No replacement yet for £10m High Court IT failure
Justice officials have admitted they cannot say when a new computer system will replace a £10m failed attempt to upgrade IT in the High Court.
The Electronic Working System, designed to speed up cases in the Royal Courts of Justice, was ditched in March after what HM Courts & Tribunals Service called ‘serious issues with the quality of the core system’. According to a response to a freedom of information request, the eWorking system cost £9.33m to set up and a further £343,754 to close down.
HMCTS said the shutdown has now been completed after computer memories were securely wiped and new procedures put in place.
The department confirmed there are ‘no plans at the moment’ to implement an electronic working system as envisaged under the original project. A spokeswoman said: ‘Planning for an e-filing project is ongoing and we are not able to say when a new system will be introduced.’
The eWorking system was implemented in 2009 to improve the flow of information from court users across the Royal Courts of Justice by allowing them to submit files electronically. HMCTS said the system was designed in-house with the help of a number of specialist freelance contractors. Initial good progress was made, but over the final 18 months of the project take-up fell dramatically, with less than 1% of cases filed electronically in the first half of 2011.
The HMCTS board agreed on 30 March this year to cease further work on the system and to begin the process of decommissioning.
The failure of an electronic working system comes less than a year after the RCJ moved to the £300m Rolls Building, a state-of-the-art facility designed to become a world centre of dispute resolution.
Tony Guise, chairman of the Commercial Litigation Association, said the withdrawal of the system was ‘hugely disappointing’ but he remained hopeful a replacement could be found soon.
‘This has been needed for something like 20 years and it’s more urgent than ever now,’ he said. ‘There is competition from other jurisdictions - Dubai has a system in place and New York has something similar.
‘The shutdown was regrettable but frankly the writing had been on the wall for some time.
‘The positive thing is that [shutdown] is now behind us and the judiciary, civil service and the profession can find a solution for something everybody supports. I think it will be delivered sooner rather than later.’
Comments
Astonishing
So £10 million pound has been wasted on a rubbish computer system? Who is going to be losing his/her job over this fiasco?
I am quite sure that the
I am quite sure that the contract for the installation provided for a total refund by the installer if the system failed to work.
What contract? The project
What contract? The project was in-house, the contractors won't have had enough control to bear responsibility for overall failure.
I suppose it saves an IT firm from making a bit of profit on the work from HMCTS but precludes any guarantee or warranty.
Accountability
Good article but there are still more questions than answers.
It is the usual trap that
It is the usual trap that middle management - overawed in wonder by powerpoint projections by IT people - ALWAYS make.
They design a system for the IT department. It is designed by the IT department. And it has a bit of input from the court staff.
Any proper system would of course be designed by - and for - the people who would actually USE it, i.e. the solicitors.
And it is obvious, little things. For example, "electronic working" consisted of going on a website, and downloading bespoke versions of the court forms, which then can be typed using PDF. Of course most people using PDF use Adobe Acrobat on MS Windows, which doesn't allow the typed information to be saved (unless you buy a more expensive version).
And the bespoke form is - by definition - not integrated into the case management system.
And then there are questions such as "who is going to type these forms?" "who is going to submit them?" "who is going to track them?". I think the IT people thought the solicitor / partner dealing with the case would do that, but that isn't practical.
I am a County Court Bulk Centre user, and the system they use is ancient (in IT terms) and kludged together with lots of Heath Robinson esque bits and bobs. But it does at least work. Not ideally, but it works.
However, we received an email a few months ago that they are going to change it, to an "XML" based system. Why? The only reason I can fathom is that some IT consultant has heard that "XML" is better. Other than that, there is no reason.
The PI Portal is another example of a poorly designed system which was clearly created based on the case handling systems used by Insurance companies, with little or no thought as to the poor people on the Claimant side who would actually have to use it.
You mean we should design our sites for the users' convenience?
"Any proper system would of course be designed by - and for - the people who would actually USE it"
Yep, but that seems to be beneath the consideration of senior management and beyond the comprehension of the rest of the staff. Have you tried negotiating Local Authority, Hospital and similar websites without any understanding of the structure of these bodies?
What a waste
The public sector is constantly wasting money on systems that they do not need and do not use. They should be made more accountable for such expenditure and people should be held responsible for causing such expenses to be incurred.
A mistake - but learn from it
The courts and lawyers need better technology going forwards. This looks like a shambles because it wasn't well enough thought through at the outset - or people haven't been responsive enough to get things back on track when it was going wrong.
Rather than sink the project - find out what went wrong, involve the right people and technologies to get it right ... and do it right. Lawyers will only suffer if they don't.
The thing is - the right
The thing is - the right technologies aren't rocket science.
Lets say you want to allow electronic court forms such as Claim Forms, Particulars of Claim and the like.
You could have:-
1) An IT manager's wet dream, consisting of XML based data entry portal, using a bespoke javascript based website to generate the data, which is then transferred using HTTP and can be monitored using a database bridge website in real time.
In order to pay the court fees, you create an account with HMCTS's preferred payment services provider, who allocate you a unique reference number. After you have issued the claim through the portal, you email the accounts team at the court with you reference number. They then check with Liberata whether the account is on hold, and Liberate come back and authorise the transaction.
Liberata then debit your account and require the money. If the money is not paid, a stop is placed and they notify the court, who then cancel the process.
Otherwise the court staff then generate the data and print it out and post it to whomever it will go.
or
2) Do what everybody else does in the real world. You create your document (however it is created is irrelevant - even if it is written in ball point pen on a peice of paper, you can scan it in afterwards). You then email it to the court office. They then process it and email it out, or (if necessary, let's say the other party is a litigant in person) print it out and post it.
The court's caseman system invoices you automatically, and emails you the invoice. You then pay by return, by electronic BACS, FasterPayments or even PayPal. If you don't then the court stop your process.
if you are bothered about email being unsecure, use the CJSM Secure Email system (which is itself a Kludge and an IT Managers dream project but does work - eventually), or better still use out of the box secure email using security certificates which functionality is included in every email program even though nobody uses it.
As ever, using option 1 is what would happen in the real world and the price tag would be millions, even though option 2 would be better and could be implemented within a week without spending more than a few thousand pounds on training.