Conceição Gomes

The Piecemeal Development of an e-Justice Platform: The CITIUS Case in Portugal

Citius is the system developed by the Portuguese Ministry of Justice to dematerialise proceedings by treating electronically all information belonging to the proceedings, thus reducing their physical form to a minimum. The Citius-Payment Order Procedure is one of the Citius applications. We show that the development of Citius in the Portuguese Justice system constitutes an example of piecemeal development and cultivation of the installed base. It therefore benefits and suffers from the limitations of being a further development of H@bilus, a former application used by court clerks and registrars in courts to manage the acts of registries. We unpack the ICT design infrastructure of the Portuguese Justice system at the legal, organisational and technological level, with a special focus on small civil claims and the payment order procedure. We offer a description of the system’s characterisation, concentrating on its various applications and latest developments, and illustrate the daily functioning of Citius, with its virtues and drawbacks as experienced and perceived by the users. We bring forth the most noteworthy aspects of the experience and discuss its future prospects.