Public at risk from violent and sex offenders register IT delay

Public safety is being put at risk by delays to Probation Service plans to create a national harm register that would monitor paedophiles and violent offenders in the community.

An interim report by the HM Inspectorate of Probation said there are "serious concerns" about the delay to what is one of the key recommendations of a previous highly critical Inspectorate report in 2000.

The plan is to develop a joint police and probation system called ViSOR (violent and sex offender register) and an interface with the probation service's system that assesses the likelihood of re-offending. It will not now be ready until at least 2004 and the report even questions whether it will be of any use nationally because of security and access issues.

"It is not yet clear that the system (in view of security and affordability issues) will be available to staff in all probation offices. If it is not, this could limit its usefulness as a comprehensive national register," said the report. "We are concerned that this key recommendation – of high importance to public protection management – will not be in place until at best four years after the recommendation."

Further delays to data extraction tools for the Case Record and Management System (Crams) were also criticised in the report.

The delays in acting upon previous recommendations by the Inspectorate have also been flagged as an area for concern that should be investigated further.

"We fully acknowledge the time required to make sound IT developments and welcome the progress in the last two years. Nonetheless, IT developments generally appear to us to take a long time, particularly in the public sector. The substantial time required for IT developments in the public sector is of concern and it would be useful to identify reasons for it," said the report.

Another factor identified as hindering the Information and Technology Group (ITC) of the National Probation Directorate (NPD) is the inability to recruit skilled staff quickly enough. This has led to a dependence on consultants and temporary contractors, said the report.

Although the report was widely critical, it acknowledged there has been progress in establishing the foundation for a coherent IT programme, more closely aligning IT developments to the business requirements of the probation service, and improvements to the OASys system for assessing offenders' likelihood of re-offending.

Responding to the report, Eithne Wallis, director general of the National Probation Service said in a statement: "Given the backdrop of major change for the probation service, including the formation of the National Probation Service in 2001, we have worked hard to make progress in building IT systems that enable us to better supervise offenders, and serve the courts and victims. We will take on the recommendations of the Inspectorate's report to ensure that we make the best possible use of information technology."