Media Release: Virtual Court Excellence Conference explores how courts around the world can pursue court excellence in challenging times

1. More than 1,600 judicial officers, court administrators, policy makers and experts from the related fields across 43 countries attended the virtual International Consortium for Court Excellence (ICCE) Conference, to explore how courts in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and the Pacific Islands have embraced new modes of operations in the new endemic world, and addressed their implications on the court workforce, court management practices, and public trust and confidence.

    

2. The virtual conference – held over two days on 15 and 16 March 2022 – is organised by the Consortium members, and the current chair of the Consortium is held by the State Courts under the Deputy Presiding Judge of the State Courts, Ms Jennifer Marie.

    

3. Participants at the Conference included speakers and delegates from Australia, Dubai, Indonesia, New Zealand, Palau, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Netherlands and the United States.

    

4. Themed “Pursuing Court Excellence in Challenging Times”, the virtual conference featured distinguished local and international speakers who shared the best practice in the following areas to better help courts pursue excellence in challenging times (refer to Conference Brochure at Annex A for more information on the sessions and panellists):

    

   • Meeting the Challenges of Court Workforce for Tomorrow: What are the challenges faced by the court workforce of tomorrow and how would courts tackle these challenges?

      

   • Embracing New Modes of Court Operations: How did the courts in Australia, New Zealand, Palau and the USA transform their traditional court practices into technology driven remote hearings and digital management of cases?

      

   • Change Management in a Highly Volatile and Uncertain Environment: How may court professionals leverage change management techniques and tools to make change more positive, purposeful, collaborative, and successful?

    

   • Harnessing Public Trust and Confidence in the Endemic World: What may we glean from the perspectives from the European and North American courts in their approach to address the digital divide of their court users?

    

5. The Consortium developed the International Framework for Court Excellence (IFCE), which takes a holistic approach to assessing a court’s performance and provides guidance for courts to improve their performance on a continuous basis. In November 2020, the Council of ASEAN Chief Justices (CACJ) authorised the formation of a network of ASEAN-IFCE resource persons to build expertise on court excellence within ASEAN. The ASEAN-IFCE Resource Network maintains a collection of materials for the reference of Resource Network members, such as IFCE guides, materials shared at workshops, conferences and seminars, and reports contributed by members. The Network is now in the final stages of putting together a Resource Portal to host these materials online in a members-only portal, making it easier for members to access the materials and to communicate with each other. The Resource Portal is developed by a team of students from the Temasek Polytechnic, in collaboration with the Network – an illustration of how the courts can partner the community stakeholders to work on initiatives that can have a positive impact nationally and internationally.
   

    

6. In his Keynote Address delivered at the Conference, The Honourable the Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon of the Supreme Court of Singapore said:

“Achieving court excellence is a long-term goal that we all subscribe to, and we should aggregate our knowledge and wisdom through resources like this so that it can be shared with our counterparts and preserved for our successors. This conference gives us an excellent opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences in implementing the IFCE and to further our journeys towards court excellence.”

Please click here for Annex A Fact sheet on ICCE Conference 2022 (PDF162 KB).
Please click here for Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon's Keynote Address (PDF54 KB).

Issued by: State Courts, Singapore

Date: 15 March 2022