The International Framework for Court Excellence is a quality management system designed to help courts to improve their performance. It includes universal core values, seven areas of court excellence aligned with those values, as well as concepts, case studies, and tools by which courts worldwide can voluntarily assess and improve the quality of justice and court administration.
The Framework is the product of an international attempt to identify a process for achieving court excellence regardless of the location or size of a court or the resources or technology available to it. It uses the term “court” to refer broadly to any organization that is part of a country’s judicial system, including courts and tribunals of general, limited and special jurisdiction.
The main enhancements to the new edition are the inclusion of assessment statements relating to ethics, conduct, technology, risk management, security, data integrity, ADR and problem solving approaches. The self-assessment process and the scoring methodology have been simplified. We would like to thank the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, the Indonesia Judiciary, and the UNDP for providing translations for the latest edition of the framework, which can be downloaded below.
The Third Edition of the International Framework for Court Excellence (May 2020) is now available in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Laotian and Spanish.
The International Framework for Judicial Support Excellence
The Consortium has also developed a version of the Framework aimed at Judicial Support Organizations, entitled the International Framework for Judicial Support Excellence (‘IFJSE’). Consortium members in the Affiliated Judicial Institutions membership category may wish to consider applying the IFJSE to their own organizations, particularly when courts in the same jurisdiction are utilizing the International Framework for Court Excellence.
Judicial support organizations are those bodies that provide broad support services to courts as well as specific services such as research, performance management, records management, education, technology, finance, asset or personnel services. These types of organizations play a significant role in supporting the administration of justice and invariably have indirect community accountability as well as direct accountability to their ‘client’ courts, judicial officers and court administrators.
The IFJSE is based on the IFCE and follows the same structure as the ‘Thinking of Implementing the International Framework for Court Excellence’ publication. However, the Self-Assessment Questionnaire in the IFJSE is substantially different and is not designed to be used by courts or tribunals. New IFJSE checklists have been added for specific service delivery functions such as education, research, information technology, finance, asset management, human resources and labor relations. The purpose of the IFJSE, like the IFCE, is to assist organizations identify areas of their operations that may require improvement and to develop improvement plans to guide implementing change. The IFJSE is available for download in the link below.