Systems overhaul for court IT

The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) is looking to improve the use of technology at courts with a new IT infrastructure programme.

The government department responsible for the justice system, said the way its existing contracts had been put together was holding back its use of IT. It wants to replace contracts as they expire with the Disc Programme.

"The legacy of the responsibility splits between the contracts can inhibit the most effective and efficient use of information and resources," a DCA procurement document notes. "Changes in technology have proven difficult to apply consistently."

The department currently has contracts covering IT infrastructure, business applications, finance and accounting and human resources services, which expire between September 2006 and September 2008.

The 10-year Disc contract is currently broken into two lots: the first to migrate existing services to a new infrastructure service that can support 25,000 desktops spread across 700 sites throughout the UK - such as headquarters, courts and local offices.

The second lot seeks a supplier for the Disc Application Service, which will take responsibility for the support and maintenance of existing IT applications - such as problem resolution, configuration management and release management.

The provider of the service will make those applications available as a managed service - either accessible from the infrastructure service or hosted directly by the infrastructure service provider. The DCA said there are 70 current applications within the scope of the deal, with more than 50 considered to be business critical.

Some applications are used by as few as 10 users, while others are used by over 4,500, it said.