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MoJ restarts troubled £250m National Offender management ICT system

Yes, again. Department on track to become IT basketcase

The rollout of the Ministry of Justice's troubled £250m National Offender Management IT system was restarted again earlier this year - The Register can reveal.

The Cabinet Office's body for monitoring costly programmes - the Major Projects Authority - has already flagged the project as red, meaning successful delivery of the project is extremely unlikely.

Earlier this year and the main rollout activities were paused between August and December 2014 "whilst significant performance issues were investigated and corrected." The programme was then restarted.

However, further operational service issues in March 2015 led to an independent review by Deloitte.

A Freedom of Information request sent to The Register confirmed that a decision was taken to restart the rollout in late June 2015.

The project began in 2011 and was originally due to be completed in October last year. In January 2013, HP won the NOMS desktop contract.

The department refused to release the revised cost of the project following its major delays, the completion date, or the report by Deloitte citing "commercial confidentiality.

NOMS is intended to provide interim hosting ICT services until the MoJ's new Future ICT Sourcing "tower" contracts are in place. However, sources have told The Register that the MOJ's move under the £1.2bn FITS deal to disaggregate its IT outsourcing contract is also going badly.

"The MoJ's [projects] will go down in history as one of the great IT disasters," he said.

In September, justice minister Shailesh Vara insisted the rollout of the new NOMS IT system is scheduled to be completed in 2016. "The final cost of the rollout of the new system is estimated to be within the original budget," he said.

An MoJ spokesman said the department had nothing further to add. ®

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