UK justice system unplugs from ancient datacenters after five-year slog

37 court applications shifted off failing kit, though some are camping in a temporary hosting facility

The courts system in England and Wales has moved 37 applications out of two outdated datacenters, although some will use a temporary hosting facility until they are replaced, according to the senior civil servant responsible.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) has completed the transfer of the applications from datacenters in Park Royal, West London, and Swindon. They used around 2,500 pieces of hardware. Pete Harrison, HMCTS's program director for decommissioning and legacy risk mitigation, said: "Many of these were so old that finding replacement parts was nearly impossible... This created a fragile environment with single points of failure that could disrupt access to essential court services."

Harrison says the work to migrate the 37 applications, which started in 2020, involved scrapping some and upgrading others while shifting them to cloud platforms. The latter includes three jury management tools merged into one called Juror Digital and a complex project to establish a new digital recording system for the Crown Court.

HMCTS has moved others to "a specially created temporary hosting facility" where they can run until they are replaced or retired.

The courts system is still working to shut down applications that have been replaced as well as upgrade those it will continue to use. This involves creating tools to transfer information from older systems including Libra Web, Court Store, and XhibitA into a Common Platform, which will become the criminal case management system for all magistrates' and Crown Court cases.

Getting to this stage appears to have been neither cheap nor easy. In 2023, HMCTS directly awarded consultancy CGI a contract extension worth up to £60 million to keep around 35 business-critical pieces of software running, with the procurement document describing most as "heritage applications" given their age.

Earlier that year, the National Audit Office criticized the implementation of the Common Platform, on which work started in 2016, with a 2021 rethink leading to a £22.5 million write-off.

Sir Brian Leveson said legacy IT systems and poor interoperability are among the causes of a fragmented criminal justice system in the second part of his independent review of the criminal courts [PDF] published this week.

To improve efficiency, he recommends numerous uses of AI to summarize disclosed material, transcribe recordings of magistrates' courts, provide interpretation of court proceedings, and support the listing process that allocates cases to courts.

Leveson also says video calls could be used in more situations, including legal support for suspects in police stations.

The need for further technological development is apparent in the job ad for HMCTS's new chief executive, open until February 15 with a £150,000 salary.

It says candidates will need to show "experience of leading and delivering significant change within a complex public sector environment, introducing innovative business models, systems and approaches, and delivering greater commerciality and sustainability, including digital innovation to transform delivery." ®