of documents to consider and so such a system would be of use.

The ACT Coroner used e-documents in the investigation of the Canberra 
firestorm <http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2004-October/058986.html>.

As with the Oil-for-Food Inquiry, if evidence to such inquiries is 
also provided publicly online, it will help reassure the public that 
the process is open and transparent: 
<<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/courtech.shtml>http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/courtech.shtml>.




Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University