Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 26
Twenty-First Report: Transforming electronic monitoring services
Published 21 Oct 2022
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Electronic Monitoring programme All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Earlier in its transformation programme, HMPPS outsourced the role of systems and services integrator to Capita, which involved pulling together suppliers’ work to deliver an end-to-end tagging service.48 In 2017, we examined earlier progress in the programme. We found that this arrangement failed as, in part, the Ministry did not have sufficient transparency of the services being delivered in other parts of the programme. We recommended that the Ministry should ensure that it puts the right skills in place to properly oversee future projects from their outset and keeps them there, particularly those being delivered by private contractors.49 In its response to our report, the Department said it was building a centralised model for its Project Delivery staff which would ensure that it has skilled resources in place for its priority projects.50 Following a dispute with Capita and financial settlement, HMPPS took on the integrator role when it restarted 43 C&AG’s report, para 4.16 44 Qq 22, 73; C&AG’s report, Figure 17 45 Q 88 46 C&AG’s report, paras 4.19 and 4.21 47 Q 83 48 Comptroller and Auditor General, The new generation electronic monitoring programme, Session 2017–2019, HC 242, 12 July 2017, para 10 49 Committee of Public Accounts, Offender-monitoring tags, Fifteenth Report of Session 2017–19, 24 January 2018, HC 458, para 2. 50 HM Treasury, Treasury Minutes, Government Response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twelfth to the Nineteenth reports from Session 2017–19, March 2018 Transforming electronic monitoring services 17 its transformation programme in 2017. The NAO found that there were shortcomings in HMPPS’s performance as integrator and it did not intervene early enough to resolve cross- supplier integration issues.51
From: Public Accounts Committee, Twenty-First Report: Transforming electronic monitoring services (HC 34), 21 October 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 14 December 2022 (deadline 21 December 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it agrees with each of the Committee's six recommendations on the Ministry of Justice's electronic monitoring services, and gives target implementation dates for five of them.
- On real-time police access to GPS data, the government agrees with the recommendation, but says police have advised that live access is not a current priority; it will "consider whether and how changes to the service can be made" should the police's view change.
- On outdated technology, remediation work has moved from December 2022 to March 2023, and system improvements "by the end of January 2023" are intended to let the GPS system cope with rising volumes.
- On evidence of impact, a benefits management strategy and realisation plan will be in place "By April 2023", and a formal evaluation strategy for electronic monitoring is being developed. The target implementation date is August 2023.
- On oversight of the expansion programme, the agency commits to write to the Committee in August 2023, once new contracts have been awarded.