Written question asked by Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat) on Wednesday, 23 February 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 3 March 2005. It was answered by Baroness Harman (Labour) on Thursday, 3 March 2005 on behalf of the Solicitor General.

Solicitor-General

Question: To ask the Solicitor General, how the £600 million set aside for case management information technology in the Crown Prosecution Service referred to in the document Justice For All (2002) has been spent. - Includes figures.

Answer: Mr. Oaten: To ask the Solicitor-General how the £600 million set aside for case management information technology in the Crown Prosecution Service referred to in the document Justice For All (2002) has been spent. [218854] The Solicitor-General: The £600 million in paragraph 9.47 of the White Paper "Justice for All", was allocated for modernisation of all Criminal Justice System information technology, not for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) alone. The CPS has paid £56.41 million since 1 January 2002 under its 10-year public finance initiative for its Case Management System COMPASS and for legacy system support. COMPASS was delivered on time, to specification and within budget. It has improved the way the Crown Prosecution Service works by: reducing paper handling, increasing focus on operational priorities; providing an infrastructure which facilitates enhanced communication with other criminal justice agencies. Over two million cases are registered on COMPASS with over 4,000 users accessing the system daily. It has delivered its contribution to the CJS IT targets and is the IT system selected to support the No Witness, No Justice initiative.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 431 c1332W;431 c1326W; 218854
Session: 2004-05
Subjects: Databases Administration of justice Crown Prosecution Service Finance ICT
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk