On July 12-19, 2011, IIFD experts monitored official websites of arbitration courts (those of Russian Federation subjects, arbitration courts of appeal, federal arbitration courts of federal districts, and the Supreme Arbitration Court). The websites were monitored according to the IIFD’s Methodology for the Monitoring of Government Bodies’ Official Websites.

Totally, 112 official websites were monitored. The monitoring was topically dedicated to placement of contact information, court structure information, and personalia of judges and court office staff. Similar monitoring was held also for general jurisdiction courts; its results presented in June are available here (PDF, in Russian).

For each of four categories of arbitration courts, a specific list of monitoring parameteds was developed, based on their competence:

• 58 parameters for arbitration courts of the Russian Federation subjects,
• 57 parameters for arbitration courts of appeal,
• 57 parameters for federal district arbitration courts, and
• 201 parameter for the Supreme Arbitration Court.

The parameters were assessed by such criteria as presence or absence, comprehensiveness, html-accessibility, and file accessibility. The study was performed by means of the EXMO automated informational system.

From July 26 to August 26, interaction with arbitration court officials via EXMO was open. Having registered, a court official could get familiar with preliminary study results and communicate IIFD experts. 51 arbitration courts delegated their representatives to register within the EXMO, and 31 of them took active part in the communication. During the interaction period, an arbitration court official was able to view preliminary evaluation scores for the court he/she represented; to ask IIFD experts questions on scores for any parameter; to point possible mistakes in evaluation scores, and to inform on modifications of the court official website for scores to be reviewed.

For the courts that took part in the EXMO dialog, average openness rate increased by 28,08% during the interaction period, since quite often after communication of their officials with IIFD experts necessary information that had been absent was placed at the websites. As for average openness rate over all arbitration court monitored, it increased by 9,69% at the end of the interaction period, compared with its beginning.

Today, average availability rate of information on court structure, of contact data, and of personalia at arbitration courts’ official websites amounts to 52,52%.

The top ten of the summary rating is the following:

Information on court archives appeared to be least covered at official websites (25,18%). 47,75% of official websites place information on court structure, either as a scheme or a hierarchy description. Information on access for case parties to materials of the cases under review is covered by 58,46% websites and mostly contain description of the procedure for application to access, without contact data of the officials in charge. Information on judges is presented at 54,01% arbitration courts’ official websites.

Among for categories, arbitration courts of appeal appear to be the most open one, with average openness rate of 58,64%. For federal district arbitration courts, the openness rate is 58,38%, and for arbitration courts of federation subjects (first-instance arbitration courts) 50,34%. Information openness rate for the Supreme Arbitration Court of Russia amount to 47,9%.

In general, arbitration courts’ official websites appear to present more information that those of general jurisdiction courts.

Full rating (in Russian) is available here.

Detailed Monitoring results (not only for arbitration courts) can be found here (in Russian).

Presentations of the monitoring results (in Russian) are downloadable from the Russian page.