The system is hosted on the back of Legal Aid South Africa’s system so we are lucky enough to enjoy their security features.
Access to data between Community Advice Offices (CAOs)
CAOs have access to data from their own offices.
Confidentiality
When I check reports, the only information I see are type of cases, referral and the amount recovered so client data remains confidential.
Data error
Our system is new so we haven’t tested our planned data error tracking methods. We plan to conduct random selections of captured cases and conduct some kind of follow up with the clients (with the consent of the CAO of course.
We currently have 30 offices using the system. We want to extract information from three other systems to create a cohort of 100 CAOs feeding into the case management system. Please see a model below:
Thanks for sharing, @KhanyisileNtsenge. It is a very ambitious national case tracking system and I know the work that has gone into this massive update thus far. Congratulations!
Could you decipher some of the acronyms in the model (CMS, RLT, CWAO, CCJD)?
@Estela, interesting to hear that you have used KoBoToolbox for data collection. I am sure it is useful for satisfaction surveys like @hebamourtaga was mentioning. Based on your experience, do you think the KoBoToolbox could also be used or adapted for paralegal case management systems?
I don’t think Kobo toolbox could be used as case management system. Is more useful for legal needs assessments and evaluations.
Our system is the Case Management System (CMS). Microjustice4All designed the system in colaboration with the MJ Country Organizations. The main design was developed in Peru and Bolivia as we are the oldest organizations (2007-2008).
Each country has a main menu. In Peru we work in 4 regions, so each region has their own link. Each staff person has an user and password to protect the cases information.
In our main menu we have the different options. In the system we can storage clients information, details of consults, cases, trainings, meetings, awarness raising activities, finances of cases and reports.
RLT: Rural Legal Trust
The Rural Legal Trust (RLT) was established in 2000 as an interim arrangement that would provide free legal services for farm workers, farm dwellers and labour tenants, whilst the then Department of Land Affairs and the then Legal Aid Board were seeking parliament approval to establish such units. The interim period lasted three years through which the three organisations set up a pilot project that would best inform the envisaged model. The pilot also employed paralegals and lawyers who were meant to provide a direct service to above mentioned clientele; these personnel were also to be absorbed into the system. Unfortunately the tripartite arrangement seized to exist when Land Affairs decided not to financially support the pilot; which did not hinder the RLT from continuing to provide legal services to the indigent of South Africa.
RLT established partnerships with land rights organisations in all nine provinces where paralegals, lawyers and fieldworkers were placed to be supported through its re-granting facility. This arrangement continued through 2008 when RLT had to conduct and external evaluation of its intervention programmes. The external evaluation report argued for continuation of its programmes with recommendations that would improve service provision. At least after its strategic planning of 2009 – 2010, the RLT emerged an organisation that continues the provision of legal services to the indigent, enhanced by its people-driven advocacy work.
CWAO: Casual Workers Advice Office
The Casual Workers Advice Office (CWAO) was founded in 2011 as a non-profit, independent organisation. It provides advice and support to workers, privileging casual, contract, labour broker and other precarious workers. The organisation was formed out of the recognition that the traditional labour movement appears incapable or unwilling to organize the new kinds of workers created by neo-liberalism. This recognition also informs the emphasis the CWAO places on precarious workers beginning to organize themselves. The old industrial model of organizing seems unsuitable for precarious workers. Indeed, it seems no longer suitable for traditional industrial workers themselves. The new organizational forms that will take its place will be determined by workers through struggle. It is through organisation that precarious workers will best defend their rights, improve upon those rights, and connect with broader struggles for social justice and an egalitarian society
CCJD: Centre for Community Justice and Development
The Centre for Community Justice and Development (CCJD) is a non-profit organisation which provides fundraising, training, research and other support services to fifteen community-based advice offices in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The offices provide access to justice to rural communities, offering legal advice, mediation, counselling and educational services, and negotiating with service providers on behalf of clients. The main issues addressed are domestic violence, entitlements such as pensions and grants, labour rights and child abuse.
I only have access to the Microjusticia Peru Case Management System which is in Spanish. The MJ4All Deputy Director, James Stockstill, was in contact with someone from the Open Societies Foundation South Africa, was you? The MJ4All’s programs in Rwanda and Africa have the same system in English.
Hi all! I also wanted to add Casebox to this list of Case Management Platforms: https://www.casebox.org/. This is an open source tool built by HURIDOCS and Ketse. It was built with human rights legal organisations in mind, so it is a great option if you are managing legal cases. CEJIL is using it to manage the Inter-American Court cases.
Let me know if you have any questions - I’m happy to connect you to our team.
Hi @kjantin! Welcome back to the network! So glad to reconnect with you here, old friend, and also to learn that you’re now with HURIDOCS. HURIDOCS is a great organization that I have been following for many years, and so I’d be glad to find ways to connect and share between our two networks.
I took the liberty of completing the directory profile for HURIDOCS with info from your website - let me know if you have any corrections. For now you will also be the ‘official contact’ which means the network team will call on you to help keep the HURIDOCS profile updated and confirm affiliated members. Happy to change who that is as well - just have the appropriate person sign up and then let me know.
CaseBox looks really promising as an open source project that can be freely used and contributed to by human rights organizations . Kudos! I watched the youtube video (see below) and tried the demo and am really impressed. I liked in particular the ability to keep track of a complicated sequence of preceding and subsequent actions, like an issue tracker. Also the tree view of correspondence to keep a handle on the many people who can be involved in a complicated case. I’d love to learn more about it and the organizations who are using it - if you are up for it I’d be glad to organize a webinar about it together with you and perhaps one of your implementing partners.
Perhaps we can get some members to try out CaseBox? Or is anyone here already using it?
@KhanyisileNtsenge: Thanks for explaining these terms and for introducing us to these fabulous South African legal empowerment organizations. I updated your post to include links to their websites.
Would you be able to help us to invite them to the network? You can just send them an email inviting them with this link to https://namati.org/network which contains info about the network and the signup form.
@luckymkhize just signed up today and in her bio indicates she works for CCJD. You are most welcome to the network! Perhaps she is willing to also help us to get a network profile set up for CCJD and to invite her colleagues.
Hi @Sadiq Sadiq
I can’t share it because is an internal program and each staff member has an user name and password. Also because contains the client’s information. I can share you the CMS manual (Spanish) or you can wait for the English version that will be ready in September as part of a tools packet. The manual explains in detail each part of it. You can check here our CMS video tutorials (Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3KMRdDSXXo&list=PLwzUIjtvSLEfFNZdEkQyg9YBjBi1c6Fyo
Hi @Estela! Are you talking about my post above about CaseBox? I haven’t used it myself yet but from the website, demo and video I link to I think it does look interesting, and friendly!
I’ve been talking with the folks at HURIDOCS about potentially organizing a webinar about CaseBox so we can look into it more deeply as a community and explore its applicability to case management for paralegal programs. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, feel free to add your questions/comments here. How does CaseBox seem to compare with your own case management software?
In case you missed it, registration is now open for a webinar with @kjantin next month about Casebox. Join us! It will be useful to compare with case management systems used by @Estela@KhanyisileNtsenge@hebamourtaga and others.
Whoa - I managed to miss Michael’s post about KoBoToolbox which looks really interesting! I’m not sure how it compares with CaseBox and other case management software but it certainly looks like a valuable tool for collecting data in the field (especially during emergencies) and is worth looking at. Like CaseBox, it’s also freely available open source software, which is very encouraging to see.
@michaelotto, I fixed your link to the resource library and also added this introductory youtube video to the resource description, so practitioners can more quickly find out about it.
Thank you for sharing your experience. It is very useful. We want to develop a similar case management system in Moldova. I read all the posts related to this subject and watched the tutorials and learned a lot so for. However, I have a few question and I was hoping that you could help me:
Is this system some how related to any state authorities?
Do you use the data collected from this system as your official statistic?
How do you proceed when you have clients who don’t want to share their personal information? They have a question, they need your help on a subject, however, maybe because the topic is sensible, or he/she is afraid and doesn’t want to tell you his real name or any other information. How you document such cases?
In the tutorials I saw that the CMC was connected to social media (facebook, youtube, twitter etc) Can the user share this information using social media tools? How is social media connected to CMC? How can we use social media for case management?
Previously you mentioned that you can use this system for monitoring, measure the client’s satisfaction and even for legal needs assessment. Do you have any tutorials link that demonstrate this aspects? I would love to incorporate those functions to case management system in Moldova.
I know there are a lot of questions maybe we can have a short skype call to talk about this?
I watched the youtube video (see below) and 
maybe we can have a short skype call to talk about this?