Anonymisation and publication of judgements
The objective of this activity was to establish a special system for the publication of anonymised judgements on a single publicly accessible portal, with elaborated search options using metadata according to different criteria, as well as the possibility of download in different formats, while respecting personal data protection rules.
Since all judgements were already available in the eSpis (eFile) system, it was planned to upgrade this system with a special module for anonymisation which would automatically identify the personal data of parties and other participants in the proceedings and replace them with appropriate codes.
In order to implement the solution in practice, it was necessary to adapt the legislative framework. Therefore, the obligation of public disclosure of anonymised judgements as of 1 January 2025 was laid down and the definition of public disclosure of anonymised judgements provided in the Act on Amendments to the Courts Act (Narodne Novine No 36/24).
Pursuant to the amendments to the Courts Act, the Ordinance on the Manner of Anonymisation, Publication and Search of Anonymised Judgements (NN No 134/2024) was adopted, which entered into force on 1 January 2025. The Ordinance prescribes in detail the manner of anonymisation, publication and search of anonymised judgements on a dedicated website.
Until 1 January 2025, public disclosure of selected judgements was made possible through a special information system of the Supreme Court. In this system, all judgements of the Supreme Court since 1990 were accessible, except for judgements on the protection of the right to a trial within a reasonable period, which, due to the large number of identical decisions, were published from 2012 onwards only if a significant legal position had been taken in them.
Other courts published only the most important judgements, and along with particularly important and interesting judgements, legal positions were also published.
The available database was very limited in scope and was being filled with judgements at a relatively slow pace. This was due, inter alia, to the lack of automated means of anonymisation by court officials.
The development of the ANON system addressed the problem of limited publication of judgements and established a system of publication of all judgements with prior automatic anonymisation using special software, and publication on a single, publicly accessible portal with elaborate search options, while respecting the rules on personal data protection.
What the ANON system does is retrieve decisions from the eSpis (court case management system) 15 days after dispatch, automatically anonymise first instance judgements, propose indexes and publish them on a public portal. In second instance and high court cases, the system also retrieves judgements from the eSpis system 15 days after dispatch, automatically anonymises them and proposes indexes, but the judgements are published by the court through ANON after verification and entry of additional values.
A publicly available search engine is part of an AI-based IT solution for anonymising and publishing judgements.
In addition to the new decisions, the portal has also made available all the jugements published until 15 December 2024 on the SupraNova portal of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia.
This service represents a significant step in modernising and improving the capacity of the judicial system. The use of solutions for the automatic anonymisation and publication of judgements contributes to enhancing the transparency of the work of courts, increasing legal certainty and harmonising case law.
The total value of the ANON system development project was 160,875.00 euros including VAT.
The portal Tražilica odluka sudova Republike Hrvatske (Croatian Case Law Finder) is available at: https://odluke.sudovi.hr/.