Scottish justice system to invest over £10m in IT

The Scottish justice system is to invest up to £12 million over the next five years in its core IT systems, improving its case management system which is used to pursue over 300,000 criminal prosecutions and suspicious deaths each year north of the border.

The system is central to every criminal prosecution mounted in Scotland and is used by some 500 lawyers and 1,000 administration staff across all 47 sites of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS).

The COPFS system exchanges data with external systems to support the Scottish police forces, courts, victim support groups, defence lawyers plus links to UK and international security and law enforcement agencies.

The five-year contract, one of the largest ever signed by COPFS, has been awarded to supplier Capgemini and is expected to be worth at least £10-12 million over that period.

The firm will work with COPFS to improve the availability, reliability and cost-effectiveness of this system, but will then move to deliver a new platform in a transformation programme designed to provide users with a faster and more streamlined service.

“Our IT applications are vital for every step of every prosecution we undertake,” said Peter Collings, deputy chief executive.