The last 20 years of my working career were spent as process architect with The Ben Graham Group. In that role I worked with in excess of 100 companies across Canada. The goal in every case was to integrate and optimize the people, processes and technologies at the core of each organization’s activities.
From 2007 to 2012 we worked with both the Province of Manitoba and the Province of Alberta in the full range of services delivered by their Justice Departments (police, prosecutions, courts, defence, judiciary). The fruit of our work has finally been implemented in both provinces during the first quarter of 2020. The trigger for this implementation was Covid-19.
On April 14, 2020 the Winnipeg Free Press detailed a number of changes implemented due to Covid-19. One of the observations: “There are going to be changes that I don’t know that the courts are going to go back from (when the pandemic is over),” Walker said. “It’s so much more efficient.”
The Edmonton Journal on March 25 had similar news. “The prisoners are piped in by CCTV, the lawyers are on the telephone,” Moreau said. “I don’t know if they had a judge in the courtroom or if the judge was there by video. But it proved you can run a courtroom … with nobody physically in the room.”
These changes were forecast in a vision prepared by The Ben Graham Group on December 16, 2009. Click here: Alberta Justice Electronic Information Vision.
Important Note: every recommendation was based on technology that was currently available in 2009. What was needed was a change of perspective. That change of perspective came with Covid-19.