Sopra Group's Offshore Capability Ensures Quick, Accurate Development And Implementation Of New Records System

Sopra Group designed and built a comprehensive Management Information System for The Scottish Prison Service (SPS).  We delivered the user friendly system on time and to the required multi-million pound budget, within tight timescales, including the migration of 7.3 million records from the old system and the development and implementation of a comprehensive five year support contract.

The system has enabled SPS to develop sophisticated management reports and has the potential to share information easily with their various partners within the criminal justice system and at the same time, reduce routine administration tasks for their staff.

Background

The Government's vision for the future of service provision, tailored to the needs of the citizen and business, demands the seamless flow of information across government, using modern standards, technology and business practices.

As a major Government agency, Scottish Prison Service is committed to the use of new technology, in particular the need to integrate with the various bodies within the criminal justice system.  SPS has an annual budget of more than £229 million.  It employs some 4,600 people at 18 establishments, across the country.

The existing Prisoner Records System was designed to keep track of prisoners, their activities across the organisation and the criminal justice system.  To meet the increased demands on reporting, and to support the flow of information between various government departments SPS needed to replace their existing system.  The previous Prisoner Records System was 7 years old, was built on out dated technology and had undergone a number of enhancements.  With the new requirements of modernising government it could not have been easily adapted to cope with the increased functionality.

Partner Selection

As an integral part of the day to day running of SPS, the importance of delivering to external timescales for implementation and the need to minimise operational disruption meant SPS required a technology partner that had the proven track record:

• within their industry.
• in the multiple technologies involved in the system build.
• in developing complex offshore resourced developments.
• in similar 100% match data migration projects.
• in the project management of complex programs.
• in the ongoing management and maintenance of business critical systems.

Sopra Group has been working in the public sector for 20+ years and over this time has built a track record of service delivery that spans central government, local government and health organisations.  The experience of tackling a wide range of assignments, coupled with the up to date understanding of current public sector strategies, standards and issues, placed us in an ideal position to design, build and support SPS's new comprehensive management information system - Prisoner Records System 2.

Having already acquired a thorough knowledge of the prison service through the development of a similar system for The Northern Ireland Prison Service our team of specialists had the capability to respond quickly, and meet the short timescales required by SPS.

Tom Fox, the Communications Director for SPS said "Sopra Group were chosen to build a new records system by the Scottish Prison Service in view of their impressive track record in bespoke development, and in-depth knowledge of the Public Sector, and in particular the criminal justice system."

"Their flexible delivery model enabled parts of the system to be built alongside the analysis and design phase, using their offshore capability.  Utilising the technically skilled offshore resource enabled Sopra Group to accommodate the peaks and troughs in resource demands, without compromising the quality of the development."

The Solution

The project called on a blend of resources to ensure the optimum balance of offshore skills and onshore business knowledge.  Members of the offshore team were involved from the beginning of the project working with the UK based team on the analysis and design phase, ensuring full understanding of the requirements.  At points during the build members of UK team travelled to India to ensure communication was strong and requirements were fully understood face to face.

The project was undertaken in four key phases including:

• Analysis and Design
• Build and Unit Test
• System Test
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and Implementation.

These phases were completed on time and within budget, due to the highly effective planning, system analysis, business analysis and Prince2 project management standards implemented by The Scottish Prison Service and Sopra Group.

A critical element of the project was the migration of 7.3 million records from the old system to the new one.  It was essential that this stage was completed over the course of a weekend, as the system was being implemented Big-Bang, across all 18 establishments of SPS at once.

Tom Fox went on to say, "Sopra Group delivered a key and strategic multi-site system for The Scottish Prison Service in aggressive timescales.  The system is used by over 3000 staff and was implemented at a time of significant change for our organisation, a time that we could ill afford for the delivery of our new system to hit any major problems.

Sopra Group did not let us down, we still work closely with them as they both support our system and are working on future phases of the project."

The successful launch of the system has delivered many benefits to SPS, including:

• PRS2 is designed to be integrated with other justice systems.  SPS will be able to exchange a variety of information with agencies to help manage their "customers" more effectively.
• SPS are now able to run sophisticated management reports to manage their business more effectively.
• The new system has reduced some of the administrative tasks that were previously carried out by SPS staff.
• PRS2 Graphic User Interface is easy to use by multiple users.  A full training schedule was devised and delivered by Scottish Prison Service to ensure complete understanding by the end users.
• PRS2 is fully scaleable i.e. new functionality can be added in the future.
• The new system has been well received by SPS partners.

"We are really pleased with the system.  What Sopra Group delivered was on time and had all the functionality we required – all of the things we wanted.

The Sopra Group team worked really well with our internal IT Team, and proved to be a partner not only with excellent technical and communication skills but with great integrity."

Alan Gray, IT Programme Manager, SPS