Adoption and Challenges of ICTs for Sharing Records of Legal Proceedings in Katsina State High Court of Justice, Nigeria

Abstract

The study carried out on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for sharing records of legal proceedings in Katsina state high court of justice. The objective of the study was to find out the types of e-records generated by Katsina State High Court and identify the ICTs use in sharing the records of legal proceedings in the study area. The study employed quantitative research method. The study focuses on registry staff, court duties and librarians. This is because they are the set of people in Katsina State High Court dealing with movement of the record of legal proceedings. This study used the entire population who are one hundred and twenty-seven (127). Questionnaire was used for data collection and the data collected was analyzed using simple frequency tables, percentages, mean and standard deviation. The finding of the study indicated low level of adoption of various digital technologies by courts but only mobile applications for accessing legal records on smart phones and tablet is at moderate level and prevalent challenges includes security issues, data privacy, compatibility issues, technical skills gap, regulatory compliance issue of adoption and use of ICTs, risk assessment and mitigation and difficult to ethical considerations. Based on the finding of the study, is recommended a need of high court of justice to prioritize comprehensive training programs focused on advanced technology components to bridge the skills gap for improve familiarity among legal professionals and encouraging adoption at all levels