Cayman Islands Auditor General, Sue
Winspear, appears to have had some difficulty in coming to positive
conclusions in her recent report that centred mainly on the lower
Summary Courts. We published the summary of her Report on iNews two
days ago.

“The need for a new court house is
not in question as the current court facilities are not fit for
purpose,” she wrote, “However, the Outline Business Case for the
project is still in draft form and there are a number of significant
gaps in the information presented. There is no recent analysis of
current and future workload that justifies the need for the number of
court rooms being proposed.”

The following are some of her
complaints:

There is very limited performance
information available and what is available is not being used to
understand, manage or improve its performance.

Judicial Administration does not record
its expenditure by type of court, despite the budget being set in
this way, or calculate the cost per case. The lack of performance and
financial information means that is difficult to assess the overall
efficiency and effectiveness of Summary Courts or Judicial
Administration,

The courts are in the process of
upgrading their IT systems that has the potential to improve
efficiency of operations. However, there is no business case
documenting the costs and intended benefits of the new system. There
will be no way of knowing the extent to which it contributes to
improvements in efficiency, or whether it has delivered value for
money.

The introduction of the new IT system
will impact other agencies, such as the police and prosecutors.
However, the courts plan to restrict access to its own staff,.That
could still undermine its efficiency.

Unpaid traffic tickets have increased
by 30% adding to the workload of defence attorneys that may not be
sufficient to deal with it and the other host of criminal matters.
Winspear has no way of knowing.

There is no information collected on
significant issues impacting efficiency.

No information collected on its own
workforce to determine how many people will be needed to staff it nor
what skills will be required for the new courts and what will be the
future demand for its services.

Nine recommendations were made to help
improve things.

We will have to wait with bated breath
to see when, or if, any of these recommendations will ever be
executed.

It might take a High Court Judge to rule on that.