1 The National Audit Office examined the progress made by the Lord Chancellor's Department in implementing Libra, the PFI project to provide new IT systems for magistrates' courts.
2 We used an issue analysis approach to design the scope and nature of the evidence required to complete this examination. We set a series of high-level audit questions that we considered it would be necessary to answer to assess the success or otherwise of the procurement, and collected evidence accordingly. For each of the top-level questions, we identified a subsidiary group of questions, linked logically to the main questions, to direct our detailed work and analysis. Our general report, Examining the value for money of deals under the Private Finance Initiative (HC 739, 1998-99), provides an outline of this general methodology which acts as a starting point for all our PFI examinations.
3 The top-level questions we set were:
■ Has Libra been delivered to time and budget?
■ Does Libra meet the needs of Magistrates' Courts Committees?
4 Our main evidence has been derived from examining documents held by the Lord Chancellor's Department and interviews with relevant staff within the Department and ICL (now Fujitsu Services).
5 We conducted a telephone survey of the 36 Magistrates' Courts Committees which have the Libra infrastructure and office automation installed. We asked them to rate:
■ the standard of their IT infrastructure pre-Libra on a scale of poor, reasonable or good and to explain the reasons for their rating; and
■ Libra compared with their previous infrastructure on a scale of worse, same or better and to explain the reasons for their rating.
6 We also commissioned an expert consultant, Professor Andrew Davies of the Cranfield University School of Management, to undertake detailed work on our behalf. He examined how the Department had developed its proposals and how ICL had performed.