On the Gazette we’ve been here many times before, but that’s only because I feel duty-bound to keep pointing this out: we could have a really tidy electronic filing and document management (EFDM) system for our commercial courts (and beyond) for a fraction of the price that we appear to be paying. Yet more proof of this has crossed my path recently.

Back in June last year we broke the story that the government wasted millions on consultants after failing to pilot properly and then dropping a system tried out in the commercial courts, InterCOMM – then known to most of us as CCIT Phase One. Since then I’ve tried – without much success – to get real answers from government on what it is doing to implement EFDM in our commercial courts or beyond.

Government has, it seems, been flopping around like a landed fish on this so badly that delivering such a system is probably only going to happen in time for the launch of the new Business Court because that itself is delayed until next year.

So imagine my expression when I read in some of the Gulf press that the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts, the Emirate’s equivalent to our commercial courts, got its own case management system delivered and finished in a matter of weeks earlier this year? More irksome still was that they bought a version of the very system that the UK government tested, found worked, for some reason canned and then ignored for three years – InterCOMM.

Obviously I wrote immediately to the registrar’s office of the DIFC Courts to ask for confirmation and to get some more detail. The reply made me want to hold my head in my hands – I resisted, however, as I have long since given up despairing of the Ministry of Justice and HM Courts Service’s approach to IT.

InterCOMM's creator, Visionhall Information Systems, sold DIFC Courts the system and went from contract signing to ‘go-live’ in five weeks. It helped a lot, apparently, that the system had already been tested on our own commercial courts. The deputy registrar told me: ‘We found Visionhall to be very helpful and knowledgeable on our court procedures due to the fact a similar system is used by the London commercial courts. Now the system is in place, we are looking to add additional modules to enable e-filing in the future.' The IT project ‘was recently voted runner-up in our Governor’s award project of the year’, the deputy told me.

Astounding. So, if it’s good enough for Dubai, why isn’t it good enough for us?