Courts' IT system under fire

20-year-old Crest system still requires information to be re-keyed, says NAO

The Courts' system is 20 years' old

The Crown Courts Service is still using a 20-year-old case management system running on Oracle software that is no longer supported by its manufacturer, and its replacement has been halted for reasons of "affordability", according to the National Audit Office (NAO).

An NAO report concluded there are "operational risks" from continuing to use the Crest system, due to be "replatformed", particularly because it requires information to be re-keyed when cases are transferred between courts.

The NAO also criticised the courts XHIIBIT system - designed to provide real-time information on the progress of hearings to interested parties outside the courtroom and record the outcome of proceedings - because it has proved too inflexible to cope with changes in forms required by legislation.

The report said the Crown Courts Service "now needs to minimise security operational risks by ensuring that Crest runs on modern and supported software and hardware as soon as practicable".

It urged the Crown Courts Service service to give priority to enabling electronic transfer of data across systems, subject to data security controls.

"In this day and age, it is extraordinary that if a case is moved from one court to another, then all of the information has to be typed in again from scratch," said Commons Public Accounts Committee chairman Edward Leigh.

Tory shadow justice minister Henry Bellingham said the report was "very worrying" with heightened dangers of error from manual re-entry of data.

"If the progress or outcome of a trial is mis-recorded, then offenders may receive the wrong sentence or even avoid court altogether," he said.