The Supreme Court (SC) is set to hire a court manager in every judicial region to unburden trial court judges of their administrative duties so they can devote more time to deciding cases filed before their courts.
The information drive on the creation of the Office of the Regional Court Manager (ORCM) was started by the SC, led by Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo, during a caravan held in the City of San Fernando in La Union last April 5.
The ORCM, the SC said, will decentralize and improve the delivery of administrative services to about 2,720 first and second level courts – from municipal to regional trial courts.
At present, the SC exercises administrative supervision over all lower courts through the Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) headed by Court Administrator Raul B. Villanueva.
Under the current setup, the SC said “all court branches are reliant on their executive judges, and ultimately on the central office of the OCA for official action.”
The SC said the modernization of OCA is under the five-year Strategic Plan for Judicial Innovations (SPJI) to improve the delivery of administrative services to trial courts.
It said that through the ORCM, “the OCA will devolve some of its key functions to the regional court managers, who will be directly communicating with the court branches within the region, and vice-versa.”
It also said the ORCM “will be given the authority to sign off on administrative and fiscal matters and to deliver multiple services directly to the courts.”
Thus, it said that OCA can “devote more of its time and resources to ensuring that the ORCMs are attending to their functions and that courts are primarily focused on their adjudication performance.”
Chief Justice Gesmundo said the new setup “aims to optimize and harmonize the administrative processes involved, and consequently, ease the administrative workload of the executive judges to ensure the high performance not only of the courts but of all the other offices involved.”
He said: “Through the ORCM, the Judiciary will accelerate and promote the use of technology in the judicial regions, and advocate and champion the awareness, understanding, and implementation of the SC’s reform programs under the SPJI.”
He told trial court judges during the caravan: “Today, we kick-start a new beginning- the beginning of an efficient judicial machinery for first- and second-level courts. Through this, we hope to eradicate the administrative delays and inefficiencies that add to the worries and concerns of our trial court judges, who as it stands, are already saddled with adjudicative work.
"From lack of office space and supplies to delayed and centralized procurement, from much-delayed initial salaries to belated funds disbursements and releases, from late issuance of travel authorities to delayed action on request for additional personnel, we heard your grievances. Now, we are here to ease your burdens,” he also said.
He then expressed the SC’s gratitude to its development partner, the European Union-GOJUST II, for the support in the ORCM project.
In his message, Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen said that a crucial part of the SPJI within the next few years is to improve the management of courts throughout the country.
Thus, Leonen said the SC is modernizing and repurposing the OCA “into a more customer-centric and data-driven organization by establishing offices of the regional court manager, or ORCMs, in all judicial regions.”
He also said: “The goal is to decentralize the functions of the OCA to the regional level and bring the services closer to the stakeholders, both internal and external, and then perhaps from the regional level, sometime in the future, perhaps even to a more local level like multi-sala courts. Through the ORCMs, we will have a field office or one-stop shop in every region that will serve and support the administrative requirements of the first- and second-level courts.”
In her message, Associate Justice Maria Filomena D. Singh said the pilot implementation of the ORCM is “a significant addition to the remarkable list of SPJI achievements.”
“All 15 members of the Court, led by no less than the Chief Justice, are working doubly hard to bring tangible results so that our SPJI targets of Efficiency, Innovation, and Access can all be achieved even before 2027.”
As a former trial court judge, Justice Singh said she understood “how slow administrative court systems exacerbate the judiciary’s perennial problems of clogged court dockets and case delay.”
She noted that trial judges, on top of their primary role of adjudicating cases, are also saddled with administrative duties and this has clearly affected the efficiency of the courts.
She said the ORCM “holds immense potential in streamlining our court operations, improvement of case disposition, and ultimately, the delivery of real-time and responsive justice to the people we serve.”
Court Administrator Villanueva, on the other hand, said the setting up of ORCM is “the fulfillment of a more re-purposed and re-directed OCA organization.”
“The time has come for us to make a paradigm shift or a mindset change towards a more decentralized system of providing the administrative necessities of our trial courts,” he said.
Also present during the caravan were Associate Justices Rodil V. Zalameda, Mario V. Lopez, and Jose Midas P. Marquez.
The other ORCM caravans will be held in Angeles City, Pampanga on April 12; Butuan City, April 19; Davao City, April 26; Metro Cebu, May 10; and Ormoc City, May 24.