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As part of the Supreme Court’s annual strategic planning exercise, the Registrar, Deputy Registrar, Senior Assistant Registrars and Directors of the various directorates held regular discussions from October 2005 to January 2006 to map out the strategic direction of the Supreme Court moving forward. Following from these discussions, three Core Ideals were distilled as the focus of the Supreme Court:
- Timeliness of justice
- Accessibility to justice
- Quality of justice
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 The three Core Ideals were communicated to all staff during the Supreme Court Staff Workplan Seminar held on 20 June 2006 through the theme “TAQ Revolution” where the letters T, A and Q represented Timeliness, Accessibility and Quality of justice.
For the first time, the Chief Justice graced the occasion and made an address to the staff during the Workplan Seminar. In his speech, Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong spoke of the importance of each of the administrative functions in the various directorates and how they served to support the judicial functions of the Supreme Court. He emphasised that the work of the staff was critical to the operations of the Supreme Court.
The Registrar also shared her perspectives on the three Core Ideals and how they translated into practical action. The Deputy Registrar then presented a pictorial journey of the many events that took place in the past year. This was followed by presentations from the Directors of the three directorates and the Manager of the Computer and Information Systems Department who reviewed the Supreme Court’s performance for FY 2005 and announced new performance targets and initiatives set for FY 2006.
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 The Supreme Court Corporate Retreat was held on 24 March 2006. Members of the Senior Management team and the various Heads of Sections were literally stretched beyond their comfort zones during the full-day team-building activity held at the Sentosa Low-Ropes Obstacle Course. The participants were divided into teams and tackled increasingly challenging activities as the day wore on. The day culminated with the seemingly impossible task of scaling an 11-foot wall. In an amazing display of teamwork and unity, all 60 Supreme Court participants were able to help each other across the wall as a team. At the end of the day, everyone went away with a renewed sense of camaraderie and teamwork.
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The Supreme Court Legal Colloquium has been an annual affair since 2004, and is organised and attended by the Registrars and Justices’ Law Clerks of the Supreme Court. The Legal Colloquium traditionally comprises activities on legal matters as well as team-building elements. The Legal Colloquium in 2006 was held on 7 September at The Arts House. The event kicked off with the presentation of legal updates by the participants followed by a quiz on various legal topics. Thereafter, the participants proceeded to the Academy Bistro at the Supreme Court for a corporate culinary session. Divided into three teams under the guidance of Chef Jimmy Chok, they prepared starters, main courses and desserts which they would tuck into for dinner that night. At dinner, the guest speaker was Judicial Commissioner Sundaresh Menon who spoke on the changing face of legal practice over the last 20 years and the lessons and challenges these changes might hold for the legal community in the future.
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The ACES project was conceived to automate manual functions and improve work processes undertaken by the registry staff of the Supreme Court. It also serves to improve the monitoring of key performance indicators in the case management process. Designed as a back-end system to complement the current Electronic Filing System (as well as the future Electronic Litigation System), ACES will be implemented in phases over the course of 2007. In its first implementation phase, ACES will manage all matters relating to writs, including summonses before the High Court and Registrar’s Appeals. It will subsequently be expanded to include all originating processes, including criminal matters, as well as appeals from the Subordinate Courts and the High Court.
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Since the review of the Electronic Filing System (EFS), the Supreme Court has embarked, and continues to embark, on a series of improvements to the EFS. In 2006, the Supreme Court, together with the other stakeholders in the Electronic Litigation System (ELS) Committee within the Singapore Academy of Law, continued to bring these improvements one step further. A technical audit was commissioned and completed in the first quarter of 2006. A Technical Standards and Front-End Sub-Committee was also set up to look into the implementation of recommendations from the technical audit. Over the year, a slew of new Front-End features was introduced to users, including the “Pack-n-Go” service, a new-look case file and enhancements to the One Click File-n-Serve service. The Supreme Court and Subordinate Courts also progressed with the development of a new iELS to replace the present EFS. The iELS aims to capitalise on the maturity of web-based technologies to provide system integration and interoperability that better caters to the litigation process as a whole.
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Recognising the importance of preserving institutional and administrative knowledge, the Knowledge Management (KM) team, headed by the Senior Management, will be launching an email archiving system and enhancements to the Supreme Court’s Intranet to facilitate the updating, tracking, organisation and dissemination of information. This will be made possible by incorporating the use of RSS feeds, Wikis, blogs and workspaces. To provide in-depth and timely scanning of legal developments, subject matter interest groups each consisting of an Assistant Registrar and several Justices’ Law Clerks have been formed. The research work of each group is guided by a Supreme Court Judge. Their findings are consolidated periodically and made available in blog format for easy reference by any Judge or Judicial Officer in the Supreme Court.
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In an effort to benchmark the best practices on court administration, study trips were undertaken by Registrars and court officers to other jurisdictions. The following study trips were undertaken:
- Study visit to the Australian Courts on judicial administration in June 2006
- Attendance at the usability conference in Sydney in July 2006
- Study visit to the Courts in USA on judicial administration in September 2006
- Attendance at the E-Courts conference in Las Vegas and visit to the Courts in USA on information technology initiatives in December 2006
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The Supreme Court website has gained international recognition, winning the top spot in the “Justice Served Top 10 Court Website Awards” 2006. This is a website award given out by a US-based alliance of court management and justice experts which provide management services, consultation and training to courts, justice agencies and their partners in technology. The organisers used two main criteria in judging the websites:
- Court functionality, which encompasses the ability to perform court tasks through the web
- Web functionality, which encompasses links to other relevant websites, aesthetics, navigability and ease of searching for the site.
For the award in 2006, the organisers scanned over 3,500 websites before deciding on the Supreme Court’s as the winner.
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 For the third time since first receiving the award in 2000, the Supreme Court was re-certified for the Singapore Quality Class in October 2006. This certification is awarded by Spring Singapore for the overall business excellence standard and is based on the internationally benchmarked business excellence framework.
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The Supreme Court clinched its first GOLD Singapore H.E.A.L.T.H. (Helping Employees Achieve Life-Time Health) Award, its very first after five years of participation in this accreditation exercise. The Award was presented by the Health Promotion Board to give national recognition to organisations with commendable Workplace Health Promotion programmes. Out of a maximum score of 100, the Supreme Court chalked up 95.34 points, bagging full marks in several categories of assessment.
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Section: Timeliness of Justice
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