CFMnet: Towards European Caseflow Management development network – Identifying, developing and sharing best practices – concluso

Delays and process inefficiencies are problems that undermine the functioning of court systems around the world. However, their implications and possible solutions are not so widely understood and agreed upon. Various countries in Europe have designed and implemented many promising solutions to improve caseflow management (CFM) in courts. However, these solutions have not been collected, reported or disseminated systematically. Even though there are contextual factors to be considered, there is also large potential to learn from each other´s and from other professional organizations.  Thus, to improve the synergy of CFM improvement efforts, approaches to enhance the information exchange between countries would be needed. This requires efforts to create opportunities, procedures and platforms for sharing information, learning from each other’s and creating new innovative solutions for CFM.  The need to increase knowledge and information exchange about CFM efforts in Europe was the driven force behind the project. The project was carried out in years 2014-2016. The project was co-funded by the Civil Justice program of the European Union.

The overall objective of the project was to start creating procedures for European co-operation in developing and sharing good CFM practices.

• The first aim was to create a systematic collection of CFM tools, methods and practices – a Caseflow Management handbook. The handbook covers important areas of CFM and give suggestions and guidelines concerning the implementation of the practical improvement work in courts.  The handbook is not a scientific publication, but a practical improvement guide.
• The second aim was to utilize the structure of the handbook and develop a website for exchanging good CFM practices at the European level – CFM Improvement network. The aim of this web-based platform is to facilitate information exchange and promote co-operation in the development and evaluation of CFM solutions and ideas. Through the website the collection of practices can be constantly updated and evolved. The website will be utilized in the future as a dissemination channel also for other projects on the field of court improvement.