Whitehall finalises criminal justice IT

Multimillion-pound deals with Steria and Fujitsu seal joined-up justice plans

The government has signed two multimillion-pound deals for the IT system at the heart of plans for joined-up criminal justice.

Once the Exchange system is up and running it will act as a secure hub through which the seven criminal justice system (CJS) agencies will be able to share case information. It should be in place by March 2008.

An application development contract, worth tens of millions of pounds over its four-year life, has been signed with Steria, while a hosting contract has been signed with Fujitsu for £17m.

The deals were due to be completed six months ago, but the delays do not necessarily suggest problems, says Mike Davis, senior analyst at Butler Group.

‘Exchange is the core of the whole programme, so if they do not get this bit right the rest of it falls apart,’ he said.

‘These contracts are under great scrutiny, and the government has taken the time to get it right because it can’t afford a failure. So it may be that the slight delays bode well.’

The first organisations to use the Exchange are likely to be the Courts Service and the newly merged prison and probation services, the National Offender Management Service (Noms).

The Courts Service’s Xhibit system, which automatically relays court hearing information to relevant organisations such as the police, has been rolled out to 26 of the 43 regions, and is due for completion in March 2006. As part of the Noms merger, the Home Office last month signed a £39m deal with EDS for a common infrastructure providing a single view of offenders, from sentence to custody to probation.

The challenge for CJIT will be people issues, says Ovum analyst John O’Brien.
‘CJIT has to get cohesion across the different bodies involved, and that will be difficult because all seven organisations will have their own agenda,’ he said.