1. Introduction
The development of a transparent public administration operating under simple, rapid and competitive procedures is a necessity in modern society and a major priority for most countries in the era of digitalization, since it increases efficiency, responsiveness and accountability in transactions between citizens and public servants and fulfil the objective of meeting and satisfying the needs of citizens, while it becomes a powerful mechanism for generating economic growth. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) together with organizational and normative changes have been proven to be the key for the simplification of the administrative procedure and for achieving the goal of enhancing the quality of services provided to citizens (Batalli M., 2011).
More specifically, the accessibility of justice for citizens and businesses is one of the basic conditions that a judicial system must meet in order to be able to provide quality services. The principle of open government introduced the concepts of transparency and accountability in the exercise of public administration. In the light of these new ideas, it was argued that the legitimacy of a judicial system is not only based on correct judicial decisions but also on the provision of adequate services (Fabri & Langbroek, 2000) and that at the same time specific initiatives should be taken in order to increase the transparency and accountability of the judicial system by providing the public with a wider access to information about the activities of the courts (Velicogna & Ng, 2006), which can be achieved with the support of ICT technologies (Velicogna, M., 2011). It is crucial, however, that this opening to the public through the use of ICTs is done carefully, ensuring the core principles of justice’s independence and impartiality.
In addition, ICT can be a powerful tool for the elimination of obsolete bureaucratic procedures and paper-based filing systems, thus making public administration arguably more flexible and able to respond more quickly to the citizens’ requests. In this way, public management’s performance becomes more efficient since valuable resources are saved in terms of time and monetary cost. At the same time, the introduction of ICT in public administration has created new forms of service delivery that respond more effectively to new requirements and demands. Furthermore it has become essential for public officials and employees to acquire adequate skills and capabilities which are relevant to the operation and application of ICT systems.
Although the importance of e-government applications has been emphasized, it is still in the early stages in the Greek public administration and it has yet to be fully implemented. In particular, the administration of justice in Greece operates under obsolete schemes relying mostly on time consuming bureaucratic procedures failing to meet the requirement of rapid and efficient handling of litigation matters (CEPEJ 2021). Achieving a satisfactory level of rapid handling of court cases can be a driver for economic growth for Greece through services of better quality which minimize the cost and maximize efficiency (OECD Going for Growth 2021).
Many studies related to the service quality in the field of justice have been carried out by several researchers (Gomes, A. O., Guimaraes, T. A. and Akutsu, L., 2016, Deligiannis Athanasios, 2017), but few have been focused on the Greek situation. More specifically, there have been several case studies and theoretical work about the slow judicial process, the legal inefficiencies in Greece as well as the association of this legal inefficiency with phenomena of corruption and increased inequality, (Mitsopoulos and Pelagidis, 2010, Papaioannou Elias, 2011), but, to our knowledge, these studies have not included empirical analysis. It is generally accepted that Greece faces serious problems with the administration of justice; the increasing number of new lawsuits filed each day, combined with the sluggish disposal of cases, contributes to the growing backlog in Greek courts (Greek Company of Judicial Studies, 2015, Argyros P. Antonis, 2015). Greece also lags behind other member states of the European Union in adopting electronic tools in judiciary procedures and only recently efforts are made by the Greek government for the Greek courts to acquire the level of computerization that will allow them to operate efficiently and effectively (CEPEJ 2021). One remarkable initiative in the direction of the digitalization of Greek justice is the participation of Greece in the e- CODEX system (Velicogna, M., & Lupo, G., 2017). More specifically, Greece was among the 7 states that participated, through its Ministry of Justice, in e-CODEX system for the electronic submission of European Payment Orders (EPO) claims in cross-border civil and commercial cases (Pangalos, G., Salmatzidis, I., & Pagkalos, I., 2014).
This paper presents a short overview of the opportunities arising from the introduction of new technologies in the sensitive field of justice and investigates the service delivery of the Greek judicial system comparing the perceptions of customers and court staff on the Greek judicial-system service quality. A modified SERVQUAL model was utilized to identify perceived gaps, clarify users’ expectations, and provide information to support the efforts of service quality improvement.
The court of the Prefecture of Ioannina Greece was used for the research and the data was collected through a questionnaire addressed to those who are directly concerned with the improvement of the situation in Greek Justice, i.e. lawyers and court employees.
To guide the research, the following questions were developed related to the application of new technologies in the field of justice: which were the ICTs adopted in the public administration and to what extent they affected service quality; what opportunities open up in the field of digital justice (e-justice) and what actions have already been taken in this direction within Europe; which is the existing situation in Greek Judicial system; what changes and improvements can be adopted.
The paper has the following structure: the literature review focuses on the service quality and its correlation with customers’ satisfaction, and more specifically in the justice administration system and the application of ICTs in judicial environments. It also presents a brief description of the existing situation in the Greek judicial system and the level of ICT adoption. Following this, the methodology of the research is explained, and the results of the statistical analysis are presented. Finally, the research conclusions, the limitations and the future directions are discussed.
2. Literature review
Justice is a basic good of an orderly society as it encapsulates even-handedness and fairness, qualities that are fundamental to any self-regulating social order. Thus, an effective justice system is the fundamental underpinning of a successful economy and flourishing society.
Access to justice requires the process to be affordable and timely since one of the most significant barriers to access to the civil justice system is when people develop the sense that legal proceedings are futile (McKoy, G. A. 2018).
Quality is among the key elements of an effective justice system. Quality is a driver for citizens’ and businesses’ trust in the justice system. That is confirmed by the fact that, the EU Commission annually publishes the EU Justice Scoreboard, which provides a comparative picture of the results regarding the independence, quality, and effectiveness of justice systems in all EU Member States. The Scoreboard was first published in 2013 and it has been created as a tool «to assist the EU and the Member States to achieve more effective justice by providing objective, reliable and comparable data on the functioning of the justice systems of all Member States» (EU Commission (2013), The EU Justice scoreboard, COM (2013) 160 final, p.3).
The Scoreboard makes massive use of data provided by the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) which was established by The Council of Europe. More specifically, CEPEJ has undertaken since 2004 a regular procedure to evaluate every two years the judicial systems of the member states of the Council of Europe and some observer states. At the same time, it annually prepares a study based on the above evaluations of the judicial systems of the member states, with the aim of supplying the European Commission with the necessary data for the compilation of the annual EU Justice scoreboard (Dori Adriani, 2015).
The EU Justice Scoreboard focuses on certain factors that are generally accepted as relevant to improve the quality of justice. They are grouped into four categories:
accessibility of justice for citizens and businesses;
adequate material and human resources;
putting in place assessment tools; and
digitalisation
Parasuraman et al. (1985) argue that service quality represents the customer’s overall assessment of a service offered by an organization, which is often based on the formulated perceptions of service encounters. Hence, an empirical causal relationship is suggested, in which users’ service experience responds to the series of concatenated activities that support the service delivery function. In the particular case of the Judiciary, service quality is thereby argued to originate from the perceptions -either positively or negatively- that the Judiciary’s users have about Judiciary staff’s attitudes and performance during service provision, in addition to Judiciary’s organizational practices that directly impact the service delivery function (Murillo Rodrigo, 2014).
Judiciary users’ degree of belief conveys to materialize the potential quality of deliverable services; which in comparison to the quality of manufactured products, is quite difficult to be assessed as it considers not only the results but also the process through which it is delivered.
But, as improvements to the general service delivery function are sought, service provision features on one hand, and users’ concrete needs on the other must be fully comprehended and measured, which in turn posits the challenge of assessing psychological constructs such as expectations and perceptions. It is at this point where a search for indicators, indexes and metrics supported on explanatory models becomes necessary, in order to establish a systematic means both to capture those psychological constructs and also to define what is to be measured and the interpretation of the measured figures.
Although it is difficult to use a universal tool to measure service quality and users’ satisfaction for all contexts, peer reviewed literature reveals a debate between assessing service satisfaction by means of contrasting expectation and perception constructs (Brown, T. J., Gilbert A., Churchill Jr and Peter P. 1993). The most spread out, well-known and reported service assessing tools are SERVQUAL –Service Quality- and SERVPERF –Service Performance-, which on both cases are supported by foundational explanatory models, so that they provide practical structures to assess understand and improve service quality (Cronin, J. J., & Taylor, S. A, 1994).
2.1 Service quality
The most common definition of service quality is the one that defines it as the extent to which a service meets customers’ needs or expectations. According to Peter Drucker (1985), quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. This definition highlights the importance of understanding the customer’s experience and perspective when it comes to determining the quality of a service or product. Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1988) define it as «as the overall evaluation of a specific service firm that results from comparing firm’s performance with the customer’s general expectations of how firms in that industry should perform». Crosby (1990) defines quality as meeting or satisfying customer’s needs and expectations, while according to Gronroos (1984) service quality was described as the difference between the expected service and the perceived service. For an organization this means that it has to match the expected service and the perceived. A high service quality is achieved if the perceived quality is higher than the expected quality level (Stiakakis, E. and Georgiadis, C. K., 2009).
Service quality can thus be defined as the difference between customer expectations of service and perceived service. If expectations are greater than performance, then perceived quality is less than satisfactory and hence customer dissatisfaction occurs (Parasuraman et al., 1985, Lewis and Mitchell, 1990).
2.2 The SERVQUAL approach
The most widespread and known approach developed by scholars for service quality assessment is the SERVQUAL which, through its original and modified versions, has been widely employed in measuring users’ expectations and service quality perceptions (Donnelly, M., Wisniewski, M., Dalrymple, J. F. and Curry, C., 1995). Parasuraman et al. (1985) identified ten quality dimensions which are relevant for the evaluation of the perceived service quality from customers’ point of view. Based on these results they refined the SERVQUAL model for measuring customers’ perception of service quality (Parasuraman et al., 1988; Seth Deshmukh & Vrat, 2005).
The SERVQUAL approach covers five dimensions which are used to measure service quality:
✓ Tangibles: Includes all the physical facilities, equipment, and staff appearance.
✓ Reliability: The ability to perform service dependably and accurately.
✓ Responsiveness: The willingness to help and respond to customer need.
✓ Assurance: Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire confidence and trust.
✓ Empathy: Caring, individualized attention the company provides to its customers.
A major factor that affects the service quality in the public sector is the digitalization of the administrative procedures (Wisniewski, M. and Donnelly, M., 1996). More specifically, the integration of ICTs in public administration may result in multiple positive effects for its proper organization and functioning, such as: administrative simplification, new skills for the employees, interoperability between organizations in domestic and international level, participatory governance, reduction of maladministration and cost effectiveness (Directorate – General for Employment, A. and I. & Commission, E., 2017).
Through these processes E-government applications may affect the quality of public services and thus shape the citizens’ degree of satisfaction. E-government ensures convenience, greater accessibility to public agencies and reduced costs due to the increased technological intermediation (Fang, Z., 2002). It also contributes to the functioning of democracy by online provision of government information which otherwise be difficult to obtain and it is able to streamline bureaucratic procedures and thus make operations more efficient (Darell, M. W., 2004). Therefore, the new technologies reform the government structure and bring it closer to the citizens. By doing so, they contribute to the enhancement of quality in public services and thus the goal of satisfying the customer needs and expectations is fulfilled.
2.3 The case of digital justice (e-justice)
The sensitive field of justice is one of the main fields of public administration where the use of new technologies may be proved a key element for the significant improvement of the services provided and in the long term for judicial reform and the eventual transformation of judicial systems from bureaucratic and cumbersome systems into more effective and transparent ones. The application of ICTs will provide the suitable tools to support and promote the judicial processes and enhance transparency in judiciary, thus reducing phenomena of corruption plaguing the most judicial systems.
There are certain values judiciaries are expected to create: fairness, timeliness, impartiality, and independence. The incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies in the field of justice may resolve many problems with regard to the realization of these values.
More specifically, the delays in the handling of court cases violate the value of timeliness, thus with the automation of court procedures and practices through the use of new technologies, the demand for rapid handling of cases can be satisfied. The use of electronic filing of claims, the electronic exchange of legal documents, online data entry and electronic case files reduce the amount of activities court staff need to perform when processing cases. Therefore, automating routines and simplification through the reduction of individual procedural decisions that need to be taken in each case affect the processing time and serve the notion of timeliness (Velicogna Marco, 2007).
In addition, the norms of fairness and impartiality can be served by the detection of corruption and fraud in the judiciary (Cerrillo i Martínez Agustí and Pere Fabra i Abat. 2009). In this direction, the new technologies can offer valuable assistance by introducing more impersonal ways of working and thus make the judicial procedures more transparent. The judicial systems are mainly based on bureaucratic procedures and long and arduous paper-based filing systems and thus they are characterized by long delays in service delivery. These long disposition times and procedural complexity create opportunities for bribery and favour the development of phenomena of discretionary treatment by both court staff and judges. By establishing case registration systems, it is possible to introduce process control, and thus ensure integrity and reduce corruption (Buscaglia, Edgardo & Dakolias Maria, 1999).
Finally, the demand for a more accessible and open judicial system can be satisfied through the use of networking systems which facilitate the electronic communication between the users and provide access to legal information, which may help people to resolve their problems out of court, as well as to the specific information on judiciary’s activities, thereby increasing legitimacy.
The main technologies adopted within the courts fall under 3 categories: the first category includes all the basic technologies which mainly consist of the necessary software and hardware for accomplishing basic office tasks, such as word processing, electronic database of jurisprudence, electronic files, e-mail, and internet connection. The second category consists of all the applications that support court staff and judges, such as case registration systems, court management information systems and search engines for legal research, AI tools and videoconferencing. Finally, the third category includes the ICT tools which support the external communication and judicial data interchange between courts and the network of actors, such as other courts, other public agencies, and the general public (follow-up of cases online, electronic registers, electronic processing of small claims, electronic processing of undisputed debt recovery, electronic submission of claims) (Velicogna, M., Steigenga, E., Taal, S., & Schmidt, A. 2020).
2.4 The existing situation in the Greek Judicial system
The judiciary is one of the three powers enshrined in the Greek Constitution in Article 26 according to which: “The judicial powers shall be exercised by courts of law, the decisions of which shall be executed in the name of the Greek People.”. Justice is administered by courts composed of regular judges, who enjoy functional and personal independence. Judges in the exercise of their duties are subject only to the Greek Constitution and laws.
According to the Greek Constitution, there are three categories of courts: civil courts, penal courts, and administrative courts. The supreme court of the civil and penal justice is the Court of Cassation (Areios Pagos), while the supreme court of the administrative justice is the Council of State. Civil cases are judged at first instance by the District Courts or the Courts of First Instance, according to the estimated value of the disputed matter, while at second instance, by the Courts of First Instance or the Courts of Appeal, again according to the estimated value of the disputed matter. At third instance, cases are judged by the Court of Cassation.
More specifically, the judicial function in Greece is organized as follows (Figure 1):
A. Civil and Criminal Courts:
The lower level of civil and criminal courts consists of the Magistrate Courts (154 throughout the country) and the Police Courts (41 across the country) respectively. The next step concerns the 63 courts of first instance (civil and criminal) in the country and then at 19 courts of appeal (including four newly established), while the Supreme Court (Areios Pagos) is at the top end.
B. Public Prosecutor’s office:
Prosecutor’s offices are independent bodies from the courts, but are assigned to them. So there are 63 Public Prosecutor’s offices of first instance courts, 19 Public Prosecutor’s offices of courts of appeal and the Public Prosecutor’s office of the Supreme Court. Under the First Instance Public Prosecutor’s offices fall the Criminal Records departments.
C. Administrative Courts:
The administrative courts are responsible to settle disputes related to the public administration (tax, social security, relating to the validity of the municipal elections, State liability and legal entities of public law disputes of administrative contracts etc.) as well as to handle the requests for annulment against individual administrative acts, which have been assigned to them by law provision. The Administrative Courts are coordinated by the General Commission of Administrative Courts and there are 30 Administrative Courts of first instance and 9 of Appeal. The Council of State is the supreme administrative court.
D. Court of Audit:
The Court of Audit is responsible for the control of the State’s expenditure, as well as of the local authorities and other legal entities, the control of high-value contracts signed by the public administration bodies while it provides advice on bills and reports on the annual State’s balance sheet and report, and the trial of pension and liability cases of policy/military officials.
Figure 1
Organization Chart of Courts in Greece.
Source: official website of the Greek Ministry of Justice. Available at: https://www.ministryofjustice.gr/?page_id=612 (accessed 30 October 2022).
The Greek justice operates under obsolete and bureaucratic procedures unable to meet the requirement of rapid handling of judicial affairs (Greek Company of Judicial Studies, 2015, Argyros P. Antonis, 2015, Papaioannou, 2011). The judicial procedures in the majority of Greek courts are still widely performed on paper and with manual work, even after the COVID 19, which although has further made clear that technology challenges in-depth the role and functions of judges, clerk of courts and lawyers (Fabri M., 2021), nevertheless in Greece it only accelerated the electronic handling of few judicial procedures but at the same time motivated the authorities to take immediate initiatives for the full courts’ computerization, which has not yet been completed. Under those circumstances, court cases are accumulated without effect and not only the citizens are indignant due to the delay in resolving their problems but also the government loses revenue that could be obtained from the judicial decisions.
Concerning court activities, the four main performance indicators at the level of the court system are:
length of proceedings, pending cases and backlogs,
productivity of judges and court staff
quality of judicial work, and
Organizational quality of the courts.
E-justice is among the key factors that can contribute so that the courts meet high standards of performance and satisfy the requirement of a rapid and transparent handling of court cases. In European Union member states, ICT is playing a growing role within the justice administration (Velicogna, M., 2007). That is reflected in the CEPEJ evaluation cycles, which are published every two years and prove the increasing ICT deployment by the member states’ courts as the time passes (Velicogna, M., 2007). Therefore, the Report’s focus shifts from basic technologies to the more advanced areas that still represent a challenge for the judiciaries, such as such as artificial intelligence (AI) and block-chain. Although there are considerable variations in the extent of adoption of new technologies by the judicial authorities of the Member States, delaying a digital convergence within the EU, the initiatives of the Member States in the field of e-Justice are constantly growing, and mainly focus on three applications: Computer facilities used for the direct assistance of judges and court clerks, systems for the registration and management of cases and electronic communication and information exchange between the courts and their environment.
In Greece, the major problem in the field of justice is in the excessive delay in delivering justice, which often in practice can be regarded as a denial of justice (Papaioannou Elias, 2011). The World Bank data show that to judge for clarity and simplicity a case in Greece, it takes on average 1,580 days, or about four years. That gives Greece one of the worst records among the member-states in the Council of Europe. In Bulgaria, the average is 564 days, while in Albania it is 523 days. More specifically, the increasing number of new lawsuits filed each day, combined with the sluggish disposal of cases, contributes to the growing backlog in Greek courts. In addition, the prevalence of appeals is another factor that slows the courts. The cost of appeal is low, and the majority of first-instance decisions are appealed, as litigants choose to proceed with their cases at second instance, thus the excessive length of trials is being favoured. This fact has serious economic consequences, since it discourages prospective investors in Greece, because of the many years it takes to deliver a ruling lowers the index of legal security. As a result prospective investors feel insecure about the legal protection of their assets and fear the possibility of being caught in legal disputes. Companies report that Greek courts do not consistently deliver unbiased judgments and the institution is described as inefficient, slow, and vulnerable to corruption and political influence (HRR 2017, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2017).
In addition, according to the most recent Study on the functioning of judicial systems in the EU Member States Facts and figures from the CEPEJ questionnaires 2012 to 2019 carried by the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) which was published on 12/03/2021, the efficiency of the Greek justice system is low especially compared to that of other European Union members since all DT (i.e. Disposition Time: determines the estimated number of days necessary for a pending case to be solved in a court level) are well above EU median values. In respect of civil and commercial litigious cases, the first and second instance courts face significant challenges as both instances recorded extremely high DT levels (637 and 638 days respectively) which are 3 to 4 times larger than EU median (213 and 175 days respectively). In the highest instance court, the situation appears more favourable as DT shows lower value compared with first two instances (352 days) but is still considerably higher than EU median (217 days).
One of the main reasons for this delay is the lack of the necessary digital infrastructure in Greek courts (Buscaglia and Dakolias, 1999, Papaioannou, 2011). More specifically, according to the previous CEPEJ evaluation report, published on 22nd October 2020, based on 2018 data, Greece was lagging other European member states in adopting electronic tools in judiciary. In all three categories of ICT applications implemented in European judicial systems, Greece exhibited low adoption rates, and it was among the countries with the lowest General ICT index: 3,98, while the maximum is 8,23.
Unfortunately, the level of digitalization of the Greek courts remains insufficient. The most recent CEPEJ 2022 EU Justice Scoreboard, published on 5th October 2022, based on 2020 data, proves that there has been a little progress in adopting electronic means, but still Greece ranks last in terms of online access to court decisions by the public, as well as in taking measures for the issuance of machine-readable court decisions. Greece is also in the last place in terms of the use of technology by courts and prosecution services and in the use of digital communication tools. In addition, Greece was the only country along with Bulgaria without rules allowing the use of technology in the courts. However, an ICT regulatory framework is crucial for successful digital transformation to ensure legal validity and proper usage of ICT tools and electronic processes (Ahmed Rozha K. et al, 2021). More specifically, ICT laws regulate the citizens’ interaction with ICTs, increasing trust towards the validity of electronic transactions while protecting their rights. Greece provides only a few digital solutions for initiating and monitoring proceedings in civil/commercial and administrative cases, such as the possibility of online payment of court fees, the availability of online information about the court fees and the possibility for clients to access the electronic file of their closed cases. The reason the ICT are not used between courts and lawyers is either because they are not available in Greek courts or, where available, they are not sufficiently user friendly or they present technical problems.
Until now, the strategy for the implementation of computerized systems in Greek courts and penitentiary authorities has been based on the implementation of independent infrastructures for each department, resulting in the creation of multiple data centres and information systems, which, although similar, do not communicate and interact with each other (Contini F. (ed.), 2017). Another factor that hindered the proper application of ICT in judicial system was the lack of support from the legal and regulatory framework of Justice. The implementation of information systems without parallel radical adaptation of the legislative framework leads to poor exploitation of ICT opportunities (Lupo, G. and Bailey, J., 2014). However, this situation is changing as it has now become clear that the introduction of new technologies for the establishment of computerized systems, such as e-filing, digital signatures etc., requires a parallel institutional adjustment (Contini, F., & Cordella, A., 2016). Finally, the application of ICT in Greek judicial system has faced difficulties also due to the staffing of the courts as well as of the Ministry of Justice. In the past there was a low priority in recruiting qualified staff with e-skills, as there was no a long-term planning for the integration of ICT tools in judicial system.
3. Methodology
In the present study the concept of quality was used. To guide our research, we developed the following questions:
Is there significant difference of perceptions about the general perceived service quality between the lawyers and court employees?
Do the respondents’ independent variables of gender, age etc. have a significant impact on the service quality dimensions perceived by them or not?
Which is the impact of each of the five dimensions of SERVQUAL on the overall perceived quality of the court services among the two groups of respondents?
Importance rating of SERVQUAL dimensions: Which of the 5 dimensions of service quality plays the most significant role to the two groups of respondents?
Is there significant difference of perceptions about the general level of ICT adoption between the lawyers and court employees?
Data for the study were collected from the Courts of the prefecture of Ioannina. More specifically, 30 questionnaires were distributed to lawyers who belong to the Bar Association of Ioannina, and 30 to court employees of several departments of the Courts of Ioannina to highlight and compare the lawyers’ perceptions of the service quality they perceive with the employees’ perceptions of the service quality they deliver to them. The goal was to support a link between customers’ and staff’s perceptions about the Greek judicial-system service quality, which in turn will facilitate the understanding of customers’ needs as well as the implementation of the suitable integrated strategies for the acceleration and upgrading of administration of justice. The data was collected by using personal approach with the participants, lawyers, and Court employees. The author presented the content and the objectives of the survey to the participants and was waiting until they fill out the questionnaires to answer any questions concerning the completion of them and give the necessary clarifications.
The two questionnaires consisted of four parts. The first one included questions regarding the demographic characteristics of the respondents; the second was consisted of 22 five-point Likert scale questions on key research variables, in the third section of the questionnaire the respondents were asked to allocate a total of 100 points among five statements, each of which represent one of the 5 SERVQUAL dimensions, according to how important each statement is to them and finally the fourth and final part of the survey included 12 statements referred to some basic requirements for digital integration that should be satisfied by the Courts of Justice and the participants were asked to rate the degree to which they believe that the Courts of Ioannina meet these requirements by choosing their answers among a five-point Likert scale. In the following section the survey’s results are presented and analysed.
4. Empirical results analysis
4.1 Demographic Profile of Respondents
Most of the lawyers that took part in the survey were females (60% of the sample). The most lawyers (46.67%) were between 30–49 years, 30% of the sample were between 18–29 years, 16.67% were between 40–49 years, 6.67% were between 50–59 years, while most of them (93.33%) reported daily transactions with the Courts of Ioannina. Regarding the years of exercising the profession of lawyer, 86.7% reported up to 19 years, while the remaining 13.4% reported exercising the legal profession for more than 20 years.
As for the second sample of the court employees, out of the 30 respondents, again the vast majority (76.67%) were females, while only 7 (23.33%) were male. More than half of the respondents (53.33%) were aged between 40–49 years, followed by the age group of 50–59 (26.67%). 20% were in service for less than 10 years, 36.7% were between 10–19 years, 33.33% between 20–29 and 10% of the respondents were for more than 30 years. With regards to educational qualifications, the most of the participants were graduates of higher education institutes (43.3% from Universities and 13.3% from Technological Educational Institutes) followed by a significant percentage (36.7%) of high school graduates, while only 2 respondents had a master’s degree.
4.2 SERVQUAL analysis
As shown in Table 1, the mean scores of lawyers’ perceptions ranged from 1.93 to 3.40. The lowest perception item was «up-to date equipment», which indicates that the courts of Ioannina do not provide modern facilities. On the other hand, lawyers’ highest perceptions were regarding the «Service in accordance with what has been promised or agreed». Furthermore, lawyers highly assessed the: «Interest in solving customers’ problems», «Knowing the exact time when service will be performed» and «Court employees provide prompt service». These indicate that the courts’ staff has one of the crucial roles in performing high service quality, since court employees show sincere interest in solving problems and respond promptly to customers’ requests. As far as these descriptive statistics is concerned, with a mean value of 2.89 on a 5-point Likert scale, we conclude that the overall service quality perceived by the lawyers is at a moderate satisfactory level.
Table 1
Average scores of Lawyers’ and Employees’ service quality perceptions per item.
| MEAN (LAWYERS) | STD. DEVIATION (LAWYERS) | MEAN (EMPLOYEES) | STD. DEVIATION (EMPLOYEES) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TA1 Up-to-date equipment | 1,93 | ,640 | 1,67 | ,661 |
| TA2 Visual appealing physical facilities | 2,00 | ,743 | 1,70 | ,837 |
| TA3 Neat Court staff | 2,90 | ,803 | 3,87 | ,819 |
| TA4 Visually appealing materials | 2,47 | ,900 | 2,40 | ,968 |
| RL1 Provide services at a predetermined time | 3,07 | 1,048 | 4,10 | 1,029 |
| RL2 Interest in solving customers’ problems | 3,23 | ,898 | 4,40 | ,770 |
| RL3 Performing services right the first time | 3,03 | ,850 | 4,13 | ,681 |
| RL4 Service in accordance with what has been promised or agreed | 3,40 | ,814 | 4,23 | ,817 |
| RL5 Error-free service | 2,93 | ,944 | 4,10 | ,712 |
| RS1 Knowing the exact time when service will be performed | 3,20 | 1,031 | 4,37 | ,765 |
| RS2 Court employees provide prompt service | 3,37 | ,718 | 4,40 | ,621 |
| RS3 Willingness to respond to the customers’ requests | 3,00 | ,788 | 4,47 | ,776 |
| RS4 Court staff has time to answer customers’ questions | 2,97 | ,928 | 4,20 | ,997 |
| AS1 Court staff instils confidence | 3,03 | ,765 | 4,23 | ,679 |
| AS2 Feeling safe and secure | 2,73 | 1,015 | 2,87 | ,900 |
| AS3 Courteous court staff | 2,90 | ,960 | 4,60 | ,621 |
| AS4 Court staff has knowledge to answer questions | 2,93 | ,868 | 3,97 | ,718 |
| EM1 Providing individual attention | 2,80 | ,847 | 3,90 | 1,242 |
| EM2 Convenient opening hours | 3,33 | 1,155 | 4,17 | 1,053 |
| EM3 Court staff provides personal attention | 2,50 | ,820 | 3,87 | ,937 |
| EM4 Customers’ best interests at heart | 2,83 | ,791 | 4,07 | ,907 |
| EM5 Understanding customers’ specific needs | 3,03 | ,765 | 4,17 | ,791 |
| Overall Mean of Lawyers SERVQUAL 22 items | 2,8909 | ,46117 | 3,8120 | ,39384 |
The mean scores of employees’ perceptions ranged from 1.67 to 4.60. The lowest perception item was again «up-to date equipment», which confirms the absence of the suitable up-to-date equipment in the Courts of Ioannina. On the other hand, employees’ highest perceptions were regarding the «Courteous court staff», while they highly assessed: «Interest in solving customers’ problems», «Willingness to respond to the customers’ requests» and «Court employees provide prompt service». Although they are subjective judgments, they largely correspond with lawyers’ perceptions, since both groups of respondents highly assessed the attributes associated with the interest of officials to resolve any issues and provide prompt services (responsiveness). With a mean value of 3.81 on a 5 point Likert scale, the overall court employees’ satisfaction is above satisfactory level.
By comparing the mean scores of the two groups of respondents we see that the lowest perception scores were recorded in the tangibles dimension where almost all the mean scores are below the score of 3, which indicates that serious efforts should be taken in order to improve the appearance of physical facilities and equipment in the Greek courts. In all the other 4 dimensions we observe that the court staff’s mean scores are above 3 in all the items unlike lawyers who seem to be more demanding and less satisfied with the courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and provide caring and individualized attention to their issues, since in empathy and assurance parameters most perception scores are below average. This could be due to the fact that in Greek justice there is not an objective system for evaluating officials, and as a result judicial officers believe in themselves to function effectively at the same time that lawyers appear dissatisfied with the service they receive. If there were measurable goals and objective criteria for evaluating employee performance, these differences in mean perceptions would not be appeared among the lawyers and court staff, since all the aspects of service quality would be judged objectively by an evaluating system and not by the opinions of the two groups of participants who perceive differently specific behaviours and tactics.
Moreover, to investigate if there is a significant difference between the overall means of the two different samples of respondents an independent two-sample T-test was performed. The following hypothesis was tested:
H0: There is no significant difference of perceptions about the general perceived service quality between the lawyers and court employees.
Independent samples T-test (Table 2) revealed T = 8,319 with 56,613 degrees of freedom and p-value = Sig. (2 tailed) = 0.000. Since p-value = 0.000 < 0.05 = α (significance level), the null hypothesis was rejected. Thus, H0 is not supported at all, meaning there is a significant difference of perceptions about the general perceived service quality between the lawyers and court staff.
Table 2
Independent Samples Test results of comparisons of lawyers’ and court staff’s perceptions.
| LEVENE’S TEST FOR EQUALITY OF VARIANCES | T-TEST FOR EQUALITY OF MEANS | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F | SIG. | T | DF | SIG. (2-TAILED) | MEAN DIFFERENCE | STD. ERROR DIFFERENCE | 95% CONFIDENCE INTERVAL OF THE DIFFERENCE | |||
| LOWER | UPPER | |||||||||
| TA | Equal variances assumed | ,079 | ,780 | ,649 | 58 | ,519 | ,08333 | ,12834 | –,17356 | ,34023 |
| Equal variances not assumed | ,649 | 57,859 | ,519 | ,08333 | ,12834 | –,17357 | ,34024 | |||
| RL | Equal variances assumed | ,113 | ,738 | 7,525 | 58 | ,000 | 1,06000 | ,14087 | ,77801 | 1,34199 |
| Equal variances not assumed | 7,525 | 56,687 | ,000 | 1,06000 | ,14087 | ,77787 | 1,34213 | |||
| RS | Equal variances assumed | ,355 | ,553 | 7,546 | 58 | ,000 | 1,22500 | ,16234 | ,90005 | 1,54995 |
| Equal variances not assumed | 7,546 | 57,891 | ,000 | 1,22500 | ,16234 | ,90004 | 1,54996 | |||
| AS | Equal variances assumed | 1,827 | ,182 | 6,997 | 58 | ,000 | 1,01667 | ,14530 | ,72582 | 1,30751 |
| Equal variances not assumed | 6,997 | 53,567 | ,000 | 1,01667 | ,14530 | ,72531 | 1,30802 | |||
| EMP | Equal variances assumed | 1,774 | ,188 | 6,411 | 58 | ,000 | 1,13333 | ,17677 | ,77948 | 1,48718 |
| Equal variances not assumed | 6,411 | 56,755 | ,000 | 1,13333 | ,17677 | ,77932 | 1,48735 | |||
| SERVQUAL 22 items | Equal variances assumed | ,649 | ,424 | 8,319 | 58 | ,000 | ,92107 | ,11072 | ,69943 | 1,14270 |
| Equal variances not assumed | 8,319 | 56,613 | ,000 | ,92107 | ,11072 | ,69932 | 1,14282 | |||
By comparing the data collected from lawyers and court staff, it was found that the gap between lawyers’ perceptions and court staff’s regarding terms of courts’ service quality is significant. This might be explained by the fact that court officials when answering the questionnaires were not entirely objective in their judgments about the quality of the services they provide. On the other hand, lawyers are the main group of citizens who are served by court staff, and due to the pressure and the high demands of their profession they are seeking to the fast and efficient satisfaction of their requests. This becomes more obvious when the overall mean values of the two groups of respondents (Mean Lawyers = 2.8909 Vs Mean Employees = 3.812) are compared, which leads to the conclusion that the lawyers’ perceptions of the quality of the services offered by the courts fall short of the court employees’ perceptions. Nevertheless, although court employees perceptions are reported as higher than lawyers’ perceptions, with mean values of 2.8909 and 3.912 respectively on a 5 point Likert scale, the general service quality of the Greek judicial system by both groups is considered average.
4.3 One-way ANOVA analysis
Analysis Of Variance (One-way ANOVA) was performed in order to examine whether there is a statistically significant association between the respondents’ background – gender, age, years of occupation and frequency of transactions with courts for the lawyers and gender, age, department, years of employment and level of education for the court employees – and their generally perceived service quality.
In the case of lawyers, since all the p-values are greater than the significance level of 0.05, it was concluded that the independent variables of gender, age, years of occupation and times of transaction did not seem to influence the perceived service quality. Similarly, the one-way ANOVA analysis for court staff revealed that gender, age, and job position did not seem to have any association with their generally perceived service quality (Table 3).
Table 3
One-way ANOVA results for Lawyers and Court Staff.
| LAWYERS | GENDER | AGE | YEARS OF OCCUPATION | FREQUENCY | EMPLOYEES | GENDER | AGE | JOB POSITION | YEARS OF EMPLOYMENT | LEVEL OF EDUCATION | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SIG. | SIG. | SIG. | SIG. | SIG. | SIG. | SIG. | SIG. | SIG. | ||||
| TA_LAW | Between Groups | ,543 | ,331 | ,620 | ,623 | TA_EM | Between Groups | ,925 | ,894 | ,173 | ,703 | ,573 |
| Within Groups | Within Groups | |||||||||||
| Total | Total | |||||||||||
| RL_LAW | Between Groups | ,099 | ,639 | ,797 | ,685 | RL_EM | Between Groups | ,969 | ,139 | ,228 | ,024 | ,124 |
| Within Groups | Within Groups | |||||||||||
| Total | Total | |||||||||||
| RS_LAW | Between Groups | ,929 | ,462 | ,545 | ,548 | RS_EM | Between Groups | ,062 | ,804 | ,535 | ,171 | ,014 |
| Within Groups | Within Groups | |||||||||||
| Total | Total | |||||||||||
| AS_LAW | Between Groups | ,909 | ,852 | ,986 | ,955 | AS_EM | Between Groups | ,883 | ,614 | ,678 | ,122 | ,979 |
| Within Groups | Within Groups | |||||||||||
| Total | Total | |||||||||||
| EMP_LAW | Between Groups | ,354 | ,457 | ,539 | ,497 | EMP_EM | Between Groups | ,096 | ,893 | ,101 | ,058 | ,117 |
| Within Groups | Within Groups | |||||||||||
| Total | Total | |||||||||||
| QUAL_LAW | Between Groups | ,726 | ,868 | ,825 | ,789 | QUAL_EM | Between Groups | ,200 | ,778 | ,199 | ,041 | ,242 |
| Within Groups | Within Groups | |||||||||||
| Total | ||||||||||||
4.4 Multi-Regression analysis
The regression analysis was performed in order to examine the impact of each of the five dimensions of SERVQUAL on the overall perceived quality of the court services among the two groups of respondents. According to the results, the dimension of Reliability affects the most both the groups of respondents’ general perceived service quality, followed by Empathy. Regarding the respondents’ perceptions about the other SERVQUAL dimensions, and more specifically technology and equipment (Tangibility), both lawyers and employees considered that the courts have not yet adopted the suitable equipment and facilities that will allow them to provide high-quality services.
4.5 The Importance Rating of SERVQUAL dimensions
After expressing their perceptions on the SERVQUAL scale about the courts’ services, the survey respondents were asked to indicate the importance of the five SERVQUAL dimensions (Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy). They were requested to allocate a total of 100 degrees among the five dimensions by rating more points the factor that plays the most significant role to them.
The dimensions of quality were classified hierarchically as follows: Reliability (29,00), Responsiveness (20,00), Tangibles (18,50), Assurance (18,00) and Empathy (14,50). Thus, the most important dimension to lawyers is Reliability and the least important dimension is Empathy (Figure 2). Almost similar results were obtained from court employees: Reliability (31,83), Responsiveness (19,33), Assurance (18,03), Tangibles (17,47) and Empathy (14,50) (Figure 3).
Figure 2
The percentage significance of the SERVQUAL dimensions (Lawyers).
Figure 3
The percentage significance of the SERVQUAL dimensions (Employees).
According to the analysis of the weights of the five court service quality dimensions, Reliability seems to play the most important role in both lawyers’ and court employees’ minds. This might imply that, the complicated and cumbersome judicial procedures cause uncertainty and insecurity on the immediate resolution of the problems faced by citizens, thus the courts’ ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately, is considered as of utmost importance. In other words, service quality, as perceived by lawyers and court staff, will increase significantly if the Reliability dimension is improved. On the other hand, Empathy is the least important factor for both groups of respondents, which shows that lawyers and employees are not so concerned with offering emotional support to the customers, but their main interest lies in providing the best possible judicial services.
It is very important to find out which dimensions are considered the most important by customers in a particular setting, so as to prioritize service improvement investment decisions, given the limited resources available to management. Since customers have different service quality requirements which carry different weights in the evaluation of perceived service quality, the assessment of the importance attached by judiciary users and court staff to each dimension supplies court managers with enhanced data about the expectations and perceptions of customers and enables them to set priorities in order to make appropriate investment decisions, given the limited resources available. Thus, service quality improvement should be prioritized in this order: Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Tangibles and Empathy. This means that the Greek Courts should provide promised services on time, dependably, and accurately, and should help customers and convey trust and confidence.
Although similar research has been carried out in studies of service firms across different industries, where the above results are consistent with those reported by Tsoukatos (2007), Stergiopoulou (2004) and Parasuraman et al. (1988, 1991), who established that Reliability is the most important dimension, in the field of justice the importance rating of the 5 SERVQUAL dimensions by the judiciary users is mainly a suggestion for future research (Christopher T. Patterson, 2009, Gosheye Damtew, 2015).
On a relevant study about the service delivery by the Second Court of Appeal within Costa Rica’s Judicial Branch, the results showed that the factors that Judiciary users value the most are: knowledge and courtesy of judicial servants and their ability to convey trust and confidence followed by the appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communications provided by the Judiciary and then by the ability of the Judiciary to provide care and individualized attention to its customers (Rodrigo Murillo, 2014).
4.6 The ICT-adoption in Greek judiciary results
The third and final part of the questionnaire had as a target the measurement of the level of the adoption and integration of digital technologies in the field of justice. Within the framework of this research, the respondents were asked to rate the degree to which they believed that the courts of justice meet the requirements described in twelve statements about any possible implementation of electronic tools in the Courts of Ioannina. The aim was to compare the views of lawyers, who are served by the courts to those who work in them, and thus ascertain whether there is a need or not to undertake the necessary actions and initiatives to improve the level of digitalization of Greek judiciary.
From the cumulative percentages of the questions posed to the lawyers it was evident that the majority of them believe that the relevant e-justice tools (such as electronic filing of claims, on-line monitoring of court cases, mutual on-line interconnection of courts etc.) do not exist in the courts of Ioannina. In addition, their perceptions about the court staff’s qualifications of using the ICTs are also very low, since 70.0% of the respondents believe that their skills and knowledge are very poor, meaning that even if there were the appropriate ICT tools, it is doubtful whether they could be used successfully by the court employees.
The staff’s perceptions are in accordance with those of the lawyers’ regarding the integration of new technologies in the Courts of Ioannina, and in many cases, they are much worse, as they are in a position -because of their status as users of such applications – to be more aware of the disappointing level of ICT-adoption in Greek judiciary.
In order to compare the two groups’ of respondents perceptions about the level of ICT adoption in the Courts of Ioannina an independent two-sample T-test was performed. This analysis approach tests the following hypothesis:
H0: There is no significant difference of perceptions about the general level of ICT adoption between the lawyers and court employees.
From the output of the independent samples T-test it was found that T = –0.77 with 55.976 degrees of freedom and p-value = Sig. (2 tailed) = 0.939. Since p-value = 0.939 > 0.05 = α (significance level), the null hypothesis was accepted. Thus, there is no a significant difference of perceptions about the level of digital integration of the Courts of Ioannina between the two groups of respondents. The pressing need for enchasing the level of Courts’ digitization is also proved, if simply compare the overall scores of lawyers (Mean = 2.1556 Std. Dev. = 0.61188) with the court staff’s ones (Mean = 2.1444 Std. Dev. = 0.50473), which are illustrated with the histograms below (Figures 4 and 5).
Figure 4
Mean of Lawyers’ perceptions.
Figure 5
Mean of Court Employees’ perceptions.
5. Conclusions
Using the SERVQUAL model the survey provided the set of expectations residing in Judiciary users’ minds about service quality. Thus the model seems to be very useful tool for the Greek Judicial principals, which based on the users’ expectations, will be able to address service quality, to identify possible improvement opportunities and to take the proper organizational decisions that will lead to the enhancement of the level of the services delivered by the courts.
The service quality results indicated that the Courts of Ioannina fail to meet the expectations of their customers. The lawyers can be considered as relatively fastidious ones since they need to receive higher quality from the courts’ services to satisfy their demands. Thus, in order to decrease the gaps between lawyers’ and court staff’s perceptions as well as to improve citizens’ satisfaction and obtain better results in service recipients’ perceptions, it is necessary for the courts to design and apply new business strategies or reform the old ones in the fields of reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. In addition, the results about the extent of ICT adoption in the Greek judiciary are disappointing, since according to the respondents’ views (mainly the lawyers’ ones), not only the Courts of Ioannina lack even the most basic digital infrastructure, but also the level of employees’ e-skills and qualifications is doubtful.
The service quality shortfalls in the Greek justice administration system which is characterized by outdated, long and bureaucratic procedures, are related to a number of constraints, such is the lack of an integrated strategy for introducing ICTs in the field of justice, the lack of support from a suitable legal and regulatory framework from the Ministry of Justice and the relatively low priority in recruiting qualified staff with e-skills in the field of justice. Because of these constraints, the Greek Courts are unable to perform the service at the level required by customers. Thus, the Greek Government needs to provide the adequate training to the court staff focusing to their ability to provide a fast and reliable service to their customers.
Using the SERVQUAL instrument, this study was able to provide a starting point and assist in the prioritization of service improvement activities. The different lawyers’ and staff’s perceptions and expectations of service quality highlighted the current performance levels of the Greek courts, revealed the service quality gaps and the fields that need improvement, while the rating of each of the service quality dimensions by the survey participants, assist in resource allocation and definition of action-planning priorities.
Nevertheless, the study was conducted in only one relatively small and provincial Court district, the Courts of Ioannina. The generalization of the study would be higher if it was (change to ‘were’) conducted in other courts as well. In other words, this small sample hinders the generalization of present results in other Greek courts. Thus, in order to obtain a more generalized image and extract safe conclusions about the service quality level of the Greek Courts and the degree of their digitalization, future research in the Greek judicial system can examine a wider respondent base within Courts of other cities.
Competing Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.