Indians to run prison IT system?

The IT news site silicon.com reports that government is looking at off-shoring its prison offender case management system, named C-Nomis. My first thought, reflecting on the failures of data security in the home civil service over the last few years, was that the records are probably safer in India. ;-)

However, the major motive is obviously the saving of money. "With predictions that a £50bn cut in public services spending is needed by 2020, senior Whitehall figures have indicated that they're open to an increased offshoring of government IT." says silicon.com.

It goes on: "Whitehall already offshores a limited amount of work, including some back office operations under the NHS Shared Business Services Centre run by Steria and the Department of Health. The joint venture provides back office services to more than 100 trusts and offshores about 60 per cent of its work to India.

"The centre's performance has been mixed: despite having signed up one quarter of all NHS trusts, it's also about three years behind its target of having 40 per cent of trusts on board and that is not expected to break even until this year."

On the subject of NHS IT, government recently released the "gateway" reviews of 31 projects in the National Programme for IT, originally carried out between 2002 & 2007. They are summarised here.