Seeking to speed up the delivery of justice, the Supreme Court has established an Office of the Regional Court Manager (ORCM) in Davao City, Angeles City, Mandaue City, and most recently in San Fernando City, La Union to serve the Davao Region, Central Luzon, Central Visayas, the Ilocos Region, and the Cordillera Administrative Region, respectively. According to Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo, the setting up of ORCMs in the Judicial Regions will allow judges “to focus more on their primary duty of adjudication.”
In line with the objectives of the Supreme Court’s Strategic Plan for Judicial Innovation (SPJI) 2022-2027, an Office of the Regional Court Manager will be established in all Judicial Regions in order to decentralize and improve the delivery of administrative services to about 2,720 first and second level courts – from municipal to regional trial courts.
In the legacy structure, these courts were supervised centrally from the Supreme Court in Manila by the Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) through the Executive Judges. 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.” Moreover, the ORCM “will be given the authority to sign off on administrative and fiscal matters and to deliver multiple services directly to the courts.”
Chief Justice Gesmundo also pointed out that the High Court is promoting and accelerating the use of technology to ensure that the benefits of improved, real-time delivery of justice will be experienced by the citizenry at the grassroots level. He said that it was imperative to “eradicate the administrative delays and inefficiencies that add to the worries and concerns of our trial court judges...(such as inefficiency in) 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.”
He expressed the SC’s gratitude to its development partner, the European Union-Governance in Justice (GOJUST II) program, for its support in the ORCM project.
The Office of the Court Administrator, which has borne the brunt of overseeing the supervision of the first- and second-level courts for more than four decades, will now be “re-purposed and re-directed,” according to its head, Court Administrator Raul Villanueva. He emphasized: “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.”
Judicial reform is a long-term process that requires sustained support and commitment from all vital stakeholders, especially the government and the citizenry. As noted in an Asian Development Bank report, the justice sector is “one of the most complex sectors, making consensus building among different stakeholders—mainly constitutional bodies—unstable and difficult.” Aside from capacity-building and institutional development, it is imperative that “policy improvement to ensure sustainability” is undertaken with a sense of urgency.
Broad-based awareness and support from a more enlightened citizenry will make a crucial difference.