20260714 Berlins Justiz mit Softwareproblem

This wouldn't have happened with free software

... nor would it have happened with a regular paper file. But working on computers in the Berlin judicial administration was already causing long wait times last Friday; since early yesterday morning, it has been impossible for anyone to log in to their workstations at all. As a result, important scheduling matters remain unprocessed, hearings must be postponed, and communication between employees and with attorneys is only possible to a limited extent.

The consequences include canceled expedited proceedings and, in the event of rescheduled hearings, the possible premature release of suspects if deadlines are missed. Employees are being encouraged to use their “free time” to work off overtime. At the Berlin Court of Appeal, all employees were sent home on Monday at noon.

ITDZ, the technical service provider for the State of Berlin, announced yesterday afternoon that the problem had been identified. The inability to log in to the servers is apparently “due to a licensing issue with interface software.”
As mentioned, this would not have happened with free software, since at most there are certificates (verifying the integrity) of the software that can be restored immediately at any time. However, as can be read on the rbb page linked below, employees in the judicial administration are generally not very satisfied with the software solutions offered to them.

For weeks, there have been complaints from judicial circles about problems with the IT system.

There is talk of everything from long response times for applications to outages lasting hours or even days due to cheap, inadequate applications.

Since the introduction of the e-file, work has actually taken much, much longer because various steps have to be repeated — assuming the system even works.

The outage is still ongoing today.