The government's information technology and the courts committee (ITAC) got a new leader last week in the form of Lord Justice David Neuberger, who replaces Lord Saville.

Professor Richard Susskind, who has been the Lord Chief Justice's IT adviser since 1998, has also been appointed co-chairman.


Though ITAC is fundamentally a talking-shop, it does have a networking and leadership capacity and can influence decisions on what kind of IT systems are adopted in courts in England and Wales.


ITAC is pegged as promoting 'effective and consistent use of IT in courts and tribunals', but few involved in using the systems in question would describe them all as being effective or consistent.


Though some projects have been successful, such as the LINK system for judges, others have suffered from being developed in isolation, or have been superseded while in development. The ePOC conferencing element of the so-called judicial portal is a year late, and the LIBRA system for magistrates' courts continues to grind slowly onwards to roll-out.


Sir David is the current judge in charge of modernisation, and as such has had his finger on the pulse of IT system development for the courts for some time. It is hoped that the new leadership team will reinvigorate ITAC and help it gain more clout with the government, influencing its plans more effectively as a result.


The committee also includes representatives from the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Bar Council, the Law Society, and the Society for Computers and Law.


According to some, similar problems remain as when the committee was first set up back in 1985. In November 2004, Lord Justice Brooke gave a grim view of the patchy nature of IT development for civil courts in a speech to the Society of Advanced Legal Studies, saying: 'It is foolish for one part of the system... to design its IT systems as if they are in an oasis... we founded the IT and the courts committee to take forward this message, but nobody listened.'