Judicial Development and Grassroots Engagement

Results achieved as of the end of the project (December 2012) include: (i) institutionalizing 43 courses and knowledge products developed and piloted by the project into the regular curriculum of two key training centres the Judicial Academy of the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Training School of the Supreme People's Court; (ii) providing training to over 3 700 judges using the new courses developed by the Judicial Training School; (iii) helping to change the training philosophy of both centres moving the Judicial Training School from a lecture-based approach towards a skills-oriented and interactive approach to course development and helping the Judicial Academy to improve curriculum development produce better teaching materials use student-centred inquiry method and adopt a quality assurance approach to assessing and measuring the quality and effectiveness of their teaching programs; (iv) improving citizen access to court services and increasing the transparency of the court administration system; (v) establishing 'model courts' by introducing a one-stop shop for citizens to file petitions and access court documents using pilot courts in Hue Vinh Long and Hung Yen provinces; (vi) developing and distributing a court clerk’s manual and providing training using the manual; and (vii) enhancing the efficiency and consistency of court administration using new information technology tools such as digital audio recording systems local area networks Web pages and video handbooks. These have contributed to: (i) reducing wait times for citizens filing petitions from 14 days (average for all three provinces) in 2009 to four days in 2012 in model courts; and (ii) improving citizens’ access to court documents such as judgments by reducing wait times from two days to a matter of minutes in model courts. By December 2012 these court administration reforms were being replicated at the district-level courts in the three provinces and the Supreme People's Court p