EDS to develop U.K. prison app

National Offender Management Service

British government officials have awarded EDS a $68 million contract to build and test technology that will provide a single, comprehensive view of offenders from arraignment to probation.

The contract, which could earn EDS another $70 million through additional services, will run until 2012.

The National Offender Management Information System (NOMIS) will give U.K. officials up-to-the-minute information about offenders in prison and on probation across a number of agencies, including the National Offender Management Service and prison and probation agencies.

The new system, which will replace several legacy systems, will provide a profile of an offender with information related to education and training history, case management, alerts and risk. A comprehensive view of such information is expected to better help prison and probations officials to better and more consistently assess offenders. The system is also expected to help in better planning and resource management.

“Basic, core information will only be entered once and the single record will be available to both probation and prison staff to update and add detail,” according to a National Probation Service brief published in December 2004. “This will reduce the number of duplicate records, provide significant efficiency savings and ensure staff have access to the fullest possible record and the latest assessments.”

Authorized staff will be able to access a complete and up-to-date picture of an offender’s progress, such as toward educational awards and participation in recognized programs. An offender’s photograph and biometric information will be recorded to reduce any risk of misidentification, according to the brief.

The new information system will be based on a product called TAG, developed by Canadian-based Syscon Justice Systems. Built around Oracle’s 10g database, TAG is designed to capture facial images and fingerprints to verify people’s identities, utilize Extensible Markup Language (XML) to allow other applications to integrate with the TAG application database and facilitate access through Web-based kiosks.

NOMIS is scheduled for a June 2006 limited deployment followed by full rollout over the next 18 months for about 77,000 users.