Global Effort: Ensuring justice for all

In this episode of Inside HMCTS, we delve into the recent OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Global Roundtable on Access to Justice held in Ottawa, Canada. Join us as we explore the innovative approaches and practical strategies that are improving access to justice worldwide.

Our special guest, Luc Altmann, Head of Insight at HMCTS, discusses his presentation on measuring and improving access to justice in court services and how the UK is leading the way with a data-driven, user-centered approach that’s setting new standards globally.

We also hear from representatives from the World Justice Project, and the OECD, who provide their perspectives on the importance of people-centered justice and the impact of international collaboration.

Tune in to learn about the challenges and successes in making court services more inclusive and effective, and how these efforts are shaping the future of justice systems around the world.

For full transcript of each episode, please visit - Inside HMCTS

Transcript

Dr Alejandro Ponce: 

I'm Alejandro Ponce, chief research officer at the world justice project. Last week, I got a chance to check out the UK effort to implement the OCD access to justice recommendation. I really like what I saw. It's one of the first serious attempts to push for people's under justice and make courts more inclusive. There are 3 things that I found particularly interesting.

First, the 7-step framework for improving court services that helps identify the problem using data, come up with solutions, and monitor progress. Second, that the framework is flexible enough to work with different legal systems. And third, it encourages continuous improvement. Something that I also like about this initiative is that it's not just theoretical. It contains practical data driven strategies and real-world examples, making it quite relevant for practitioners. It is fantastic work. 

Aaron Wilson:

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Inside HMCTS with me, Aaron Wilson, from the communications team. Today, we're going to be talking about a recent OECD roundtable event that took place in Canada that my colleague, Luc Altmann attended to discuss our essential work around enabling and improving access to justice for all. So we'll be catching up with Luc on his return from the event a little bit later on in the podcast. But prior to him traveling out there, I spoke with him to find out a bit more about the aims of the trip and the importance of international discussion on access to justice.

So, Luc, tell me your your role, first of all, at HMCTS. What is that? What do you do and, can you tell me a little bit about this event as well that you're going to? 

Luc Altmann: 

So my name is Luc Altmann, and I'm the Head of Insight, for HMCTS. So that means my team provides all the evidence for the department to inform its decision making. I'm going to be be in Ottawa at the OECD Global Roundtable on Access to Justice, and I'm going to be be presenting a paper that we're jointly publishing with the OECD. If you're not familiar with the organisation, they're a group of 38 countries who promote better policies for its member countries to adopt. And each year since, I think, about 2016, they've held a roundtable on access to justice.

The roundtable is at it's a two day conference with expert led presentations, discussions, workshops, and all things related to access to justice. This year, the the topic for the roundtable is people-centered justice or what we call in HMCTS user-centered justice. It's something we know a lot about in HMCTS because a user-centered approach has been an important part of the HMCTS reform programme. And it's, you know, really sort of the basis and the essence of the work that we do in my user insight team. 

Aaron Wilson:

And what about the paper you're going to be presenting to the round table? What's that all about? 

Luc Altmann: 

The paper I'm presenting is a practical guide on how to measure and improve access to justice in court services. It's based on some of the work we published in autumn 2023 to assess access to justice in our services, and we're going to be publishing more this autumn as well. It's probably one of the biggest programmes of work we've had in the insight team. We've been working on it for a few years now.

And as the OECD has recognised and commented on, it's a truly innovative and world leading piece of work because we are the only people at the moment measuring and improving access to justice in our court services in this way. The work we've done is assessed access to justice in 6 services, including divorce, online civil money claims, the immigration tribunal. 

Aaron Wilson: 

Are you seeing any evidence or any positive effects of this work as well that you can explain to our listeners?  

Luc Altmann: 

We've now got evidence of where we've actually improved access to justice in the services. So it's a it's a really big deal.

This is very much a team effort, and it's been a collaboration between the different analytical professions in government, but notably the government social research profession, which I'm part of and most of the team is, as well as the operational research services. 

Aaron Wilson:

I know you've sort of outlined a few points about it, but why is it important to get everyone together in the same room and have these conversations? 

Luc Altmann: 

It's really important to kind of bring together different countries' perspectives on how to deliver global justice policies. And what work have you and your team done so far in relation to this? We've taken a kind of a world leading approach to court reform, and our use of evidence and our approach to our sort of user centered approach is really innovative, and they want to kind of bring that expertise in from us in the UK, but also kind of take views in from all of those other countries.

There's some amazing work being done in Canada and Australia and across Europe, and bringing those kind of experts together in one place as an opportunity to kind of share ideas, basically. 

Aaron Wilson: 

For you, obviously, it's an overseas trip. What are you looking forward to most about sort of meeting with other justice partners over abroad? 

Luc Altmann: 

I feel I think that there's probably two things I'm really looking forward to about the roundtable. One is to kind of hear what other countries are doing and kind of potentially bring back some ideas. Ideas in terms of, data that other countries are collecting and how they're using that data to improve their services and make their services more user centered. But, also, I feel like we've done some amazing work in this space, which is why we're publishing this policy paper with the OECD. And I'm really proud of that and really proud of the team's contribution to that, and I'm really keen to share that with other countries. 

The aim of the paper, the reason we're publishing it with the OECD is because the OECD think that the work that we've done and the methodology we have to assess and improve access to justice is something that other countries can use and adapt. And if and if other countries can pick it up and use it to improve their services, I think that will be, you know, a huge a huge kind of win for us and be so great on the international stage.

Aaron Wilson: 

It sounds a really interesting opportunity to obviously speak and learn different things, but I think one thing that perhaps our users will be thinking about is what does this mean for me and how does this benefit us? Could you talk a little bit about what it means for sort of access to justice and users coming to our court and tribunal system? 

Luc Altmann: 

What the access to justice assessment mean for users coming into the court services is that we're able to identify some of the barriers that they might face accessing justice through the court services. By measuring those barriers and understanding those barriers, we can help reduce them and remove them so that users can come into our court services and get the access to justice they need so that our services are easy to understand, easy to use, Our court system, both online and in in in in the physical space, is easy to navigate and get the outcome that they deserve.  

Aaron Wilson: 

So you've been going to the round table for a few years now. What sort of changes in trends to do to justice have you seen in your time attending? 

Luc Altmann: 

The big challenge for all the countries in the OECD now is the financial constraints that all governments and countries find themselves in. So the focus is often very much on how can you make the justice systems more effective and more efficient when they're all experiencing some of the same issues around a rise in case backlogs and the financial constraints.

But the focus on the roundtables are always around people-centered justice, and there can be a bit of a conflict between those financial pressures and designing, delivering services around the user. 

Aaron Wilson:

How are you with flying? How are you looking forward to that trip? I'm looking forward to the flight.

Luc Altmann:

I've got 3 young kids, 7, 9 and 11.

So, most of the time when I'm traveling anywhere or getting on a plane, I'm looking after the 3 children as well so I'm looking forward to that peace and quiet on the flight. I've never been to Canada, so really looking forward to getting to Canada in the autumn and just absorbing a bit of, yeah, a bit of the Canadian culture. I'm only there for 3 days, but Ottawa is supposed to be a fantastic city. So, yeah, really looking forward to that. 

Aaron Wilson: 

I think we're due to catch up with you when you come back for the conference as well. So I'm looking forward to hearing more about what you've learned and how it was. 

Luc Altmann: 

Yeah. Well, look forward to coming back and telling you all about it.

Aaron Wilson: 

Well, that was Luc prior to heading off to Canada, and I'm delighted to say that he's now managed to safely make it back to the UK to come and tell us more about the global roundtable event. But just before we do catch up with him, a gentle reminder that if you're enjoying the podcast, you can find more content on our Inside HMCTS blog pages, and you can also keep up to date with the latest releases by following us on social media across X, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and YouTube. And now back to you Luc, so tell us how it went firstly and what the main takeaways were.  

Luc Altmann: 

Yeah, thanks. Yeah. It went it went really well, kind of as planned. So as now, we went out to, launch our publication on measuring and improving access to justice in court services, and that kind of went off without a hitch. So it was launched, it was published, and got an opportunity to kind of present that to the OECD.

I did a 10 minute presentation, which went down really well, and there was a lot of questions and a lot of discussion off the back of that. You know, the hope from publishing that is that other countries are going to be, adopt it and use it in in in their court services as well. 

So we had interest from a few countries, from Holland, from Chile, Thailand, the United States, as well as interest from the World Bank and the World Justice Project. So really positive stuff. And, yeah, hopefully, sort of next steps are to kind of be working with those other countries and through the OECD to help them adopt that process for measuring access to justice. 

Aaron Wilson:

Lovely. Sounds like it was a good trip. We had we chatted before previously, before you traveled to Canada and you mentioned one of the aims of the OECD events is to sort of help different countries work together to deliver better policies. Do you think that the conversations you had with colleagues from other countries have contributed to that and delivering sort of better approaches to justice around the world?

Luc Altmann: 

I think so. I think this paper is going to be kind of a big step in helping some of those countries assess and improve access to justice in their court services. They're really interested in the kind of methodologies we're using, and they're interested to kind of adopt them for their own purposes. And some of the other organizations like the World Bank and the World Justice Project were particularly interested in the kind of measures that we were using. So potentially, they can reuse it reuse those measures with other countries and as part of their work and their missions with other countries around the world.

Aaron Wilson:

Brilliant. Well, let's hear from a member of the World Justice Project who you spoke with at the event now. 

Dr Alejandro Ponce:

I'm Alejandro Ponce, Chief Research Officer at the World Justice Project. Last week, I got a chance to check out the UK's effort to implement OECD access to justice recommendation. I really like what I saw.

It's one of the first serious attempt to push for people centered justice and make courts more inclusive. There are 3 things that I found particularly interesting. 1st, the 7 step framework for improving court services that helps identify the problem using data, come up with solutions, and monitor progress. 2nd, that the framework is flexible enough to work with different legal systems. And 3rd, it encourages continuous improvement.

Something that I also like about this initiative is that it's not just theoretical. It contains practical data driven strategies and real world examples, making it quite relevant for practitioners. It is fantastic work. Congratulations.  

Aaron Wilson:

Well, that was really interesting to hear from Alejandro and sounds like the HMCTS contributions have been really well received. What were some of the things you learned from the conference? And was there anything surprising or unexpected that you took away from it? 

Luc Altmann: 

I think one of the takeaways from the OECD Conferences on Access to Justice is the the scope and the breadth of access to justice and what it means to other countries. It's always a good reminder that something like only 2 or 3% of all legal problems ever reach the court system.

And so a lot of the discussion around access to justice sits outside of the court system. So the work that we're doing, the work I was presenting, and the work that we do in HMCTS is only quite a small part of that access to justice ecosystem that all the other countries are thinking about. And even in the delivery of access to justice in in in the courts, I was sat next to a lady from the United Nations, and she had just come back from Fiji and Tonga where she was running a programme to deliver access to justice to some of the islands out there. And that involved, basically, going round on a boat, gathering up sort of judges and lawyers and court clerks and magistrates and going round from island to island and doing all the court cases, you know, in a day, registering all the births and the marriages, and the death, and then doing all the civil cases and the criminal cases, then, you know, going back on the boat and going around to these other islands. So even in the context of delivering access to justice in courts, other countries, you know, experiences are kind of very different to ours, and it's always a bit of a wake up that we're looking at quite a small niche in terms of access to justice.

Aaron Wilson: 

And in terms of sort of the themes of the round table, I think you touched on this before when we spoke last time, but what was sort of the general theme of the conference? 

Luc Altmann: 

So the big theme's around kind of people centered justice as well as the use of data and insight and evidence. So as head of, user insight, I've got sort of a foot in both those camps, And the Reform programme that we've been working on has always been a user centered programme. And so, we've lot learnt a lot, and we've got a lot to kind of offer around people centered justice. And, obviously, heading up an insight team, there's a lot to kind of give and share around kind of the use of data and evidence and insight that hopefully this this paper that we've published kind of talks to both those things that has a very much a user centered, people centered approach.

And it hopefully, an exemplar of how to kind of use insight and data to improve access to justice. 

Aaron Wilson:

It sounds like you were able to cover a lot of ground during the round table and during your presentation. So let's hear now from one of the OECD representatives on the day who shared her thoughts on how this is supporting network. 

Marianne Piccinin Barbieri:

I'm Marianne Piccinin Barbieri, policy analyst at the OECD. With this paper, we hope to support policy makers across the world to measure access to justice and court services, tailoring to their specific context.

It provides practical guidance and good practice examples for using data to realize equal access to justice for all. Grounded in the OECD approach to people centered justice, This paper is part of a set of tools TOECD has been developing to help countries implement the OECD recommendation on access to justice and people centered justice. 

Aaron Wilson:

What I'm getting from this is, you know, the importance of court users' experience, particularly within the justice system and how we can improve access to justice for people across the UK. Is this an unusual approach compared to other countries? Are they all trying to improve access, and why is it a really important thing to consider?

Luc Altmann: 

In all, all countries are, of course, trying to improve access to justice. I think that the approach, one of the approaches that we have taken through this work that we've published is a kind of more structured and sort of formal way of actually getting a measurement and then making improvements off the back of data. To be able to do that, it's kind of reliant on having the right data. So having a having a data strategy that that allows you to collect the information to make those to do that assessment and make those improvements. That's certainly what other countries want to do, and they're a bit further sometimes behind in this sort of their reform journeys to kind of transform their data and kind of transform their services. So that's a good opportunity for them to hear kind of what we're doing. 

Aaron Wilson: 

And I get the impression that you've left the round table feeling quite positive. But what are the next steps for you and your team and for HMCTS, and where do we go from here? So the next steps in relation to kind of the work of the OECD is hopefully to try and get some of the other countries to adopt our processes. And there's a few countries, Holland and Chile, Thailand, and the United States who are interested in doing that. So going to be try and work with them, and they'll be working with the OECD as well to kind of adopt that process. 

Aaron Wilson:

And speaking of Chile, I think you spoke with a few representatives from there on the day, and we can hear from one of them and what they had to say on our work now. 

Ariel De la Maza: 

My name is Ariel de la Masa. I'm the Chief of International Affairs and Cooperation from the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights in Chile and I'm here with Luc Altmann. We just witnessed his work, and we're very much interested in the project of measuring and improving access to justice in court services. 

We in Chile have, very much involved judiciary in the problem of access to justice, especially in courts, and the tool that you have developed for measuring, the problems, and the gaps in access to justice and to try to address them. It's very interesting for us, and it's a tool that we're very much interested in applying in Chile. 

Aaron Wilson:

Another really insightful reflection there. And I know we were talking a little bit about this before and talked about you looking forward to going to Canada previously, but how was it? How was the flight and how was, Ottawa in general? Did you get up to anything else while you're out there? 

Luc Altmann: 

Ottawa was brilliant. It was a quick journey. I was only there  for 3 nights, so it's quite a long way to go for quite a short period of time. But Ottawa is a a beautiful city. Obviously, it's the kind of administrative capital, so it's got all the government buildings there, which were lovely, and we had a look around those. And then on the final evening, I got the opportunity to go to a ice hockey game to watch the Ottawa Senators beat the Florida Panthers.

That was the first day of the season. So, a bit of a cultural highlight and got to meet some proper Canadians there. So, it's yeah, good fun.  

Aaron Wilson: 

Well, Luc, thank you so much for taking the time to come on to the podcast to talk about this important work and it sounds to me like it was an invaluable experience for both you and the organisation. 

If you'd like to find out more about our work around this issue or are just interested in discovering more about justice in general, you can visit our blog by searching inside HMCTS in your browser. You'll also be able to find previous episodes of our podcast here, or you can also search HMCTS and visit our pages on GOV.UK. 

So thanks to everyone for tuning into this episode, and we'll be back with another instalment very soon, which I believe we'll be looking back at 2024 in review, so until then, take care.