£500m Libra courts IT project fiasco

The cost of Libra, the project to modernise the IT used by the UK's magistrates' courts, has increased again.

A Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing yesterday saw Conservative MP Richard Bacon quiz Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) accounting officer Alex Allan about the system's rollout timeline and jump in price, to close to £500m.

The latest increases in cost are down to a pricier core application, higher internal project costs and "enhancements made" such as new interfaces to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency for the exchange of information.

The original cost of the project - awarded to ICL, now Fujitsu Services, as a 10-year PFI deal starting back in 1998 - was £184m. This figure had increased to almost £400m by 2003, with the PAC calling the project the worst it had seen.

Under questioning, Allan said rollout should be complete by March 2008. Trials start next week at a local level, with full national rollout from October this year.

He also said there will be a consolidation of contracts, across the whole of the DCA and the courts system, down to two - one covering infrastructure and the other applications. The tendering process has already begun.

At the moment Fujitsu Services has Libra, the software part of which has been handled by Accenture, delivering technology from STL Technologies, since 2003. EDS runs crown and county court infrastructure and applications, Liberata handles the DCA's headquarter's network and applications, and Cable & Wireless is used for web hosting.

The DCA was not available for comment.