Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 11
11
Accepted in Part
The telephone system Capita uses in the live service for its operations—including contacting offenders—has been...
Conclusion
The telephone system Capita uses in the live service for its operations—including contacting offenders—has been in place since 2005. Since May 2021, there have been six 13 Q 24; C&AG’s report, paras 3.6–3.7 14 Q 36 15 Qq 33, 36 16 Qq 24, 37–38 17 C&AG’s report, paras 2.22–2.23 18 Qq 53–55; C&AG’s report, para 2.23 Transforming electronic monitoring services 11 major system failures and HMPPS told us that on one occasion the system was down for six hours overnight. HMPPS explained that it had contingency plans in place to deal with system failures and that it was not aware of an occasion when an offender had committed a serious offence while systems have been down, as all data are recovered when the system is available again.19 Insights for police forces and the Probation Service
Government Response Summary
The government is undertaking a technical refresh, including replacing tablet applications and addressing IT health check findings, but the completion date has been moved to March 2023 due to prioritising expansion of the EM service.
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
2.2 His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (the agency) has successfully completed the first stages of technical refresh, including replacing obsolete field officer tablet applications and addressing IT health check findings. Further remediation work, including migration to the cloud and replacing the telephony system, enters the testing phase at the end of November 2022. 2.3 The scheduled delivery date for completing planned remediation work has moved from December 2022 to March 2023. This has in part been caused by decisions to prioritise systems development required to deliver the public commitment to expand the Electronic Monitoring (EM) service. These decisions have been taken through appropriate governance, following engagement with relevant stakeholders and suppliers. Delivery of the planned