According to Article 19 of the current Judicial Code, the collection and maintenance of judicial statistics pursues the following objectives: to ensure the effectiveness, transparency and accountability of the courts to the public. In an interview with Iravaban.net, Ms Mariam Zadoyan, expert of the “Multi-Faceted OGP Action: Open Justice & Anti-Corruption Commitments” project, said, speaking about the international standards raised as a result of analysis “Legal Structures of Judicial Statistics, including improvement of statistical data/indicators aimed at evaluating the efficiency and quality of the court’s (judges) activity, completion, collection, processing and publication procedures of statistics”.

“According to the legislation of the Republic of Armenia, effectiveness, that is, the ability to achieve a certain goal by minimizing

Mariam Zadoyan

the use of resources, is not defined among the goals, and only two of the many possible quality standards are defined: transparency and accountability. The RA lacks the vision to consider statistics as a tool for assessing, planning as well as efficient and effective management of the performance results of judicial activity,” she noted.

The expert noted that the evaluation of the performance of the judicial system in the RA is carried out only individually at the level of judges, and there is no measurability and evaluation at the domestic and court levels.

According to the legislation of the Republic of Armenia, the following statistical data on the types of court cases are published for each court and judge of the First Instance:

1) the total number of cases transferred from the previous reporting period at the beginning of the next reporting period;

2) the total number of cases received during the reporting period;

3) the total number of resolved cases during the reporting period, as well as individual civil cases examined within the framework of the bankruptcy case, specifying the individual types of proceedings (procedures) used during the examination of the cases, and the total number of cases based on the status of limitation period;

4) the total number of cases with suspended proceedings as of the last day of the reporting period.

” As a result, the following formula is not observed:

number of pending/unfinished cases at the end of the reporting period  =

number of pending/unfinished cases at the beginning of the reporting period  + 

number of new (incoming) cases in the reporting period  –

number of resolved (completed) cases during the reporting period.

Also In addition, they do not provide data as of 31 December of the reporting year on the number of pending/unfinished cases that are pending for more than 2 years. Moreover, the statistics of judicial cases of the Constitutional Court are not collected,” Mariam Zadoyan noted.

According to her, the modernization of the statistics system is not considered in the context of the introduction of instruments for measuring the performance of courts.

At the same time, the RA Government referred to the mentioned issue in the “OGP-Armenia National Action Plan 2022-2024” in the definition of the commitment “eCourt-statistics” statistical analytical tool. In particular, the commitment envisages the definition/improvement of statistical indicators that will allow the court to conduct periodic analyses. However, as the results of the focus group discussion showed, there are a number of challenges in implementation of the mentioned vision, including in the digital/technological sphere: “As for the draft of a new methodology for the evaluation system of judges, it again concerns the evaluation of judges at the individual level.”

Mariam Zadoyan believes that the reforms aimed at improving the system of individual evaluation of judges should be considered more broadly, in the framework of the formation of a vision aimed at modernizing the structures of measurability and evaluation of the judicial system,

reforms aimed at improving the individual evaluation system of judges should be considered more broadly, within the framework of forming a vision aimed at modernizing the measurability and evaluation structures of the judicial system, where statistics will be a tool for evaluating, planning as well as effective and efficient management of the performance results of judicial activities, at the national, court and the judges’ levels.

“It is necessary to develop a concept, strategy and road map aimed at the realization of this vision, within the framework of which the collection of judicial flows will be carried out according to the above-mentioned international standards, the data related to the Constitutional Court will be collected, and the main performance indicators presented by statistics will be introduced,” the expert noted.

This publication was prepared by the “Armenian Lawyers’ Association” NGO in cooperation with CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition of Armenia within the framework of the “Multi-Faceted OGP Action: Open Justice & Anti-Corruption Commitments” project implemented with the support of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), in the framework of the European Union funded “EU for Integrity Programme for the Eastern Partnership” Action.

The publication expresses the position of the author, the ALA, which does not necessarily coincide with the position of the OGP and the EU.

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