Governance report of RAK Courts Department for the year 2014

According to the strategic plan of the Courts Department for 2014-2016, there is a close link between the strategic goals and objectives of the Courts Department on one hand, and between the elements of RAK Government’s vision and strategic directions, and the national agenda of UAE’s vision 2021 on the other hand; also there is a vertical link between all the applied methodologies in the department and between those elements; as the Courts Department works to support the judicial system efficiency index under the focus of a safe community and a just judicial system through many measures. On one hand, there is a keenness to sort commercial cases and calculate their duration rates regularly despite the lack of an independent department for commercial cases, as a result this index improved from 230 days per case in accordance with the report of World Bank during the year 2012, to only 87.7 days during the year 2014. The department also seeks to develop an organizational unit for case management in the organizational structure of the department in line with the policies of the Ministry of Justice in order to cut the time needed in the commercial contracts execution procedures, which are currently numbering in Ras Al Khaimah Courts from the moment of registration of the case to completion of payment to about 14 procedures on an average during the year 2014, after it had been 25 procedures in the year 2012.The Court Department’s primary concern is justice and its men represented in the judiciary, as the department seeks to achieve high efficiency in this area to reassure citizens and residents and the investor and worker that there is an authority that is able to protect and recover their rights, and for this purpose H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Saud Al Qasimi, Crown Prince of Ras Al Khaimah, Chairman of the Judicial Council, and Chairman of the Executive Council, has directed to the need for the department to hire Arab judicial expertise who has the knowledge, experience and know-how, and are able to accommodate their fellow citizens, and who belong to a variety of judicial schools, such as Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and therefore RAK Courts Department is ready to accommodate any number of cases and resolve them quickly in different courts, as well as all other types of documentary and community services, and there are also integrated judicial and administrative preparations, and a work environment equipped for this purpose, which resulted in the courts’ completion of 64754 services during the year 2014, an increase by 4.34% compared to the previous year, with a significant increase in notary public services by 7.95%, while the authentication department witnessed an increase too by 47.93%, and the number of cases with final judgments increased by 5.30%.This increase in completed services in the department by 4.34% compared to the previous year, particularly documentary services, can be explained by a number of reasons, the most important of which is the increasing confidence of society in the documentary services provided by RAK Courts, and the increase in the number of population of the emirate, which according to the latest official count exceeded 400 thousand people, in addition to the expansion of economic activity in the emirate, where RAK Investment Authority has succeeded in registering a large number of companies to both national and foreign investors, which resulted in increasing the number of companies’ articles of associations services provided by the notary public, these services also necessitated the opening of a branch of the Notary Pubic in the Free Zone Authority in the year 2014. All these factors resulted in the significant increase in the number of required and completed documentary services, as the number of completed notary services reached 25431, and the number of completed services by the Authentication Department reached 14169.It is possible to interpret the decline in the number of registered cases and community services positively as a sign of improved family stability in the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, and increased support for social care on the part of the relevant governmental bodies, and it is clearly seen by the decline in demand on the Department of Reform and Family Counseling services by 34.83%, where services number reached 3753 including agreements, reconciliations, referrals, and personal and over the phone counseling. It is also evident in the reduced demand on the Patrimony and Inheritance Department’s services by 30.15% compared to the same period last year, where the services number reached 3,700, also the family stability has contributed to the decline in the number of cases registered in the Court of First Instance by 23.02% which reached 5936 cases.While the irony is the increase in the number of executed cases by 10.43% and the increase in the number of cases with final judgments by 5.30% in the same time as the number of registered cases decreased. This reflects the efficiency of the management of civil litigation and personal status cases, and the speed in case settlement, as well as the quality and speed in executing judgments, especially after the development of the Electronic Execution Service initiative, which is considered the first of its kind at the state level.There was also a significant decrease in the time required for cases in 2014 thanks to the guidance of H.H. Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, and the close follow-up of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Saud Al Qasimi, Crown Prince and Chairman of the Judicial Council and Chairman of the Executive Council of the Emirate, of the precise details of Courts Department’s work, and their keenness to strengthen the independence of judiciary, by making the provision of legislative structure and the judicial system and modern systems of governance at the top of the priorities of Ras Al Khaimah Government’s vision.Also the time required for labour cases settlement decreased to 75 days on average per case, and the time required for plenary civil cases fell to 163.7 days on average per case, and summary civil cases required time fell to 61.7 days per case, and for personal status cases it decreased to 120 days on average per case during the second half of 2014. A quality circle was held in April 2013 to discuss the root causes of the increase in the required time to solve personal status cases, in the presence of a number of judges, and directors of concerned departments and divisions, and a number of secretaries, where the root causes of this problem were explored by following the methodology of quality circles management, and the classification of the root causes of the increase in status cases duration showed that the most important of these reasons are purely societal reasons such as poor qualification of youth during school period on the nature of family life, so the family advisors are working to promote awareness through a variety of educational lectures in governmental and social institutions, as well as the “My Family” radio show aired on RAK FM. There were also technical reasons that contributed to the issue, for example one case can branch into many other cases, so there have been a number of initiatives implemented to resolve this problem in the framework of Courts Department’s strategy for 2014 -2016, such as the establishment of an Addresses Investigation Committee, to solve the issue arising from defendants not having clear addresses, and the introduction of a new judicial department branching from the Department of Personal Status (Inheritance Department), and the appointment of a specialized judge and secretary for this department, so as to relieve the pressure on the Department of Personal Status, which has also been divided into two judicial departments, and thus the time required for personal cases decreased from 148 days on average to only 120 days.The department also witnessed re-engineering the cases registration process to shift to electronic registration from afar, in addition to the development of this process during the year 2015 to include the e-registration of appeals, as well as email enquires about them for the lawyers who are registered with the department, in addition to units of legal affairs in banks, insurance companies, debt collection companies and others, as a result, the electronically registered cases during the year 2014 reached 33.8% of the total number of cases that have been registered.In a humanitarian gesture and administrative wisdom, H.H. Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, directed to the need to apply the one-stop solution for the users of authentication services from social subsidies needers, so they will not have to refer to both Courts Department and the offices of the Ministry of Social Affairs for authentication services, which make it easier for them to get the determined subsidies from the ministry as quickly as possible, with minimal effort, from one place – the headquarters of one of the two offices of the Ministry of Social Affairs, whether in Ras Al Khaimah city or in Al Muaireedh.And because there are around 5,700 benefiters from the service of receiving social subsidies, they will not have to come to the headquarters of the department for this purpose; this is in addition to the two witnesses who must accompany the applicant of the service, therefore this enhancement satisfy more than 17,000 dealers annually.The business environment also witnessed development efforts during the last quarter of 2014 through the opening of Sheikh Saqr Hall and the authentication center for dealers, where the center includes a notary public department with its two sections for authentication and documenting services, in addition to the sections for patrimony and inheritance, authentication, authorized providers of community services, and the authentication center for customer service came as an implementation of the enhancement plan which was the outcome of observations of non-compliance during the internal audit on the quality management system ISO 9001:2008, and the authentication center also comes as an implementation of the process re-engineering methodology, which included the collection of all processes related to authentication regardless of the organizational unit the process belongs to, in one customer service center.The commitment to the star rating system standards was taken into consideration during the launching stage of the authentication center, in hopes that the center will receive an advanced rating, and therefore a standards comparison was held with the Emirates Identity Center in Ras Al Khaimah which received a 4-star rating, and all this led to an increase in the level of customer satisfaction after the opening of Saqr Hall to 97%, which is an unprecedented level of satisfaction not seen in the courts before.The committee for continuous development and improvement is considered a supreme executive committee in the department, in order to identify the causes of imbalances and deficiencies and weaknesses in the department, and to eliminate the root causes using the appropriate policies and procedures through a collective mechanism of thinking and decision-making which is characterized by transparency, openness, and participation. This initiative is considered a connecting link between the strategic planning team, and its field visits to inspect various organizational units on weekly basis, in order to identify the aspects of shortcomings, and an investment in the great success of the guidance experience of the committee, which brought together the first, second, and third level leaders, and brought together the young and experienced.The continuous development and improvement committee also undertakes the preparation of development and administrative work improvement plans in the Courts Department in light of the department’s strategy of monitoring its performance, using performance indicators, and specific time frames according to the models prepared for that, and to stimulate and encourage teamwork spirit using the latest means of creative thinking, and encourage innovation and creativity in the administrative work in the courts, and to develop ways to adopt the creative ideas of employees and dealers, and perform regular audits on different aspects of the work and ensure the achievement of the desired goals.Because excellence, creativity and innovation have become hallmarks of the UAE, which won first place in the world in the efficiency of government services in 2013 and twelfth place in the Global Competitiveness Index, and therefore there is no longer a choice in the adaptation of the culture of excellence, quality, and innovation as the main approach in the daily work of the department on the judicial or administrative level; which held the door wide open for creativity and excellence, encouraging and motivating judges and staff in all ways possible, which resulted in many creative service projects and initiatives from leaders and employees of the department such as the e-registration project for lawsuits and appeal cases and queries about them, and the one-stop initiative to provide authentication services to social subsidies needers. The department also increased the awards for the internal excellence competition (beacon of excellence and creativity), and the quality and excellence concepts reached all judicial and administrative and service processes, so much that the department will not require any excellence expert or specialist in the next few years, for the culture of excellence will be the dominant in the department’s work, and for this purpose it was decided to adopt a quality record to have a daily evaluation mechanism to evaluate each employee, department, and division, and the Courts Department as a whole; the employee will find no conflict or contradiction between the performance of his work and the participation in Awards categories, which all led to the Courts Department winning first place in the overall ranking of the Excellence Award of 2013. One of the major challenges faced by the department in some cases is the lack of statements of claims to the basics of drafting, which causes difficulties for judges in adopting these statements in the legal qualification of these statements. Sometimes there can be also shallowness in the understanding and judicial knowledge by some of the litigants. The major challenges also include the experts and the extent of their competence, as well as the lack of accuracy in addresses as a trick used by some of the plaintiffs, which called for the establishment of the Addresses Investigation Committee, which succeeded during the year 2014 in documenting 81% of the total number of addresses in the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah.The main success factor in judicial work is for the judiciary to work on maintaining judicial impartiality without favoring anyone, and that the judges be in isolation from direct confrontation with the dealers, and this is only possible through the existence of management crews with the highest levels of efficiency and readiness, and the provision of high quality services for the dealers, and receiving their comments, complaints and suggestions and processing them quickly, therefore the “Falak Tayyeb” initiative was launched to provide guidance and informative services to customers. The department was also keen to communicate with its dealers through more than 14 channels including social media channels, where the Courts Department was the first government department in the Emirate to authenticate its two pages on Twitter and Facebook.