CJS performance system launched nationally

The Office for Criminal Justice Reform today launched a new secure performance management IT system that will support the Criminal Justice System in delivering an improved service to the public in England and Wales.

CJ Know-How brings together information from many sources including police, prosecutor and court databases. The web-based application allows users to measure performance in a range of ways, for instance how well victims of crime are informed about their cases and how long a case takes to reach court.

The application allows staff to run virtual business models to see how changing the way criminal justice agencies handle cases can improve the system locally. It also enables staff to share their experiences and best practice with other areas.

In Cumbria for example, CJ Know-How has been used to identify the use of Conditional Cautions as a means of providing local victims and offenders with a faster and more effective outcome. Such cautions are given to offenders on admission of the offence instead of charging and prosecuting them. The CJ Know-How application in Cumbria demonstrated that the use of these cautions freed up courts to deal with more serious cases and saved local criminal justice agencies almost £100,000 per year to spend elsewhere on tackling and reducing crime.

Home Office Minister for Crime Reduction, Vernon Coaker, said:
“A professional performance system may seem a world away from a local police officer in your street. But that officer is part of an integrated Criminal Justice System and CJ Know-How will greatly support that officer to work seamlessly with thousands of colleagues supporting him or her to protect the public.”

The Solicitor General, Vera Baird QC, said:
“CJ Know-How collects more information, faster, and puts it to more use. It saves many thousands of hours of staff time across the Criminal Justice System in collecting performance data and has already reduced the time-lag for access to live data across the whole System from three months to one month. It is only right that we have a highly professional performance management system to support the very human face of helping victims and witnesses and dealing effectively with offenders.”

Justice Minister Lord Hunt, said:
“To reduce re-offending, we have to carefully manage how we deal with offenders from the point of arrest to when their sentence finishes and beyond. CJ Know-How will help criminal justice agencies to work closely together to identify what methods are successful and to share that success.”

Logica and Northgate Information Solutions are working together to provide the IT expertise behind CJ Know-How.

Commenting, Juanita Taliadouros, Managing Director Public Sector, Logica UK, said:
 “Logica is delighted that CJ Know-How has already led to tangible operational improvements within the Criminal Justice System. This is an excellent example of public and private sectors working together collaboratively and effectively to deliver tangible outcomes. 

Ian, Blackhurst, Managing Director of Criminal Justice & Public Safety for Northgate Public Services said: “We are committed to building innovative partnerships with the public sector to provide safer and stronger communities and supporting the needs of victims and witnesses. CJ Know–How  demonstrates how information can be used intelligently by the criminal justice agencies to improve performance and provide quality and continuously improving services to the public.”

NOTES TO EDITORS:

1. For further information, please contact:

For Criminal Justice System:
Peter Morris, Office for Criminal Justice Reform
(020) 7035 8734
peter.morris5@cjs.gsi.gov.uk

For Logica:
Pam Taylor
Tel: 07894 603910
Email: pam.taylor@logica.com

Nadia Boodram
Tel: 020 7446 4152
Email: nadia.boodram@logica.com

For Northgate Information Solutions:
Kathy Sutton, Fellows’ Associates
(020) 7849 3403
ksutton@fellowsassociates.com

2. The Following Factsheets accompany this press release to help you to write your story:

Factsheet 1 – what is the Criminal Justice System?
Factsheet 2 – what is CJ Know-How?
Factsheet 3 – how was CJ Know-How developed?
Factsheet 4 – our suppliers, Logica and Northgate
Factsheet 5 – case study of CJ Know-How being used

FACT SHEET PART 1 – WHAT IS THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM (CJS)?
The CJS in England and Wales is the responsibility of three government departments - the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General's Office. Together they oversee the government's drive to improve the CJS and coordinate the work of the following public services; police; prosecution; courts, probation and prison officers, and; youth offending services.

Criminal justice also involves others, most notably judges, magistrates and defence lawyers who play a vital and independent role in the criminal justice process. Some services and initiatives within the CJS are run by a number of voluntary groups like Victim Support and the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO).

At local level, the work of the Criminal Justice agencies is co-ordinated by 42 Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJBs) in England and Wales. They are based on police force areas. Membership comprises chief officers of police, Crown Prosecution Service, HM Courts Service, Youth Offending Teams, prisons and probation. LCJBs focus on improving the effectiveness of the CJS and supporting the delivery of key targets and reform.

FACT SHEET 2 – WHAT IS CJ KNOW-HOW?
CJ Know-How is a secure web-based system which provides users with data on the performance of the criminal justice system at England and Wales and local level. It hosts data on performance across the whole of the CJS process, from recorded crimes, through court outcomes and timeliness, to sentences and enforcement.

Access is password controlled, and is restricted to performance management specialists in organisations across the CJS. There are currently around 1,000 registered users of the system.

A strategic forum will allow areas across England and Wales to share good and bad experiences to help each other develop reforms that will be appropriate and successful in individual areas and avoid unnecessary repeating of prototype testing.

The heaviest users of the system are performance officers at the 42 Local Criminal Justice Boards across England and Wales. It is being increasingly used by performance officers at individual criminal justice organisations to direct strategy and delivery of particular initiatives including youth justice management, offender assessment and No Witness No Justice, a programme which aims to improve support and attendance of witnesses in criminal cases.

The suppliers of the CJ Know-How platform are Logica and Northgate Public Services. The cost of the platform is around £7.2 million.

What are the benefits?

As a performance management system, CJ Know-How is intended to allow both monetary and non-monetary improvements to be identified and evaluated across the Criminal Justice System. Those improvements actually take place elsewhere in the CJS so it is impossible to quantify the overall benefits that the platform can provide. Anecdotal feedback across the Criminal Justice System is that the logical benefits derived will be of much greater overall value than the outlay.

Specific benefits directly brought about by CJ Know-How include:

• Many thousands of hours of staff time at LCJBs and at criminal justice organisations is being saved because data no longer has to be collected from many sources.
• This time can now instead be spent on analysing the information and focussing on ways to improve performance.
• Data is collected quicker and at a consistent rate across the Criminal Justice System in all areas. The time lag for live data has been reduced from 3 months to 1 month in any area.
• The platform reduces the need for additional performance management systems to be built to link disparate parts of the Criminal Justice System, for example local authority and health members who are part of local youth justice services.
• The breadth and detail of available performance management information has improved as other performance systems become linked in.

FACT SHEET 3 – HOW WAS CJ KNOW-HOW DEVELOPED?
When LCJBs were established in 2003, a tactical response to this pressing business
requirement was the launch of the Joint Performance Information Tool.

JPIT demonstrated user demand for a single source of cross-CJS performance management information, and a year after its launch was averaging 1,000 log-ins per
month.

JPIT met some of the initial needs of users but was constrained in terms of the amounts of data it could hold, the depth of analysis it supported and growing demands for more sophisticated analysis and diagnostics.

Therefore a cross CJS management information system prototype approach was established. This quickly put together a working cross-CJ MIS to evaluate the potential for improving performance management and decision-making, and to test out the benefits, risks, opportunities and threats involved in delivering management information to support joined up justice to feed into a bid for funding for a ‘full strength’ CJ MIS.

Procurement for the CJ MIS Prototype began in July 2005 and a contract was awarded to Logica in partnership with Northgate Information Solutions in October 2005.  A prototype system was deployed for an initial pilot with 8 Local Criminal Justice Boards and 2 Regional Offender Managers in March 2006. 

In October 2006, the prototype was rolled out to national pilot with all LCJBs, local and central CJO performance analysts and managers, all Regional Offender Managers and their performance management teams and a range of central analysts and PSA target delivery teams. The purpose of the national pilot was to translate the support of users and the agreed benefits of the system into a business case for the procurement of a full-strength system.

The national pilot received extremely positive feedback from users. In 2007, a successful business case was prepared and agreed with all CJS agencies for the procurement of a 4-year contract for the development and delivery of a full-strength system.

In June 2007, following a positive return on investment assessment and proving services review, a joint-CJS submission proposing the procurement received ministerial approval. Following competitive tender, a contract was awarded to the developers of the prototype, Logica in partnership with Northgate Information Solutions.

Since June 2007, the development of the full-strength system focused not only on embedding and enhancing the range of data and functionality to meet user requirements, but also user demand for capacity to share effective practice and knowledge as part of the performance management process. The feedback and requirements from users at all levels in the CJS fed directly into the development of the full-strength system.

In April 2008, the prototype was replaced by the new full-strength system, entitled Criminal Justice Know-How.

FACT SHEET 4 – OUR SUPPLIERS

About Logica

Logica is a leading IT and business services company, employing 39,000 people across 36 countries. It provides business consulting, systems integration, and IT and business process outsourcing services.  Logica works closely with its customers to release their potential - enabling change that increases their efficiency, accelerates growth and manages risk.  It applies its deep industry knowledge, technical excellence and global delivery expertise to help its customers build leadership positions in their markets. Logica is listed on both the London Stock Exchange and Euronext (Amsterdam) (LSE: LOG; Euronext: LOG). More information is available at www.logica.com

About Northgate

Northgate Information Solutions is a leading provider of innovative services to the public sector and utilities markets. Northgate’s task is to enhance public value through the intelligent use of people and technology, and to share in the economic and social benefits that this brings.  In the UK, the company works with four out of five local authorities and every police force. Northgate supports public service transformation through sustainable performance partnerships. Its technology is used in the administration of more than £12 billion of revenues and benefits; in electoral administration systems covering 18 million people; to support the national system for reporting police performance; and in the management of over three million local authority and housing association properties worldwide. Founded in 1969, the company has over 6,000 employees.

FACT SHEET 5 - CASE STUDY - CUMBRIA
Cumbria is England’s third largest county so managing its Criminal Justice System has to be achieved over comparatively large distances. Performance management information has to be collected from three separate Basic Command Unit areas covering the north, west and south of the county. It also has to be collected from police, prosecutors, courts, probation and youth offending services.

Cumbria Criminal Justice Board’s Business Manager Paul Bradley says: “It used to vary between agencies and areas as to how up to date performance management information was.

“ If one set of information relates to one month ago, and another to three months ago, it makes it difficult to get a ‘snapshot’ of how well you are doing, or what difference a new initiative is making.

“But CJ Know-How provides more timely information. It saves staff time and costs in collecting the information and the quality and timeliness of data is improved. Better information, coupled with the functionality to run that information through professional business management models, is providing real benefits for the people of Cumbria.

“CJ Know-How allows us access to cross agency performance data, which then enables us to have a snapshot of the entire criminal justice process from the reporting of a crime through to charging, trial and conviction. We can see where there is unnecessary duplication and where some parts of the process are slowing down others, and predict how making changes will affect the system.

“We looked at what would happen if more people who want to plead guilty are able to at their first hearing, rather than waiting for evidence to be prepared that they will not be disputing anyway. Not all cases can be dealt with so simply, but for many it is simply common sense to try and it is in the victim’s interest for the matter to be dealt with expeditiously.

“The Simple Speedy and Summary Justice (CJSSS) Project, delivered over the last two years was intended to speed up the criminal justice process, particularly the effectiveness of the first hearing at court. A better quality, proportionate file was required to obtain a plea at first hearing, and this required some additional effort from the police. However the data available on CJ Know-How, and its predecessor CJ MIS provided us with the evidence to show the effect of those changes.

“CJ Know-How tells us that these changes are now saving around £750,000 of staff time per year, shared across the Police, Courts and Crown Prosecution Service. This represents a significant amount of staff time which can be reinvested in the system to provide a more efficient service.”