Scottish Government

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EFFICIENT GOVERNMENT FUND

Stage 1 application - expression of interest

Part 1: Summary Table

Part 2: Narrative bid

The detailed costs and benefits for each of the main criminal justice organisations ie COPFS, SCS and ACPOS are as follows:-

COSTS AND BENEFITS : CROWN OFFICE AND PROCURATOR FISCAL SERVICE ( COPFS)

A. COSTS

1. Storage of Scanned Documents - The proposal envisages that the Police would transmit documentary productions/evidence in solemn cases, ie High Court and Sheriff and Jury cases to COPFS electronically - and that COPFS staff (including Crown Counsel) would deal with the documents on-screen rather than in hard copy. The Department deals with around 4500 solemn cases per year (High Court and Sheriff and Jury). For the purposes of this preliminary estimate of costs, it is assumed that there are, on average, 20 documentary productions in each solemn case and that, on average, each production is 5 pages long. On this basis, it would be necessary for COPFS to store 90,000 5-page pdf documents each year. The documents would need to be retained for at least 5 years - and COPFS' IT infrastructure would therefore need to have the capacity to store 500,000 5-page pdf documents. While these changes in the IT infrastructure would also enable us to deal in the same way with documentary productions in summary cases, this does not form part of the current proposal. Relatively few summary cases involve documentary productions and those that do typically involve a small number of productions, most of which require to be available in hard copy anyway so that they can be served on the accused.

Costs - Our initial assessment is that creating and maintaining the necessary storage and processing capacity within our IT systems would involve the following costs:

2. Scanning Documents - It would of course be necessary for staff to scan in to the COPFSIT system documentary productions received from sources other than the Police which continued to be submitted in hard copy - eg medical records. The work involved in scanning in such documents should not however be more time consuming or costly than the costs currently involved in making multiple photocopies.

Costs - Scanning of documentary productions by COPFS staff is expected to be cost - neutral.

B. BENEFITS

3. Storage and Recording - As documentary evidence will be received and stored electronically, there will be no need to hold the originals within a COPFS office/store. Productions received electronically could in theory automatically update PROMIS with an individual production record. This would save Fiscal Officer/Production Keeper's time in:

• Recording receipt of productions and making entries on PROMIS
• Checking that productions received match police records
• Writing up index cards on the location of productions
• Filing productions away

Savings - There would be a reduction in the time spent by Production Keepers in dealing with solemn cases. With the advent of Bonomy, checking, recording and filing of each documentary production may take 30 seconds. On the basis of the estimates in paragraph 1, the total time saved in handling 90,000 productions per year would amount to 0.5 of a Fiscal Officer post. That equates to a saving of £9k per year.

4. Access to Documents - Once the documentary productions are stored electronically, any member of COPFS staff working on a case would have access to them without the necessity of having to move them around the country or to request them from the Production Keeper. Electronic access to the documentary productions would help to speed up the processing of cases (eg time would not be wasted while documents were transferred in hard copy from Procurator Fiscal's offices to the Crown Office and, where it was beneficial to do so, it would be easier to establish centralised units within Areas to process solemn cases). Within individual offices, current arrangements mean that every time a precognition officer has to request productions, he/she has to wait for the Production Keeper to get them, sign them out, and then return them at the end of day (if they are too bulky to keep in the file). The Production Keeper also has to sign them back in. Storing productions electronically would therefore result in savings in staff time.

Savings - It is difficult to quantify these savings. The changes in the way that documentary productions were handled would however help to streamline the business process. For present purposes, it is assumed that the savings relating to the removal of the need to request productions from the Production Keeper would amount to £5k per year.

5. Lost and Missing Productions - There are regular occasions at present where productions are mislaid and time and resources are spent trying to track them down.

Savings - Again the savings here are difficult to quantify but there would be benefits in terms of more efficient business processes. For present purposes, it is assumed that the savings would amount to £2k per year.

6. Copying of Documentary Productions - At present 3 sets of copy productions are made in Sheriff and Jury cases and 6 sets in High Court cases. The copying of documents is awkward and time consuming. A fraud case, for example, may involve back records and the like running into thousands of individual copies. Electronic copies could be viewed and presented on screen which would potentially reduce the number of hard copies required to 1 (for the prosecutor) - and then only if the case went to trial.

Savings - There would be significant savings in paper copies and photocopying time. If the number of sets of copy productions required was reduced by 2 in each of the 3600 Sheriff and Jury cases and 5 in each of the 900 High Court cases, and if there was a further reduction of 1 in the 2500 cases that do not actually go to trial, electronic productions would reduce the number of sets of copy productions required each year by 14,200. If each case involves an average of 100 pages of documentary productions, the amount of photocopying required each year would be reduced by 1.4 million pages. It should also be possible to reduce the number of photocopiers in offices that currently have more than one. The estimated savings arising from this would be:

7. Transfer of Original Productions to Court - It would still be necessary to have the original productions available in the court at a trial but these would now be brought directly to the court by the Police. Moreover, rather than the Police having to deliver every single piece of documentary evidence to the Procurator Fiscal's office, they would only need to take to the court the ones listed on the indictment and then only when a trial had been fixed.

Savings - There would be fewer journeys to lodge productions - and savings in the costs involved in sending copy productions from Procurator Fiscal offices to the Crown Office. It is difficult to quantify these savings. Our best estimate at present is that they might amount to £5k - £10k per year for COPFS. The bulk of the savings arising in this area would accrue to the Police.

8. Showing Evidence in Court - It is difficult to quantify how showing evidence stored electronically would speed up the presentation of evidence in court. However it is clear that time is taken by macers/court officers to find documentary evidence and take it to the witness. In many cases this is negligible. However in cases involving large numbers of productions it can be time consuming to find the correct item, bring it to the witness and return it etc. Electronic viewing would be effectively instantaneous.

Savings - The SCS has estimated that electronic presentation of evidence would reduce the number of sitting days in the High Court and for Sheriff and Jury solemn business by 240 days per year - 112 days in the High Court and 128 days in the Sheriff Court. Based on this estimate the savings accruing to COPFS would be as follows:

SUMMARY

10. Our current, very rough estimates of the costs and savings associated with the proposal to move to electronic transmission and presentation of documentary productions in solemn cases can therefore be summarised as follows:

ASSESSMENT OF BENEFIT- SCOTTISH COURT SERVICE

For the Scottish Court Service there are two principal benefits to be derived from the increased usage of electronically presented evidence as piloted in the DAS (Document Administration Subgroup) project. These are:

Improvements in Efficiency - Reduced time taken in court to process the case and present the evidence.

Improvements in Effectiveness - Improvements in the dispensation of justice.

1. Improvements in Efficiency

There are definite benefits which are attributed to the simple ability to rapidly present the same "sheet of paper" in front of all parties in court at the same time. The normal process of large numbers of productions, folders, sheets, maps, copy documents etc, being passed around the court is very time-consuming and prone to errors in distribution. There are also obvious costs in the duplication of these items but that cost is generally not borne by the courts.

During the course of the assessment of a number of pilots, attempts were made to quantify the degree of savings. The two paragraphs below are taken from the assessment report provided by the external consultant Brian Cheadle, on the outcome of the first pilot of a large fraud case in Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

1. It was considered by those in attendance that about 1.5 days were saved during the Edinburgh trial through the use of eEvidence. The actual duration was nine days, offering a saving in the order of 17%. Further trials, perhaps with more complex eEvidence, will be required to test the veracity of this estimate.

2. The lessons learned from the Lockerbie Trial indicate that court time saving may be as great as one third when compared to the current manual process.

Based on this we will assume that a saving of court time of the order of at least 16% is possible. This will however be based on cases with substantial numbers of productions led in evidence.

During 2003/04 there were approximately 3,500 sitting days in the High Court and 4,000 sitting days for Sheriff Court solemn criminal business.

It has been estimated by the pilot group that about 20% of cases involve evidence which is substantial in volume and complexity and which would benefit from being presented electronically.

We can therefore reasonably extrapolate that the savings for the courts would be:

7,500 * 20% * 16% = 240 days

This may still be somewhat conservative as the average length of, say a fraud trial, can be considerably longer than the average of all cases and so the saving may be correspondingly higher. We have also held the estimated savings in individual trials to 16% which again is a conservative estimate.

The quantifiable financial savings from this are difficult to gauge but would include some component of the following costs:

Staff time for Court staff (Clerk and Court officer)

Assume 240 days = 1 Full Time employee

Clerk of Court Savings = £21,500

Court Officer Savings = £14,000

Jury compensation fees

15 Members of a Jury can claim expenses and lost income on a daily basis

Total Jury Costs for 2003/4 = £3,856,000

Savings = £3,856,000 *20% * 16%

Jury Fees = £123,400

Judicial time

Take the cost of a Part-Time Sheriff as the Judicial Cost

240 days * £514 per day (plus expenses)

Judicial Costs = £ 123,360

(Only the first two are costs directly borne by the Scottish Court Service.)

There are other efficiencies to be made and minor costs which can be saved by general efficiencies. For example;

Movement and storage of large volumes of productions during and after the trial is avoided.

There is a cost to confidential disposal of paper productions after the case is ended.

Many cases plead on the first day in court so that productions which are produced are never used.

Tools can be applied to electronic productions which make it more efficient for judges when considering cases and when writing up judgments.

Should cases come to appeal, further savings are made on the reuse of the electronic productions.

2. Improvements in Effectiveness

There is good anecdotal evidence that the presentation of evidence electronically, improves the effectiveness of the cases being presented. This has been particularly noticeable in complex cases where evidence can now be displayed as a diagram to show relationships for example. The presentation can then quickly change to documents and even be interspersed with photo or video evidence, without jurors losing track of proceedings. This ability to be able to quickly and clearly present evidence to a jury is a positive step in improving the proceedings of court. The costs of this are not quantifiable but should not be overlooked in the assessment of benefits.

A case prepared with detailed electronic portfolios of productions allows the defence to more effectively assess the potential for debate in the case. There is anecdotal evidence that this tends to increase the likelihood of a plea being entered. This happened to a number of the cases being proposed for the pilot when counsel were intimated of the fact that evidence would be presented electronically.

Although every courthouse has at least one courtroom which can present electronic evidence, to achieve a suitable provision for large volumes of productions (especially documentary productions) it is necessary to have screens fitted in the jury box, witness stand, accused box as well as for counsel and judge. This is currently provided in the so-called "hi tech" courtrooms. Currently SCS have 10 such courtrooms. A number of the high court circuit courts and larger sheriff courts do not have this provision in full. On average it costs approximately £20,000 to upgrade a current Electronic Presentation of Evidence ( EPE) court to a full "hi tech" court. It cost approximately £30,000 to set up a "hi tech" court which has no EPE provision currently. These figures vary slightly from court to court due to the configuration, layout and size of the room.

There is potential for at least a further 10-20 courts using a full "hi-tech" facility to allow for one to be located in each Sheriffdom and for each High court circuit location.

Cost of 20 High Court and Sheriff courts sites to be upgraded to 'hi-tech' facilities

20 x £30,000 = £600K

Also for District Courts, which are planned to move from Local Authority control to SCS in the next two years, it would be helpful to ensure that each district court site, of which there are 64, has basic equipment for the electronic presentation of evidence eg Audio Visual unit and video projector at a cost of approx £10, 000 per site

64 sites x £10,000 = £640K

COSTS AND BENEFITS: POLICE

A. COSTS

1. Equipment & Software - The proposed system would require the Police to scan entire documentary material for an estimated 4500 solemn cases per year (High Court and Sheriff/Jury) and hold electronically as pdf files. For the purposes of estimated costs, it is assumed that the 8 Scottish forces would require 27 scanners and 27 pc terminals. Each force would also require access to Document Management Solution licenses to enable data to be uploaded. On this basis, it would also be necessary for the Police IT infrastructure to store and manage an estimated 90,000 5-page pdf documents.

Costs - The costs incurred to scan documents for Court are as follows:

2. System Operator - A system operator is required to scan the documentary evidence and to operate the electronic equipment in court. In the Lothian and Borders pilot a support member of Police staff undertakes this role. Whilst it is not envisaged that this will be an ongoing specific Police resource, and will be outsourced to skilled technicians, it is one that must be accounted for due to the critical role of the operator to the system.

Costs - The costs incurred to provide a System Operator are as follows:

27 x Support Staff @ AP1 (£18.75k) - £506k per annum

3. Retention of Documents by the Police following Disposal - Each force will need to create a Document Management System to efficiently store and index their proportion of the estimated 500,000 pdf files of documentary evidence. At present, the original copy of each document is held until instruction has been received from COPFS to return or destroy the productions following the case disposal. For this reason the cost of archiving the original productions would be cost- neutral as the mechanisms are already in place to do so. The main cost would be the Document Management System that would be necessary to ensure quick and easy access to all documentary productions held as pdf files. The total cost to create a Document Management System is tabulated above in paragraph 1.

B. BENEFITS

4. Implementation of the National Technical Standard - The national technical standards relating to electronic data in court would need to be implemented on a national basis. The standards would serve to regulate and quality assure all evidence presented at Court and would achieve marked savings in both the quality of service to the Courts and COPFS and the timeliness of the internal police processes.

Savings - The savings that will be made are predominantly qualitative. The national electronic standard would, effectively ensure uniformity in procedure and protocol throughout the eight Scottish forces. Process improvement would also be achieved in the following ways:

Improved access and movement of evidence between forces and COPFS.

Quicker collation of evidence for trial.

Greater assistance to Disclosure requirements for Solemn cases.

Improved consultation between Criminal Justice Agencies facilitated by video-conferencing and quality assured E-evidence.

5. Data Exchange and Processing - The documentary productions, if stored electronically, could be exchanged across secure networks to other police forces, Procurator Fiscals offices and the Crown office. Electronic exchange would significantly reduce the time wasted by Productions officers who have to check and sign for productions before they are taken to Court.

Savings - On the basis that the total time saved in checking and signing for the estimated 90,000 productions per annum would amount to 1.0 of the 9 Productions officers post (AP3 - £23,250) within the 8 Scottish forces. That equates to a saving of £209k per annum.

The quality/accuracy of documentary evidence would also be significantly improved with the use of E-evidence. Electronic documentary productions would reduce the level of liaison between Productions officers and the Production Keepers as the quality of the documents used in court would be markedly improved and the volume of evidence mislaid would be significantly reduced. The business process would, effectively, be more robust and streamlined.

Savings - For the purposes of this proposal it is assumed that the savings that would result from fewer enquiries and a reduced level of liaison with the PF would amount to 0.2 of the 36 Productions officers post (AP3 - £23,250) within the 8 Scottish forces. That equates to a saving of £167k per annum.

6. Transportation - The Police involvement in High Court Productions is currently under review. Currently, documentary productions are transported to the PF by support staff and police. Whilst this process will continue due to the ongoing requirement to transport non-documentary productions, it will experience a reduction in volume. The transportation of documentary evidence can often be awkward and very labour intensive. For example, the marking of each item in addition to the sheer weight of the documents often impinges on the efficiency of the process.

Savings - There would be considerable savings in the reduced volume of documents to be transported and the time spent in transit. It is difficult to quantify these savings. For present purpose, it is assumed that the transportation requirement accounts for 0.1 of 12 staff drivers post (AP1- £19,173) within the 8 Scottish forces. That equates to a saving of £23k per annum.

7. Access and Tracking of Documents - The electronic storage of documentary evidence would enable Productions officers to locate single items more quickly and efficiently. The Document Management System that would be required to access and track documentary evidence forms part of the IT infrastructure requirements stipulated in paragraph 1 & 3. On the basis of these estimates, the system would also enable any accredited member of the Police COPFS or Court staff to remotely access evidence via secure CJX lines. This would facilitate savings in the processing of cases. For example, documents will no longer need to be tagged and checked before transportation to the PF. The capability to store documentary productions electronically would therefore result in savings to staff time.

Savings - In addition to time saved, the electronic management of documentary evidence would substantially reduce the occasions when productions are lost or missing. This would undoubtedly raise the quality of service provided by the Police and improve the timeliness of the Justice process. The savings are difficult to quantify. However, It is assumed that the access and tracking of documents accounts for 0.1 of the 36 Productions officers post (AP3 - £23,250) within the 8 Scottish forces. That equates to a saving of - £84k per annum.

8. Timeliness and Improved Integrity of Business Practices - In addition to the savings in staff time the most significant benefit for the Scottish Police Service would be the improvements in quality and timeliness and the enhanced integrity of the business processes. The electronic transfer and storage of documentary productions would, effectively serve to; streamline current processes, improve the quality of evidence presented in Court, raise the level of service provided to the SCS and COPFS and provide a robust audit trail for the movement of documentary evidence before, during and after judicial examination.

Summary

9. The current approximate estimates for the costs and benefits associated with the proposal to move to electronic transfer and presentation of documentary productions in solemn cases are summarised below. Whilst it must be emphasised that these values are indicative first order estimations, there appear to be sufficient long term benefits in both savings and unquantifiable quality benefits to justify the initial start up costs.