Background :

• Automation coherence and standardization could not take place in courts.



• Automation benchmarks remained at a stage of buying hardware and networks etc. The information processing solutions starved of vision, direction, continuity and institutional ownership.



• Solutions have been hard to come by due to lack of internal capacity and resources. The internal IT staff (programmers ) can hardly visualize and give a successively layered approach to solutions.



• The sporadic efforts in courts are mostly directed by an individual at concept and IT level. This resulted in systems which can only be run by internal programmers and the information access also remained at the IT level. This resulted is having so called system which only run in the presence of programmer. “ it is like mechanic sitting in the car always while you drive”



• Various tiers of court have not been able to have a go at information access on their desktops and are always dependent on somebody for information.



• The information produced out of isolated, inconsistent and incoherent basis by programmers of various eras left the efforts at very primitive stage and rendered them of limited and isolated use.



• Web sites are most advertised for, but these hardly deliver any functions for users for them to take day to day benefit. Even the email responses to do come as there is no institutional setup built around it.



• The stakeholders and outside agencies wanting to further develop has to go through the tedious process again and again with no substantive results as the internal changing dynamics curve consumes most of the project energies and resources.

Having dwelled hard, Trees maneuvered to effectively counter the above dynamics. Courts and governmental institutions aspiring to have true automation consulting, built-up, implementation, capacity building and sustainability AGEHi is the answer.

 vision starts from here…
  Trees in the last ten years have gained enormous experience while working on diagnostic studies and pilot programs on legal systems for The Asian Development Bank and The Asia Foundation. Six years ago in year 2000, Trees ventured on its own and started investing into a new found vision for broader court automation system called AGEHI on a Pakistan wide (District Courts, High Court and Supreme Court) approach of ONE STANDARD SYSTEM and TECHNOLOGY.

 Philosophy…
  The AGEHI framework is based on a philosophy that information technology development for courts must have standards in concept, design, operations, training and manageability for robust end products, which can meet the test of time. The courts are then left with only one task in the whole process - implementation.

 Idea…
  The above background and the intermittent stages of incomplete and duplicate efforts on projects by various agencies and courts led Trees to independently work on court automation solution. The crux of the idea has been to work on unified system which can handle the variations of trial and apex courts, yet must be easy to sustain operationally and technologically for wider implementation at all levels.

 Definition…
To practically implement the basic concept on the underlying philosophy, Trees extensively thrashed out trial court’s and apex court’s business processes. Armed with rich experience of High Courts and Supreme Court, an enterprise product plan was laid with the objective of standard application, data entities, and standard product line addressing the needs of:

• Trial Courts, High Courts



• Trial To High Courts Information Flow, and Overall Connection



• Management And Monitoring Requirements of Courts



• Universal Information Dissemination Model on the Philosophy of Information Coming To You rather than You Going To Information using wired and Wireless Technologies.



• Having a Standard Engine for Web Site Disseminations.



• The Information Product Based must have Steady Stream of Products for Lawyers as well for them to come Directly In Line as a Stakeholder.



• Multilingual Trainings



• Technology and Technology People (Programmers/ analysts) Costing overheads be Removed from the courts

 Implementation…
  Hon. Zafar Ahmed Khan Sherwani, District Judge, Karachi East provided Trees the opportunity to deploy and test the application at his court in the year 2003. Under his able guidance, extensive involvement and commitment to the overall vision, Trees today stands at the crossroads of providing Pakistan with a, indigenous case management success story backed by years of experience. Furthermore, this success has been achieved with the same set of court employees written off as incompetent and unable to manage such systems.

 Future…
  AGEHI in the next phase is being implemented at the districts of Malir, Hyderabad and Larkana of Sindh Province. Latest courts to joint the AGEHI court network are being put under AGEHI implementation methodology. Trees is determined to take the entire effort to new heights by constantly improving upon the products line and a best practice based implementation strategy for future implementations. Trees intends to bring series of products for other stakeholders to harness the power of Internet, new information processing and dissemination technologies.