On 8 September 1999, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) approved the so-called “Compatibility Test“, a set of specifications that established a logical data model for the exchange of information between the computer systems of different administrations with jurisdiction in the field of justice (cases, appeals and letters rogatory), as well as minimum security requirements.
This framework of specifications has its origin in the attribution that article 230.5 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ) assigns to the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), which must ensure the compatibility of the procedural management computer systems used in the Administration of Justice:
“The computer programs and applications used in the Administration of Justice must be previously approved by the General Council of the Judiciary, which shall guarantee their compatibility.
The computer systems used in the Administration of Justice must be compatible with each other in order to facilitate their communication and integration, under the terms determined by the General Council of the Judiciary. »
Title VI of Regulation 1/2005, on ancillary aspects of judicial proceedings (approved by CGPJ Agreement of 15 September 2005), develops the mandate established in the aforementioned article of the LOPJ, establishing the creation of the Judicial IT Commission, which must propose to the Plenary of the CGPJ the determination of the elements that the computer systems used in the Administration of Justice must meet in order to comply with the necessary compatibility requirements in terms of communication, integration and security.
This Commission will be composed of the Vocal Delegate for the Judicial Office and IT, who will preside over it, and four Magistrates, one for each jurisdictional order. In this respect, the wording and content of Title VI of the previous regulation 5/1995 is maintained.
To address this mandate, as mentioned above, the CGPJ approved on 8 September 1999 the so-called “Compatibility Test“, which established a logical data model to achieve an exchange of information between systems (cases, appeals and letters rogatory), as well as minimum security requirements. Some essential bases for the elaboration of judicial statistics were also established. Bases that were not subsequently developed.
The Plenary of the Council, in its session of 24 March 2010, approved the Basic Module of the Compatibility Test, mandatory for all procedural management systems implemented.
By delegation of the Plenary, the Modernization and Informatics Commission meeting on 11 January 2011 approved a new revision of the Compatibility Test, which includes the following new features:
- Adaptation of the Compatibility Test to Organic Law 5/2010, of 22 June, on the Reform of the Criminal Code.
- Adaptation of the Compatibility Test to the needs of the State Attorney General’s Office, converting the Compatibility Test into an instrument that goes beyond the compatibility of procedural management systems to become a national standard for the Administration of Justice.
- Adaptation of the Compatibility Test to the Organic Law 3/2007 for the effective equality of women and men.
- Incorporation in the tables of the columns Validity and Date of incorporation to the Test.
- Redefinition of the table of specialties, to simplify the work of coding functional units.
- Definition of the codification of the Common Procedural Services and Administrative Units, as well as the incorporation of the Services and Units created by the competent Administrations into the corresponding table.
- Definition of the Milestones table, taking into account the needs of the State Prosecutor’s Office for the criminal jurisdiction.
- Revising the Resource Types table.
- Adaptation of the table Type of identification of person to the coding used by the Ministry of the Interior for the different types of identification document.
- Creation of the tables: Types of police requirements, Types of Signal, Signal States,Crime Groups, Origins of a Complaint, Provinces, Possible Situations of an Intervener.
- Incorporation in the table of functional units of the different Prosecutor’s Offices, of the judicial bodies created by Royal Decree 819/2010 of 25 June and of the Sections of the Chambers of the High Courts of Justice.
- The Social Graduate Associations have been added to the Associations table, making this data mandatory when the Social Graduate represents an intervening party.
Access to the Compatibility Test documentation