UK court system gets high-tech revamp

An ICL-led consortium has secured a £183m contract to provide 96 UK Magistrates Courts Committees (MCC) with IT systems and services.

The consortium was chosen to provide Microsoft and Oracle-based systems by the Lord Chancellor's Department. ICL won the deal under the Private Finance Initiative scheme.

Working alongside Unisys, Project Libra will take two to three years to design and build and will run until 2009.

Peter Farr, spokesman at the Lord Chancellor's Department, said: "The move will provide improved systems that deal with 95 per cent of criminal justice in England and Wales. The key part to this scheme, apart from the upgrade, is the compatibility of systems across different agencies such as the police and Crown Prosecution Service."

Many aspects of court life will be covered by the project, such as preparation of cases, scheduling of court hearings plus fine accounting and enforcement. Five hundred courthouses and offices will be also connected to a national helpdesk service.