CREST increases the risk of errors

Thursday, July 09, 2009

HM Court Service's (HMCS) IT system has come under fire again for potentially creating a greater risk of errors and reducing the service's efficiency.

A report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found the HMCS's 20-year-old CREST case management system had been reliable, but its limited functionality could cause problems.

HMCS was criticised by the National Audit Office (NAO) in March 2009 for allowing the CREST software to become so out of date. The NAO found the software so old that some data could not be entered onto the system electronically, meaning some documents had to be posted or faxed.

PAC concurred with the NAO's view and called on HMCS to work with its IT partners to ensure that plans are made to improve the system's functionality. In particular, the report said that "as a matter of urgency" HMCS must increase the range of cases that can be automatically updated on the Police National Computer (PNC). This would reduce the risk that police investigations are hindered by poor information on court results, it said.

The committee found that it has taken £23m and five years to develop these procedures. This has been because the courts and police had to develop their IT systems first, and then work with six different IT companies to connect those systems so that information could be transferred.

HMCS has admitted to the committee that 50 per cent of Crown Court cases will still be too complex to add automatically if, for example, they have a large number of defendants. Therefore some cases will still be inputted manually as HMCS said applying automatic procedures for complex cases would have further delayed implementation.

The CREST software is being put onto modern supported software and hardware over the next two years.

Video links between courts and prisons should also increase, the report said, after HMCS said network capacity should have tripled from April 2009. Before then, the number of video links was capped at 32.

"This expansion in capacity will support additional links between the various organisations in the criminal justice system. As part of assessing the business case for buying additional video link equipment for the courts, HM Courts Service will work with HM Prison Service to examine the level of savings that could be made from reducing the movement of defendants," the report said.

Edward Leigh, chairman of PAC, said: "Court staff need efficient user-friendly IT if they are to process cases efficiently and help judges make the best use of court rooms. But the Crown Court's 20 year-old case management system has seen better days. If a case is moved from one court to another, then all the information has to be keyed into the system again. Improvements to the system's functionality are sorely needed."