Joined-up justice inches closer

An extra £650m to streamline criminal justice IT signals a firm commitment to technology at the heart of public sector reform.

It fulfils Tony Blair's promise last month for 'major investment in IT' to combat the reality that 'many of our criminal justice IT systems are still in the dark ages'.

The ambitious technology programme to lead the sector into the future is under the auspices of parliamentary under secretary for criminal justice systems (CJS) IT Michael Wills and a Home Office taskforce set up last December.

The ultimate aim is a single electronic case file accessible to the police, the courts, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the prison and probation services.

Web services technology and existing interoperability standards will be used to join up the multitude of legacy systems in a programme spanning at least the next three years.

Phase one, due to be in place by the end of next year, is a secure email system between the different agencies. Phase two is a central data exchange for sharing information between agencies. And phase three is the Virtual Unified Case File, due in 2005.

Extra funding is welcome but the key to success will be effective programme management, says Jeremy Barnett, chairman of the IT panel for the Bar Council.

'We are broadly supportive of any attempts to introduce IT into the criminal justice process.

'The only concern is that we solve the underlying business process issues that exist in the individual agencies.

'There is a danger this programme is building from the top down - putting the IT infrastructure in place and then encouraging the agencies to use it - rather than resolving the issues in the agencies, engaging the profession and then building the systems from the bottom upwards.'

Tim Conway, director of industry affairs at supplier body Intellect, said: 'There is now a recognition that information processing and management are key to effective administration and service delivery, particularly within government. This takes money and the government hasn't really faced up to it until now.'