Key Initiatives

The work of a High Council of Justice member involves an enormous volume of ongoing cases (disciplinary complaints, HQCJ appointment and dismissal submissions, consents to detention and temporary suspension, resignations, etc.) submitted to the HCJ or disciplinary chambers. The key duty is to handle them diligently and timely. However, unlike judges, HCJ members are also called to foster improvements in systemic processes across the judiciary; they are entitled and indeed obligated to take initiative and propose reforms that resolve bottlenecks and advance justice as a whole. Below are my personal initiatives that proved crucial and impactful.

Spin-off Initiatives: The Enablers Behind Our Results

Work at the HCJ has always been driven by the pursuit of new solutions, especially when staff are overwhelmed by mountains of disciplinary complaints and data processed during judicial candidate background checks. Each year, this data grows in volume and complexity, while staffing levels remain static and external pressures mount. Recognizing these systemic bottlenecks, we sought to optimize everything within our reach.

Condemno Project

A standard review of a candidate requires verifying their asset declarations for various years. This is quite a task when such declarations have been submitted since 2015. During verification, staff must keep track of all income, expenses, property, corporate rights, and other declarable assets while conducting complex calculations to determine if the candidate’s income matches their lifestyle and assets.

The problem first arose acutely during the initial review of 460 judicial candidates. In just two weekend days, my assistant Ihor Bilyk proposed an innovative method and developed a software product based on it, creating the Condemno prototype. We jokingly considered ourselves adherents of the vertical declaration analysis method, while HQCJ representatives followed the horizontal approach.

The software extracted all NACP declarations via an open API and structured them as a unified chronological sequence, normalizing assets, valuations, legal titles, and other characteristics. Over three years, the system grew from one dataset to over 90. It now determines market values, calculates average living expenses, converts currencies, and identifies risks.

It also analyzes court decisions, market prices of vehicles, court workloads, and more. Today, Condemno is actively used by staff and analysts at the HCJ, HQCJ, PIC, and analytical units of other agencies.

Open Platform

Peromat Project

Condemno resolved verification issues only on specific open datasets. However, with the HCJ gaining access to numerous state registries, another problem arose: how a small team could process large datasets and prepare a detailed analytical brief. 60–80% of resources were spent merely compiling data, leaving little time for analysis.

Such confidential data had to be processed strictly locally without external transmission. HQCJ, NACP, NABU, and other agencies faced the exact same need for a professional local analytical tool.

Another weekend spent productively by my assistant Ihor Bilyk resulted in Peromat. Its initial function was importing extracts from EDRTZ, DRFO, and Arkan to generate an analytical brief in 2–3 minutes. Subsequent testing showed much wider potential.

Today, it processes extracts from EDR and DRRP, pulls supplemental data from Condemno, and provides numerous analyst tools. Published under the open-source MIT License, it offers the state and civil society a powerful free integrity vetting tool.

Source Code on GitHub

Electronic Court Cabinet Prototypes (Vision for ECITS)

Development of state IT subsystems usually happens behind closed doors without reporting, public prototypes, or user feedback, often leading to systems that fail expectations.

As Head of the Standing Committee on ECITS, I sought to change this approach and make development accountable to society, ensuring transparency regarding timelines and responsibilities for the country’s largest digital system, ECITS.

Unfortunately, the SJA of Ukraine did not implement the Committee’s decisions on interactive development dashboards and international commitments.

In response, we created an open platform demonstrating the ideas and ergonomic workflows we proposed for judges and court participants.

Open Platform

PrutViewer

This led to the idea of the "stream viewer" PrutViewer (named after Ukraine’s fastest-flowing river, the Prut), allowing judges and litigants to view all case documents as a single unified document regardless of format (DOCX, PDF, MP3, MP4, etc.), focusing entirely on substance rather than format. Productive discussions with Andriy Ryshchenko sparked the dual-window viewer concept.

Ihor Bilyk also contributed judicial case tools: a procedural navigator, AI-assisted mechanisms, and an argument/counter-argument comparison matrix.

Source Code on GitHub

https://uacourt.github.io/ujics/

Thanks to Maksym Sokhatskyi, development of UJICS reached a new level, as policies lie at the core of any robust system. Maksym accomplished what the SJA of Ukraine failed to achieve for 20 years: drafted sectoral cybersecurity policies under the international NIST standard, codified judicial software development policies, created an ITSM service-desk for incident management, a BPMN workflow engine for court proceedings (ISO 19510), ABAC attribute-based access control (ISO 29146), an OpenXML document template processor, and laid the foundations for other vital UJICS functionality.

We hope these innovations will take firm root and help the judiciary become substantially more effective.

Open Platform