Traffic offenders are being prosecuted faster now that all data has been centralized in the MaCH system

Faster case processing thanks to the migration to a single central case management application

In order to speed up the processing of cases, the Belgian Federal Public Service (SPF) for Justice wants to make millions of national data items continuously available to all the local offices of the public prosecutor and the courts via a centralized file management application so that they can also be automatically processed more rapidly. To achieve this, the SPF is working with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) for the technology infrastructure and Realdolmen for the (IT) integration. For example, since this migration took place in 2018 – plus having more smart cameras along our roads – offenders now receive an official report with an invitation to pay a traffic fine just six days after the offense.

"Mammouth at Central Hosting," or MaCH for short, is the software with which all the public prosecutor and trial court offices are going to be working. So far, the system has been set up in all the courts of the justices of the peace, the public prosecutor offices, police courts and criminal courts in Belgium. The central case management application currently contains around 108 million filings which can be accessed by 53% of the 10,144 employees of the judicial powers.

In 2007, each police prosecutor's office and the associated police court was still working with a local server where all the data was stored. At that time, the public prosecutor's office and court registrar's staff had to call to request certain information. Now the information is stored on a secure central server that employees can access online using the MaCH application. In addition, this information center is now available 24/7, which is much appreciated, since even when updates are running on Saturdays, for instance, the courts are still working at full capacity.

A traffic offense case is handled quickly

Ivan Verborgh, ICT Staff Director at SPF Justice says, "Data from and for the local justices of the peace courts and the police courts have been available for some time now, and in 2018 we also brought the criminal trial courts online. The challenge that now awaits us is to bring the labor and commercial courts onto MaCH. In future, we also want to link our platform to a series of software applications used by the many administrations with whom we are now working closely. By centralizing all this information and making it available to all the relevant legal bodies, the SPF is proactively investing in a more transparent and cost-effective service, which is also up-to-date, thanks to a new and robust IT infrastructure."

Future-oriented back office thanks to HPE and Realdolmen

HPE and Realdolmen have both done their jobs to solve the back office problems – the programs literally running in the background – that are not visible to their users - for the SPF. Specifically, HPE provided the technology infrastructure: especially a robust server with additional storage space to allow future applications to be added, fast network connectivity, and the software. Realdolmen, HPE's Platinum partner, has taken care of the IT integration involving the design and implementation of multiple services.

Stéphane Lahaye, Managing Director HPE Belux says, "We are proud that the SPF chose HPE to be the provider of their infrastructure platform. We look forward to making MaCH even more scalable and adding further applications to the central file management application."

One of the applications that is already accessible through MaCH is that of the Vehicle Registration Directorate (DIV), enabling employees of the judicial authorities to find information using a name, or a Belgian ID card number or license plate. "Like the SPF, we attach great importance to future-facing centralization and user-friendliness," says Johnny Smets, General Manager of Realdolmen Belgium. "Working with the SPF and HPE, we have focused on all the legal applications and those of their partners. Based on the overall situation, we have developed a long-term solution that is easy to manage and to update," concludes Smets.