Following a Ministry of Justice review the U.K. government computer system that was established to track criminal offenders is set to be dramatically scaled back.
In a written parliamentary statement, justice minister David Hanson said Tuesday that the introduction of the C-NOMIS system for the probation service is to be dropped, though it will still be rolled out to prisons, where it would “drive significant efficiencies.”
The system was originally seen as offering an end-to-end platform for the probation and prisons service, as well as justifying the creation of the National Offender Management Service. But since August last year its future has been in doubt after the justice ministry suspended development work on the project and ordered a review.
The suspension and review followed a jump in project costs from an original estimate of UK$234 million to more than 500 million.
Hanson’s statement Tuesday said the prison service would “receive a version of C-NOMIS, which will replace the existing case management system [known as LIDS].” However, no timetable for the roll-out of the system has been confirmed.
With the scaling back of the roll-out to exclude the probation service, Hanson said arrangements would be made “to allow sharing of information between prisons and probation areas through a new mechanism, ‘data share’, which will give read-only access to core case information.”
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