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By Joey Gardiner, 25 July 2002 17:05

NEWS ICL has been blamed for the failure of a high-profile government IT contract - the Magistrates' Courts case management system. The government is now looking for new bidders for the contract after ICL got 18 months behind schedule in its software development and tried to up its fee. Despite the delays and the time which must be spent procuring a new technology provider, the Lord Chancellor's Department today said it thinks it can get the project completed by the end of 2004, just nine months late. The government denies the foul-up will cost the taxpayer any money, because under the PFI contract the financial risk of the deal was borne by the vendor. As a result Fujitsu Services - which has now subsumed ICL - will take a financial hit conservatively estimated in the tens of millions of pounds. However, despite this, a spokesman for Fujitsu claimed he was pleased to have the issue resolved. He said: "We've kept the good relations we've built up with the government. Obviously it's not ideal but in the end the costings for this project were rising, and it is good to have this off our shoulders." Since the contract was signed, the re-branding and restructuring of ICL has seen the company move away from large software development projects, and instead focusing on infrastructure deployments. The contract in question was struck in 1998 between the Lord Chancellor's Department and ICL after the only two other bidders - EDS and Bull - pulled out of the procurement process. Originally valued at £183m, the contract had two aims - to provide a secure internet infrastructure linking magistrates courts into the criminal justice system, and to develop a case management application that would run over this. It is the second part that ICL failed to deliver. Fujitsu Services will continue to supply the hardware infrastructure for the project and associated services until 2007. In 2000 the contract, called Libra, was extended to run until 2013 and the value increased to £319m. However early in 2001 ICL - by now renamed Fujitsu Services - informed the government it was running a year behind schedule. Six months later it was running 18 months behind schedule and it said it was going to cost the department more money. Fujitsu and the government were unable to agree terms on this so the government is re-tendering the project. A spokeswoman for the Lord Chancellor's Department said: "We are assured there are tried and tested systems out in the market now that should be able to deliver this contract with minimal risk." The spokeswoman wouldn't comment on what companies it had in the frame for the new contract, but said guidelines issued since the original deal was signed would be used.