First Metre

The Ministry of Justice has implemented a review of the National Offender Management Service IT project to track criminal offenders across the UK. The three-year-old C-NOMIS system has already cost £155m against a budget cost of £240m. Insiders now suggest that the estimate for the entire project has now nearly quadrupled to £950m.

The C-NOMIS system is crucial to the government's process for handling criminals from their conviction to probation and release. It is intended to bring together data from the numerous regional criminal databases - itself a recipe for costly complexity, leading to failure or even disaster.

It is reported that the initial costings did not include VAT and that cancelling the project will cost the Ministry of Justice £50 million in fees to EDS, the private contractor in charge of developing the system. A review is due for completion later this year and the revised programme is expected to involve significant reductions in the functionality originally required.