CONTESTABILITY CASE STUDY: Family Court of Australia – Commonwealth
Courts Portal and Electronic Filing
Image: Melbourne Family Law Registry (Courtesy Family Court of Australia)
The Family Court and Federal Circuit Court are responsible for delivering family law services in
Australia. With the aim of having a shared strategy for the delivery of web services to clients
the family law courts, along with the Federal Court, decided to establish an online portal
through which a broad range of court services and information could be delivered to litigants,
their legal representatives and the broader community.
Developed by the Family Court, and after an initial pilot in 2007, the Commonwealth Courts
Portal (CCP) was officially launched in 2008 and has since followed an evolutionary path with
continual functional enhancement and refinement. The portal has provided:
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a gateway to a broad range of services and information from all the courts
a streamlined and integrated delivery of commonwealth court services
ease and simplicity through a single sign-on with comprehensive identity
management functions
improved access for regional clients
increased efficiency and client service for litigants and their legal representatives
better and more consistent processes across all courts
and established a platform to support future growth for common services.
This cooperative approach was possible as all these courts use the (largely) same underlying
case management system, Casetrack. Developed and maintained by the Family Court Casetrack
is a bespoke system using an Oracle database. With CCP extensive use is made of open source
software which has allowed significant savings in software licensing costs and along with agile
development methodologies has delivered worthwhile improvements in the time taken to
deliver web accessible functions to clients and internal staff.
With the success of CCP the family law courts rapidly moved into establishing electronic filing
(eFiling) via CCP and is the direction being taken for the future with greatly expanded client selfservice and electronic communications capabilities leading to the ultimate aim of having
electronic only court files (ECF).
eFiling implementation commenced in 2008 and has already provided savings with money, time
and resources within the courts and also affords clients time savings by being able to file 24/7
from their own homes or offices - in October 2014 the 500,000th efiled document was received
via CCP.
A staged approach is being taken to eFiling development with the Family Court approaching the
point of commencing to mandate electronic only interactions with the Court via eFiling later in
2015. This process is expected to span a number of years as all the associated systems and
processes evolve towards the ECF, an ambitious target requiring very significant business
transformation as it integrates into the Court’s daily practices and operations.