T3 - a letter to the Law Society Gazette

The headline on the front page of this week's Law Society Gazette reads "Firms "draw line" on paperless plan" (available here) immediately drew our attention. We would very much like to work in a paperless office but realise that such a dream is still several years away. We hope that the T3 (Transforming Through Technology) initiative of the CPS will be a success. 

We have our doubts, though. There are many issues to be tackled, such as wireless internet access in courts, police stations and prisons, and even practical points such as the lack of electrical sockets in most court rooms. There still seems to be no firm proposals as to how evidence will be delivered to the many defendants who turn up at courts every day and who have no legal representation

At the moment, however, our most pressing concern is the secure email system (CJSM) which is expected to deliver the bulk of this electronic information between all the agencies of the criminal justice system and thus make T3 a success.  We simply do not think the system is up to the job. Our reasons for this have been outlined in an email one of the partners, John Storer,  has sent to the editor of the Gazette in response to the article mentioned and the body of it is set out below

Dear Sir

Let me say at the outset, I am not a Luddite. My firm is quite happy to work in a paperless environment and we have been making enquiries of the CPS as to why we cannot receive evidence by electronic means for many years. In fact, our first request mentioned floppy disks!

However I feel I must comment on the the statement of David Jones, director of the CPS's efficiency programme, that all criminal defence firms need to do is join the secure email system (CJSM). Those unfamiliar with CJSM may imagine some type of snappy, intuitive, email interface similar to other online email providers, such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

If only that were so!

The truth of the matter is that the CJSM system software is several years past its "sell by" date and I do not believe it is now fit for purpose.

Problems start as soon as you access the site. There is a notice on the log-in page telling you that users of Internet Explorer 8 or 9 (easily the most commonly used software for internet access) may experience problems. They will. CJSM does not work with IE8 or 9 without switching to "compatability mode". It does not work very well with Google Chrome. The warning of this problem has been there for over 6 months, but no improvements to the interface have been made

I could go on at length about the slowness of the secure email system, the poor search system, the needlessly complicated way of assigning an email addressee from one's contacts, and even the way in which contacts are displayed. There are other problems as well

My main concern, though, is the lack of memory. We are a small firm in a small market town. We use the system to email the police for bail-back information, and we send all correspondence to the Crown Court and CPS via the system. The vast majority have been simple emails with no attachments. In the first six weeks of using the system, we had used 25% of the available memory. The emails cannot be forwarded to another email system and thus we are left with no choice but to print off the email and then delete it. So much for a paperless office!

Once we start receiving electronic files, I anticipate we will run out of memory within three months. Larger firms will be experiencing difficulties within weeks.

We actually welcome this new way of working in the criminal justice system, but for it to be a success the CJSM system needs a major overhaul and upgrade before T3 kicks in in April. It is my understanding this is unlikely to happen.

We actually raised these points back in September and had the following reply from Diane Aldsworth at the Ministry of Justice ICT department forwarded to us:

"We are planning to procure a new secure email service but this may be a few years away as we await developments in other parts of Government IT.  However, in the meantime we are looking to see if we can improve the user experience although this won’t be a full overhaul. 

I would be grateful for any ideas on specific improvements that could be made."

The history of Government procurement of IT systems deserves, and probably has, several blogs of its own.  Suffice to say, very few public sector IT systems cover themselves in glory. Clearly we are stuck with the diplodocus-like CJSM fror the foreseeable future. Accordingly, there has to be a real risk that T3 will fall at its first significant hurdle.

As we mentioned at the outset, we welcome the introduction of technology into the criminal justice system. However, it has to be modern technology - using software that is clearly years out of date is not going to work

Incidentally, suggestions (polite ones, please) for the improvement of CJSM can be sent to Diane Aldsworth