Courts' Libra project costs rise to almost £400m

Accenture has won a five-year £38.5m contract to implement and run the magistrates' courts case management system as part of government plans to rescue the collapse of its Libra project last year.

The latest deal brings the total cost of the project to £397m – more than double its original value. The government was forced to re-tender for the Libra contract, which was won originally in 1998 by ICL – now Fujitsu Services - for £183m over 10 years.

Problems arose with ICL's development of the national case management application as it fell 18 months behind schedule and over-budget with the cost of the deal rising to £319m with the prospect of further increases.

Last July the government was forced to scrap the deal and re-tender it in separate parts. Accenture has now won the case management portion of the Libra project, with Fujitsu retaining the infrastructure and networks element that it had as part of the original contract.

Accenture will be responsible for delivering a service using specialised software developed by STL Technologies, part of The Technologies Group, in a separate £35m five-year contract awarded earlier this year. STL is working with the courts' existing legacy software to develop the application because the government abandoned the original plans to develop a brand new case management system.

The new case management system will report case results, administer and collect fines and provide office automation facilities such as maintaining court diaries as well as enabling electronic links with other criminal justice agencies such as the police and Crown Prosecution Service.

Courts Minister Chris Leslie said the Libra project will help to speed up the time courts take to deal with offenders, provide a standardised national system for the 96 magistrates' courts and enable case information to be transferred electronically.

“Accenture will start work immediately to integrate and test the software as well as train the 11,000 courts staff. Roll out to the first of the 42 Magistrates’ Courts Committees (MCC) will begin late next year and should be implemented in all courts by the end of 2005. Accenture will also provide a Management Information System Data Warehouse which will give national statistics on MCC performance,” he said in a statement.

The first phase of the Libra Project, to roll out a national infrastructure and office automation products to all staff in the magistrates’ courts, was completed in July this year.

Anthony Miller, analyst at Ovum Holway, told silicon.com that while the contract win is very good news for Accenture the jury is still out on whether the Libra project has now been successfully rescued.

"It is a job that still needs to be done. You can't really say it is back on track until Accenture have had time to burrow into the innards and we'll have to wait until it starts," he said.