The Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) on Thursday launched the Online Registration and Application System (ORAS), which aims to make application for vacancies more seamless.

According to lawyer Michelle Sharon Domingo, head of the JBC Office of Policy and Development Research, ORAS is a “platform that basically took the Personal Data Sheet that the JBC requires and placed it online.”

The Supreme Court Public Information Offices (SCPIO) said the online application system 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,” the SCPIO said.

For his part, lawyer Nesauro Firme, a JBC regular member, representing the academe, said 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,” Firme said in his address.

ORAS was conceptualized by the JBC pursuant to the Supreme Court’s Strategic Plan for Judicial Innovations 2022-2027.

‘It is also integrated to the Philippine Judiciary Platform to ensure that no bogus accounts will be created.’

It was developed by the JBC in collaboration with the Supreme Court Management Information Systems Office.

It will be accessible to the public starting 1 June 2024.

The application system will be first use for the upcoming opening of the Court of Appeals and Sandiganbayan Presiding Justices vacancies on 13 June 2024, and will thereafter be the mode of application.

For applications for lower court vacancies to be opened on 22 May 2024, the ORAS shall not yet be used.