The Supreme Court has kept up with its commitment in providing timely justice. All the target timelines have been met with the judicious application of case management principles. In addition, we have expanded the range of services provided to court users. We are also proud that the quality of our work has been recognised by the Public Service Award for Organisational Excellence and the Singapore Innovation Class Award.

As an extension of the facilities in the Technology Courts, the Mobile-Information Technology Trolley was introduced. The Trolley allows technology facilities to be moved into any courtroom and chamber to facilitate multimedia and Powerpoint presentations of evidence and arguments.

An arrangement with a private vendor was established to provide a wider range of transcription services for court proceedings. Real-time transcription services are now available, in addition to various types of delayed services.

In addition, a pilot project was carried out to explore the feasibility of digital audio recording for court proceedings. This technology will relieve judges of the need to manually record the proceedings in court. This will allow them to concentrate on the flow of the evidence and arguments, and speed up hearings considerably.

Two terminals were added to the Supreme Court Library to allow library users to undertake electronic legal research via Westlaw. This complements the existing collection of legal materials in the Library.

The Supreme Court was pro-active in the clearance of unclaimed monies held by the Registry. We wrote to invite affected parties to make their claims and also posted the list of unclaimed monies on our website. Furthermore, the filing fee for directions relating to the refund of interest amounting to less than $500 was waived to facilitate the making of claims. These measures led to a significant increase in the amount of monies refunded.

We adopted a 5-day work week in support of the Government’s pro-family policy. At the same time, hearing hours on weekdays were extended to achieve an increase in the total number of hearing hours per week. On top of this, the Registry remains open on Saturdays to serve those who require its assistance.

In this year’s report, we have included a note on the various changes made to the Rules of Court and the Practice Directions issued. We have also included a summary of the important judgments of the Court of Appeal. This is an effort to document the work of the Supreme Court not only in terms of measures to improve efficiency and accessibility, but also in substantive law.

The Supreme Court could not have delivered the results without the effort put in by our staff and the co-operation offered by the members of the legal profession. We would like to express our gratitude to all concerned and we are determined to continue our journey in the pursuit of excellence in the administration of justice.

Koh Juat Jong
Registrar, Supreme Court