It has
emerged that the Probation and Prison Services are set to merge,
despite their poor IT track records and the lack of a unified case
management system.
The move that
would herald the creation of a unified correctional service follows
a joint Home Office/Downing Street review of the services by
businessman Patrick Carter.
Both services have
recently come under fire for their IT shortcomings. In September,
government inspectors criticised Probation Service IT for the
second time in three years, highlighting the inadequacy of the
Service’s Crams case management system.
Prison IT also has
a chequered history. In 1998, the service’s Quantum project, which
aimed to provide staff with access to modern IT facilities, was put
on hold on for 17 months. Last September, the Commons’ Public
Accounts Committee found that inadequate IT was slowing down the
Prison Service’s attempts to modernise its procurement
strategy.
Harry Fletcher,
assistant general secretary of the National Association of
Probation Officers, warned that the Probation Service must resolve
the long-standing problems with its case management system if a
merger is to be successful.
“If this merger is
going to work successfully, then probation has got to sort out the
fiasco of its case management system, which has been a major
problem for over a decade now,” he said.
September’s
interim review by the Inspectorate of Probation found that there
were still problems with the Probation Service’s Crams system,
which led to threats of industrial action by staff in 2002.
The report found
that arrangements for extracting data from Crams “are not
straightforward for operational staff”. However, inspectors also
found that the ground is being laid for future IT developments.
Both the Probation
and Prison Services have signed major IT deals over the past few
years to support their modernisation agendas.
In 2000, the
Prison Service signed a £200m, 10-year deal with EDS for the
provision of IT infrastructure services. The following year, the
National Probation Directorate signed a £50m contract with systems
integrator Steria.
Last year Tony Blair admitted that many of the UK’s criminal
justice IT systems are “still in the dark ages” and the government
allocated £1bn to modernising technology across the sector.