Applications processed by the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) for vacancies opened starting June 13, 2024 shall now be done fully online.
The JBC launched on Thursday, May 16, its Online Registration and Application System (ORAS) at the Supreme Court Session Hall.
The JBC is tasked under the Constitution to recommend appointees to the judiciary to the president. It also prepares and submits a list of nominees for the offices of the Ombudsman, Deputy Ombudsman, Special Prosecutor, and the offices of the chairperson and regular members of the Legal Education Board.
With the launch of ORAS, applicants are now required to prepare and submit their applications online.
“The JBC ORAS is a platform that basically took the Personal Data Sheet that the JBC requires and placed it online,” said Michelle Sharon Clara S. Domingo, chief of the JBC Office of Policy and Development Research, in her remarks at the launch.
The JBC ORAS also has features that make the user’s experience convenient and accessible. It is also integrated to the Philippine Judiciary Platform to ensure that no bogus accounts will be created.
In his keynote address, Nesauro H. Firme, JBC regular member representing the academe, pointed out how the ORAS will strengthen the JBC’s task of checking the integrity of applicants to judicial posts.
“Our own personnel who had been tasked to manually encode data of the applicants can now focus on their real duty based on their plantilla descriptions, which is background investigation. This is because ORAS is created to remove the said [manual] encoding,” he said.
The ORAS was conceptualized by the JBC pursuant to the Supreme Court’s Strategic Plan for Judicial Innovations 2022-2027 (SPJI).
“The JBC ORAS is a clear testament to the JBC’s commitment to the SPJI and to the Supreme Court’s goal of achieving efficiency, innovation, and access in its service delivery,” stressed JBC executive officer Leah P. Laja-Otto in her welcome remarks.
The JBC ORAS, developed by the JBC in collaboration with the Supreme Court Management Information Systems Office, will be accessible to the public starting June 1, 2024.
It will be pilot-tested and used for the upcoming opening of the Court of Appeals and Sandiganbayan Presiding Justices vacancies on June 13, 2024, and will thereafter be the mode of application.
For applications for lower court vacancies to be opened on May 22, 2024, the ORAS shall not yet be used.
