HC Deb 13 January 2004 vol 416 cc683-4W
Mr. Sayeed

To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs if he will list information technology contracts in his Department with a value of above £20 million in each of the last 10 years; what the inception date for each system was; when it became fully functional; when it became fully debugged; and what the cost of over-runs has been. [146198]

Mr. Leslie

The information for my Department is as follows:

LOCCS (various court-based IT systems)

The EDS (LOGCS) contract was awarded to EDS in September 1996, to provide IT systems to Crown and county courts. The lifetime cost of the contract is assessed at £210 million.

The initial rollout of equipment to courts was completed in August 2001. The contract was fully functional from award. The contract includes provisions to test software prior to release, and to fix software 'bugs' which are attributable to supplier software.

The LOCCS rollout was completed to time, and subsequent major work programmes have been delivered to time.

A major provision of new IT equipment to the Crown Court (and those county courts co-located with crown court buildings) under the LOCCS contract was agreed in 2003. This is part of the Government's commitment to modernising the Criminal Justice System. This programme of change had replaced the equipment and significantly enhanced the IT functionality available at 31 Crown and County Court centres by the end of 2003 and is on schedule to be completed in all of the 109 sites within scope by 2006. An extension to this rollout of a further 59 stand alone county courts is being planned. These additional sites will also be completed in 2006.

ARAMIS (Resource Accounting and Management Information System)

This is a PFI contract for the provision of accounting, financial, HR/payroll and management information services. It was awarded in December 1997 and runs until January 2007. Its current anticipated life-time cost is £207.7 million, which includes enhancements to the service during 2003.

Most services have IT elements and are delivered across an IT infrastructure provided through the contract. However, the IT system elements of the contract are not separated out from the main business functions. All the services are being provided within the lifetime of the contract, and major work programmes have been delivered to time. Debugging of the IT system elements is a process which continues through the lifetime of the contract.

Libra (magistrates' courts IT systems)

The original contract with Fujitsu Systems for Libra included provision for infrastructure and Office Automation, a bespoke case management software application and systems integration.

This contract with Fujitsu Services for the delivery of Libra has been varied twice since it was awarded in December 1998. This has resulted in changes to the baseline making it inappropriate to compare spend to date across an original and two variants of the contract. The actual spend against the original contract can be summarised as follows: Original ICL Contract December 1998: Total contracted charges expected to arise over contract life of 10.5 years—£184million Negotiated ICL Contract May 2000: Total contracted charges expected to arise over contract life of 14.5 years—£319 million Negotiated Fujitsu Services Contract July 2002: Total contract charges expected to arise over contract life of 8.5 years—£232 million Total contracted charges paid by year ending December 2003—£127 million

Libra is now being sourced through three separate contracts, one to provide the underlying infrastructure and Office Automation Services, one to supply a new case management application and the third to deploy that application and integrate all systems. These include, where necessary, provisions to test the software and to fix any "bugs" which are attributable to supplier software prior to release.

The contract signed with Fujitsu Services in July 2002 included the provision of Libra infrastructure and Office Automation only. The roll-out of these was successfully completed in September 2003.

A further contract was signed with STL in January 2003 for £37 million to provide a case management software application. The first release of this application is due in November 2004 with two further enhancements to be completed before November 2005. STL will continue to provide support and enhancement services through to 2008.

A contract was also signed with Accenture in October 2003 for £38 million to deploy the new application to the Magistrates' courts (planned completion by the end of 2005) and to provide on-going systems integration services through to 2008.