Justice ministry plans courts' IT overhaul

Brazil's justice minister Márcio Thomaz Bastos met Tuesday with the heads of the main federal courts to discuss modernizing the IT infrastructure of the country's judicial system, the ministry said in a statement. "Society no longer accepts the way the judiciary is," superior court president Edson Vidigal said after the meeting. "We have a lot to do, and time is short." Connecting all the courts up to a single network will be the first step, said Sérgio Renault, head of the judiciary reform department in the justice ministry. Total investment is likely to be "tens of millions of dollars," according to the statement. The government is building up its finances for the project, and is in negotiations with multilateral agencies such as the Inter American Development Bank.