MoJ set for £2.9bn upgrade to electronic tagging system

Upgrade to include ability to track offenders using GPS

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is set to embark on a £2.94bn upgrade of the electronic tagging system, which will involve deploying radio frequency technology to roughly 25,000 offenders at any one time.

The electronic monitoring service is used to impose curfews on offenders in England and Wales, and forms a central tenet of the government's 2010 Green Paper on rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders.

The new electronic monitoring service will enhance local police's ability to track the whereabouts of those wearing tags, providing local law enforcement with a greater degree of flexibility in imposing curfews.

For example, GPS and satellite tracking of tags could be used to ban an offender under curfew from attending football matches.

The contract for the new monitoring service is split in to four distinct lots: the establishment of a monitoring service including a processing centre and the deployment of related computer hardware and software, along with field staff; monitoring and mapping software; the electronic tags and supporting firmware; and the network, which includes mobile provision, for tracking the tags.

The monitoring service contract could run for up to nine years and be worth as much as £2.32bn, while the other lots are worth less and will only run for three years, with an option to extend by a further three.

The successful bidder will be expected to deliver a project closely aligned with the MoJ's Future IT Strategy (Fits) - under which IT outsourcing contracts will be split in to specific functional towers.

The first Fits-related contracts are expected to be awarded some time in 2013.

Meanwhile, bidders for the monitoring service contract have until mid-March to subject their proposals.

The MoJ has been under pressure to conduct a wide-ranging review of IT provision since the National Audit Office complained that its multiple data systems were undermining management's ability to monitor spending.