Critical functions
Identify what must continue immediately and what may be temporarily deferred.
Continuity of public service
Reversibility and Continuity for Judicial AI Systems
AI-assisted justice must remain capable of operating without its supplier.
Continuity and reversibility are not the same thing
Continuity means that justice can keep operating during an outage, cyber incident or supplier failure. Reversibility means that the state can leave the system, recover its data and documentation, and transfer operations to another solution without losing essential capability.
What a complete continuity plan must contain
Degraded mode
Provide a safe manual or alternative process that users know how to operate.
Recovery objectives
Set maximum acceptable interruption and data-loss periods.
Backups
Protect, isolate and regularly restore-test data and configurations.
Roles
State who decides suspension, fallback, recovery and return to normal operation.
Exercises
Run realistic tests rather than relying on an untested written plan.
What real reversibility requires
- Document all data, models, configurations, logs and dependencies to be transferred.
- Use open or fully documented export formats where possible.
- Provide skills transfer and operational documentation.
- Maintain access to evidence and archives after the service ends.
- Define deletion, certification and subcontractor obligations.
- Carry out a real exit exercise before the end of the contract.
Failure scenarios to test
| Scenario | Expected response |
|---|---|
| Short technical outage | Switch to a known degraded mode and restore within the agreed objective. |
| Corrupted update | Rollback to the last validated version with intact audit records. |
| Cyber incident | Isolate, contain, preserve evidence and continue critical judicial functions. |
| Supplier insolvency | Activate escrow, documentation, data export and transition assistance. |
| Strategic exit | Transfer to another solution without losing data, records or operational knowledge. |
Practical rule. A reversibility clause that has never been tested is only a promise. The state must demonstrate that exit is technically and organisationally possible.