Saturday, February 14, 2009

Welsh Getting No Justice

RED-FACED Whitehall bosses are spending £4m upgrading a new courts IT system – because it can’t translate documents into Welsh.

But despite the whole project taking more than a decade to develop it was not programmed to send out summonses in Welsh, as courts are required to do by law. The Ministry of Justice has been translating summonses manually on request since Libra was introduced, and will continue to do so until the problem is fixed in September. However, the ministry has yet to sign the contracts for the upgrade work, and admits the £4m cost is only an estimate.

The case puts the Government’s notorious record on IT projects back in the spotlight – even the defective Libra project was seven years late and £260m over budget.

(Sort of like Queensland's SmartCard venture. It still doesn't know the Exhibition Station exists!)

A classic case of "Computer Says No" in the not-so-little Britain?

No comments: