Courts close-mouthed on case management progress

The Department of Courts is disputing rumours that a case management system being developed by Datacom is having difficulty meeting its milestones.

The Department of Courts is disputing rumours that a case management system being developed by Datacom is having difficulty meeting its milestones.

Courts’ communications spokesman Barry Ebert denies that the project has fallen behind or is struggling. “It’s rolling along quite smoothly,” he says, but declines to give further information about the project.

The development strategy, Computerworld understands, has been to write the system in Sybase’s PowerBuilder, with an ultimate aim of developing a Java system as a second stage. Observers have called this a curiously indirect approach.

However, Ebert declines to discuss development techniques, saying “come and see us in two months or so, when we might have something to show you”.

A direct call to Courts’ IT manager David Huggins had not been replied to by deadline.
The proposals tender for the case management system went out in mid-2000 and the contract was awarded in the second half of that year. The schedule then given for case management was “mid 2002”.

Both case management and fines administration applications are intended to replace legacy counterparts still on the aged Law Enforcement System, the so-called “Wanganui computer” now being run by EDS in Auckland.

The fines system was completed last year and is now accessible by fine-payers online.

An earlier attempt to transfer these applications, the so-called Inslaw project, was canned, causing controversy and questions in a parliamentary select committee.