A consortium headed by services companies ICL Plc and Unisys Corp has been awarded a 183m pound contract to develop a new desktop IT infrastructure for magistrates courts in the UK. The system, known as Project Libra, is based on Microsoft and Oracle technologies and the initial design and build of the software is expected to take two to three years. Internet and intranet technology will give members of the public access to information such as court timetables and access to legal databases. The system will connect around 500 courthouses and will cover everything from the preparation of cases, scheduling of court hearings and fine accounting and enforcement. The contract, which runs until 2009, was awarded under the public finance initiative under which the private sector makes the capital investment and the project is then leased back by the public organization.
