E-Dossiers for Optimising Data Transmission in Italian Civil Area: Telematisation at the Tribunal of Cuneo

This article presents a framework for integrating Business Process Management (BPM) and simulation to optimize administration processes in Italian courts and tribunals. The aim is to support the telematisation and dematerialisation of dossiers so that paper-based records are eliminated and replaced by information systems workflows. Electronic dossiers can have a positive impact in terms of efficiency and productivity in several tribunals. In the Italian context, Legislative Decree no. 149/2022 set the goal of digitalising civil processes, while Legislative Decree no. 150/2022 mandated that the digitalisation of the criminal procedural system should be accelerated. This necessitates an analysis of each change process and a reorganization model. This article analyses the workflow of the civil area of the Tribunal of Cuneo, with a specific focus on files relating to civil litigation and labour practices divisions. The BPM method was used to capture pre-reform processes and introduce some corrective actions in order to create a new workflow model based on the digitalisation reforms and solutions required by the Italian Ministry of Justice. Since the digitalisation reform measures apply to all Italian courts and tribunals, the ultimate goal of this article is to provide an optimisation model that can be applied to all Italian civil processes and, in the future, criminal processes. An optimised exportable model for all the divisions of all tribunals in Italy will result in significant savings in the use of paper, operational costs and labour (which is particularly beneficial in situations of staff shortages). It will reduce backlogs and make smart working more feasible.