Indicator and Monitoring System for Legal and Judicial Reform of Cambodia

A key part of any reform process is measuring the consequence of the reform initiatives – that is if the reform works and progresses as intended. Accordingly, it is an acknowledged priority of the RGC to develop an indicator and monitoring system (IMS) for the Legal and Judicial Reform (LJR). The establishment of such a system has been discussed at TWG/LJR meetings and at bilateral meetings between LJR actors and consensus has been reached that it is now timely to initiate the actual design, piloting and implementation.

 

The framework for LJR in Cambodia has been developed through a comprehensive and participatory process involving all stakeholders, including civil society organizations and international donors. Thus, the framework is a shared framework. The Council for Legal and Judicial Reform (CLJR) wishes once again to adopt a participatory process and suggests that an IMS be developed jointly between RGC and donors and with civil society consultations. This will secure that all stakeholders have the same reference frame when measuring progress and effect (and ultimately impact) of the LJR – that all have a common language – and ensure the consolidation and sustainability of the IMS.

Context

The development of an IMS is integral to the LJR Strategy and accordingly a priority action of the Action Plan. The LJR Strategy is linked directly into the overall reform initiatives and strategies of the RGC. LJR Strategy operationalizes the Justice Sector Value Paper and the vision statement for the justice sector.

The Value Paper establishes the basic concepts and values for the Cambodian Justice Sector that informs the goals and rationale of the LJR Strategy. The Value Paper also establishes a number of criteria (hereafter termed the Criteria), which have to be fulfilled to realize the values, and these Criteria inform the seven LJR strategic objectives and their related strategies. Finally, the Value Paper lists 63 concrete interventions needed in the Cambodian Justice Sector to reach the Criteria and these interventions inform the actions and activities of the LJR Strategy. Consequently, by measuring the progress of the interventions and the fulfillment of the Criteria established in the Value Paper, the outputs and effects, respectively, of the LJR strategy can be monitored.

Principles

It is essential to the IMS that it monitors whether the LJR activities carried out and the outputs achieved actually contribute towards the fulfillment of the outcomes and goals of LJR and realize the vision for the Cambodian Justice Sector. Also, it is important that the indicators are simple and relatively easily measured and that the IMS strikes a feasible balance between data collection and processing and the capacities of the institutions implementing it.

Linking up to international best-practices

By basing the development of an IMS firmly within the LJR framework, it is ensured that the IMS is anchored in existing, national structures and relate fully to national procedures. That said, a number of international guidelines and checklists provide best-practices for monitoring judicial reform and the IMS in Cambodia should integrate such well-established best-practices – most notably the ABA-CEELI Judicial Reform Index and the World Bank Check List for Evaluating Judicial Performance. Due to the acknowledged comprehensiveness of LJR and the fact that the Criteria are heavily inspired by international best-practices, the vast majority of factors outlined for instance by ABA-CEELI are already captured as part of the fulfillment of the Criteria. Thus, measuring the progress of the interventions and designing indicators that capture the fulfillment of the Criteria established in the Value Paper will ensure both a coherent and nationally anchored approach to the IMS and compliance with international best-practices.

It should also be noted that the focus on the Criteria enables the IMS to reach beyond international best-practices on judicial reform assessments such as the World Bank and ABA-CEELI lists, since the Criteria address not only the judiciary but the justice sector as such and thereby include the legislative framework, institutional capacity etc. which are also integral parts of the Cambodian LJR.

The Criteria are attached as Annex A. Annex B provides a schematic overview of the links between the World Bank and ABA-CEELI lists and the Criteria.

What is measured?

The objective of the establishment of IMS should be to monitor the progress and effect of LJR by measuring performance and outcome of key LJR processes and interventions. Thus, IMS will measure progress, performance and effect in two dimensions:

Dimension 1: Reform Progress and Performance
– is the reform progressing according to plan and objectives and are outputs delivered? This dimension monitors the progress of LJR interventions across the different sector institutions. This dimension will primarily be monitored by the PMU and indicate reform progress on the basis of data from the sector institutions on the implementation of activities in the Action Plan which – as established above – are all related to the 63 interventions of the Value Paper. Are interventions done or not done? Are they timely? Are they delivered with respect of LJR values? Are they well organized, well managed, methodologically sound etc?

Thus, this dimension monitors the performance of reform activities and progress hereof and not the performance of individual institutions. Progress indicators directly measuring the implementation of the 63 interventions of the Value Paper have been suggested as key performance indicators (KPI) for this dimension of the IMS.

Dimension 2: Reform Effect
– does the implementation of the reform lead to the desired outcomes and to the realization of the justice sector vision? This dimension monitors the outcome of LJR and the effect on the justice sector. The monitoring is done by measuring the ways that the justice sector institutions implement their mandates across the different LJR interventions and strategic objectives and in general. This dimension will primarily be monitored through the management information systems that are to be developed in the respective institutions and aggregated by the PMU or the IMS project group. This dimension will primarily indicate reform effect (e.g. by measuring the flow of justice and/or the effectiveness and efficiency of case handling practices, cf. below). However, this dimension will also monitor the performance and institutional strengthening of the respective justice institutions (e.g. in relation to training and staff development) and of the justice sector as such.

Since the Criteria are i) anchored in the vision and values of the Cambodian Justice Sector; ii) relate directly to international best-practices; and iii) inform the seven LJR strategic objectives, it is suggested that the Criteria are used as the basis for designing effect/outcome indicators for the LJR and the Cambodian justice sector.

It is suggested that the key outcome indicators of the IMS should be based on relatively few, highly concrete, measurable data, which can be collected through the management information systems of the sector institutions and provide a comprehensive picture of how key justice sector institutions carry out their mandates in relation to the LJR objectives. Thus, the key outcome indicators should hold the potential to indicate both the effect of the way sector institutions carry out their mandates, the fulfillment of the Criteria and the achievement LJR strategic objectives.

The design and selection of key outcome indicators will be a main task during the initial development of the IMS. Indicators measuring the flow of justice and case-handling practices have tentatively been suggested as key outcome indicators due to the fact that they are relatively easily measured and only require a relatively limited data collection and processing. It is envisaged that over time the number and comprehensiveness of indicators can be developed further.

The IMS will not, in its initial phases, assess the impact of LJR on Cambodian society's progress towards fulfillment of LJR overall goal or the full realization of the concepts of the Values Paper. However, the development and implementation of the first phases of IMS – targeting progress, performance and effect monitoring – will build capacity and ownership among LJR actors that facilitates future impact assessments with a broader outlook on the justice system and the Cambodian society, including the possible integration of public surveys and third party reports. Furthermore, the development of management information systems in the initial phase of the IMS and the data collected in that regard will contribute to the establishment of baseline information on which to base the – later – impact assessment.

Linking up to the JMI-Mechanism

As part of the CDCF process the RGC and its development partners set a number of joint monitoring indicators (JMI) for the implementation of the NSDP – including the governance and cross-sectoral priorities that encompass LJR. These JMI directly relate to the strategic objectives of the LJR and the activities of the Action Plan. Consequently, an IMS based on the LJR will support a further consolidation of the JMI-mechanism by offering a systematic framework for measuring reform progress. The selected JMI for 2007 on training and selection of judicial professionals will for instance be measured through the progress of a number of LJR interventions and activities and by monitoring the strengthening of institutional capacities – including the action planning for human resources and training. Thus, the IMS will both offer key indicators and means of verification for the setting and measuring of JMI.

The Process

It is important that the process of developing IMS is driven by the Cambodian stakeholders with the support from the international stakeholders (e.g. in terms of expertise). In this way, it will be secured that:

• The IMS can serve as a management tool for the relevant actors in the reform, enabling justice sector institutions and stakeholders to systematically and continuously document progress of the LJR and identify bottlenecks and consequently revise plans and actions.
  
• The justice sector stakeholders' ability to further clarify and express ambitions and service goals to the citizens is strengthened
  
• The IMS can work as an accountability mechanism towards the Cambodian society as well as the international community.
  

 

To develop the IMS, CLJR established two working groups which are:

1. High Level Working Group (HLWG) (see annex)
   
2. Technical Working Group (TWG) (see annex)
   

 

With support from Danish experts in the CCJAL III project, TWG met two times already in the early 2008 to review and adopt important principles of IMS development for measuring the implementation of the legal and judicial reform strategy program.

From the comprehensive and broad vision of the legal and judicial reform, the four concepts from the constitution, and 63 interventions which has been formulated a common goal and seven strategic objectives of the legal and judicial reform strategy, Plan of Action for Implementing the Legal and Judicial Reform Strategy which composes of 97 short, medium and long term priority actions has been formulated. This means that the progress monitoring of LJR 64 interventions will be replaced by the progress monitoring of LJR 97 activities.

Each activity has been identified main step in order to complete the activity. The Council for Legal and Judicial Reform then has established a Project Catalogue with the detail project profile of each activity which needs the support from development partners to achieve steps identified for each activity.

As mentioned above, to monitor the implementation of the activity/project it needs to consider from the button up. It is contrary to the plan development which needs to consider from top down. It means that we need to identify the step for achieving the activity/project. We will then monitor the implementation of the steps whether it finishes or how many steps has been finished on time or not. Therefore we can sum up with the percentage of achievement according to the number of steps finished.

Basic principle of IMS development has been developed as mentioned above. TWG agreed that in order to monitor the implementation of LJR priority action, it needs primarily to identify main steps to achieve the implementation of the activity/project. The number of steps depends on the scope and timeframe of the activity/project. Each step can be identified more sub steps according to the scope of the step. The progress of the implementation of the activity/project will then be calculated in percentage according to the division of steps finished and total steps and multiplying with 100.

The implementation of the indicator and monitoring system of the reform progress will be conducted from each priority action, to integration of priority action in each strategy, to integration of strategy in strategic objectives, and finally the total integration of the whole legal and judicial reform strategy. We will see clearly how many percentage has been done regarding to a timeframe.

Identification of step of each activity has been conducted by each responsible project team of the Project Management Unit of the Council for Legal and Judicial Reform based on relevant documents and the progress report from government implementing agencies, including development partners and other relevant implementing agencies.

The identification of number of step has been set up as below:

1. For General activity/project, there are five basic steps which are:
   

 

1. Establish responsible working group for implementing the activity/project
   
2. Conduct study of the working group in order to develop policy and concept related to the activity/project
   
3. Prepare report of the study including the policy, concept and recommendations or issues which need to solve
   
4. Prepare plan for implementation of the policy or recommendations
   
5. Implement the plan, including preparation of business plan and financial support for project implementation
   

 

1. For law drafting activity/project
   

According to the Guideline of Law Drafting Procedure discussed in the first meeting in the Office of the Council of Ministers and day to day implementation in law drafting framework, there are 10 steps for law drafting process which are:

1. Establish responsible working group to implement the activity/project
   
2. Draft law by line ministry or government institution
   
3. Review draft law by relevant stakeholders (development partners)
   
4. Review by the Council of Jurists and OBSESS
   
5. Review by inter-ministerial meeting
   
6. Review by the council of ministers meeting
   
7. Review by the National Assembly
   
8. Review by the senate
   
9. Announce publicly
   
10. Enforce law
    

 

1. For particular activity/project: The identification of step depends on the preparation of the working group of the particular activity/project, for example, Model Court Project.
   
2. Some activity/project has been integrated since the activity/project is linked, for example, priority action 1.1.1 and 1.1.2. The activity/project can be identified into 2 or 3 main steps with other sub-steps.
   
3. Other activity/project has been divided into sub-activity, for example, priority action 2.1.1 which includes both civil code (2.1.1.1) and civil procedure code (2.1.1.2) and priority action 5.2.4 which includes code of ethic of judge and prosecutor (5.2.4.1) and ethic code of clerk. For this category, the IMS implementation will cover all sub-activity.
   

 

The monitoring of the implementation of the LJR does not only focus on how many step has been achieved but also on the timeframe whether the step has been done on time or behind time or not yet initiate for all seven strategic objectives of the legal and judicial reform strategy. To do this we can find out the gaps or issues that need to solve in the level of project implementing agencies, TWG/LJR, Sub Group/LJR or the level of the Council for Legal and Judicial Reform.

In the table of IMS standard, there is a table that identified which step is a key indicator to achieve the activity/project and which activity/project is a key indicator to achieve each strategy. The key indicator will then be identified as an annual joint monitoring of technical working group and Joint Monitoring Indicators (JMIs) of the whole reform as well.

The following table of IMS in the annex will then show on the general principle of IMS of each activity, each strategy, and each strategic objective, including key indicator.

Finally there is a joint table showing the result of the implementing of the legal and judicial reform strategy program where the Council for Legal and Judicial reform has been conducted the system of indicator since the beginning of the implementation of the program.

Standard indicator format for LJR priority action progress

 

Indicator (title and number

STEPS / OUTPUTS

TIMEFRAME

PROGRESS

Responsible

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step...

Step...

Step..

Step N

1. start/ stop

2. start/ stop

3. start/ stop

... start/ stop

... start/ stop

... start/ stop

N start/ stop

Completion of Steps

Time

KEY INDICATOR

Total

Compl.

%

On time

Behind

Not initiated

x

xx-yy

xx-yy

xx-yy

xx-yy

xx-yy

xx-yy

xx-yy

x

y

z

Sub-Indicator: …………………………….

Current Situation: …………………………….

 

Indicator title and number: title and number of indicator

Responsible function: definition of responsible function (ministry/person or group, such as HLWG, TWG, Management Team, Project Team etc).

 

Description of steps required and sub-indicators listed (project indicators) if/when relevant: Step 1: Establishment of a HLWG and/or TWG in charge of the priority action and its indicator. Step 2: Definition of the indicator (plan for steps to be made). Each step should be defined in such a way that the given institution can carry the responsibility for the delivery of the specific step. Step 3 – step N: description of steps including identification of sub-indicators (project indicators) if/when relevant.

Grey tones: shows how many steps the given indicator has. "X" = completed steps. Light Grey = planned but not yet completed steps.

Time: Start/stop date and year decided for each step (1-N) - is it on time, or behind schedule, or not yet initiated?

Bold: indicates how many steps have been completed. It also indicates when a step is started but not yet completed (start is bold, stop is not bold). Therefore, non-bold is not completed.

Progress

Total steps measurement: Each step completed gives 1 point. When steps 1-N are counted together there is a max total of N points (all steps completed).

Colour-marker: Shows the present position in relation to the estimated completion time (stop). When the step is on time/behind schedule/not initiated, a colour is given so it is easy to see the progress. Green = progress on time, Red = progress, but behind schedule, White = not yet initiated.

Sub-Indicator: show that each step can have more sub-steps

Current Situation: show the progress situation has been done so far.

Key indicator: If the given indicator is instrumental to the desired output, this is a key indicator and marked with an X.