The Justice Ministry’s flagship courts digitisation project has experienced “teething problems” but remains on budget and set for completion in 2027-28, officials have told Parliament.
The Te Au Reka project aims to replace the current paper-based system by digitising court documentation, including case management, making it readily available across multiple jurisdictions.
More than $170 million has been allocated to the project, with DXC Technology introducing a Microsoft-based system under the Justice Ministry’s oversight.
Secretary of Justice Andrew Kibblewhite told Parliament’s Justice Select Committee the digital transformation was “long overdue” and would result in significant efficiency gains for the courts.
Andrew Kibblewhite
“It will help access to justice in a whole lot of ways, not least of which is enabling the court system to move more quickly, but also [allowing] different ways [for] people [to come] into the court or tribunal process,” he said.
“Really importantly, it will help with resilience. We often have only a single paper record at the moment. If that gets burnt or flooded or anything, then you’ve lost what would be important information.”
Deputy secretary Victoria McLaughlin, who is overseeing the project, said it was being rolled out in three phases, beginning with the Family Court, followed by the District Court and finally the senior courts.
She said design work, including “mock courts” which have been road-tested by judges, was largely complete and implementation would speed up in early 2025.
“It was a little bit slow momentum at the beginning, as these things get stood up and you get a supplier on board, but the momentum is starting now that we’ve got through the bulk of that design work.”
McLaughlin said the issues were “those usual teething problems that you have for something so complex”.
She said there had been no change to completion dates for Te Au Reka, which means “the sweet flow” in Māori.
“Phase three at the moment, based on the original indicative business case, is estimated to be competed in 2027-28,” she said.
McLaughlin also said the project’s budget remained on target.
“We’re looking at the figures now, just in the process of making sure we’re within all the envelopes, as you’d expect, but we’re not looking at the moment for any new funding,” she said.
Judges ‘excited’
Kibblewhite said there had been some delays while DXC built up the capability needed for Te Au Reka, but such issues were not unusual for a “really chunky project like this”.
He assured the select committee that any problems were being managed.
“With a project of this complexity, with a vendor or new supplier onboard, there’s a degree of team forming that has to happen and working things up,” he said.
“It’s not an issue that we’re highlighting and coming to you with concerns about. Any project will have some issues where you’re not progressing as fast in some components as in others.
“To the extent we’ve had performance issues, they’ve been in this space, but they’ve been well managed.”
McLaughlin said tests had proved the new system could complete complex tasks and the judges who had used it were excited about its application in real-world situations.
“We are seeing really interesting conversations happening between the judges involved about how they would do things differently because they’ve got completely different sort of choices available to them when they’re no longer restricted to that paper file,” she said.
“So it’s going to be a space of continually exploring those sorts of behaviours and practice changes.”
Select committee chair James Meagher said the project had an ambitious timeframe.
“If you manage to roll out phase three by the end of 2027, I’d be incredibly impressed. It sounds like that would be an enormous achievement,” he said.
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