Digitising justice: getting the foundations right, together
Jo Ludlam
Account Director, UK Public Sector - Crime & Justice, OpenText
In my work across policing and the wider justice system, I’ve seen a consistent pattern. The ambition to digitise is real, so is the pressure to deliver faster, more transparent and resilient services. However, progress rarely comes from buying another system. What really shapes outcomes is how well we understand, manage and share information before reaching for more budget and adding to the technology landscape. Understanding the challenges in detail and identifying suitable use cases and how confidently we work together across the crime and justice ecosystem make a big difference.
The Crime & Justice sector has been investing in technology for decades. Most organisations already have case systems, evidence platforms, document stores, email archives and specialist applications. Each one was introduced to solve a real problem at the time, often successfully. But over time this has left us with information spread across too many places, duplicated data, rising costs to keep legacy systems alive, and growing difficulty finding what we need when it matters.
Access to justice depends on access to information
Whether it’s a police officer preparing a case file, a prosecutor reviewing disclosure, a court managing digital hearings, or the Home Office responding to scrutiny, outcomes depend on access to information that is complete, trusted and easy to find.
When information is fragmented or hard to access, the consequences are very real: delays, increased risk, reduced confidence in digital processes, and frustration for professionals and the public alike. And when the stakes are this high, the way organisations engage with technology suppliers can either reduce risk or amplify it.
Why working with suppliers often feels difficult
Much of the friction in supplier engagement isn’t about bad intent on either side. It comes from misalignment of scale, expectations and understanding. Technology companies are designed to work on a national scale, over long lifecycles and under intense regulatory scrutiny. Justice organisations are rightly focused on immediate operational pressures with tight budgets. When those perspectives aren’t aligned early, conversations become harder than they need to be.
One area where this shows up clearly is the procurement journey itself; from the initial RFI, through to RFPs and competitive bidding, into governance, legal assurance and budget approval.
This process is often intended to explore options and gather insight. Too frequently they’re issued before the organisation has aligned internally on the real information problem, the constraints, or what success looks like. Sometimes, not all key stakeholders are involved at the right stage. Suppliers are then asked to respond to a brief that is partial or misleading. Strong suppliers may opt out rather than guess, while others respond to the document rather than the reality. It becomes a case of the blind leading the blind and everyone loses time. On some occasions, strong contenders decline to bid when it is considered to be tailored for a specific supplier to respond, this could be the intention but if not, the risk is missing out on a better solution.
The impact doesn’t stop there. If the early narrative is unclear, it tends to harden as it moves through the formal stages: requirements become fixed in an RFP, bids are scored against a partial picture, and governance reviews focus on defending assumptions rather than testing them. By the time legal teams are negotiating terms and leaders are seeking budget approval, teams are often trying to de-risk commitments that were never fully understood at the outset, which drives delay, cost and, sometimes, avoidable compromise.
In addition, very rarely is consideration given to the life-cycle of the product during the course of the agreed contract, only from a cost management perspective.
What helps de-risk digital justice technology programmes
From observing technology rollouts that do work well, a few practical principles stand out:
Start with the information, not the application. Understand what information exists, where it lives, how long it must be kept, and who needs access, before choosing new tools.
Be realistic about scale and longevity. Justice information lasts years, sometimes decades. Being honest about this early leads to better decisions and fewer surprises. Look ahead to the end in mind and have a plan for the solution lifecycle.
Design for finding answers, not just storing files. Search and discovery matter as much as storage. Consider benefits coming from the tools aside for the main reason for procuring.
Engage the right people early. Bring together operations, digital, information governance, security, legal, procurement and budget holders from the start, rather than introducing each group in stages as this is where the blockers happen and are harder to resolve at the wrong stage
Keep engagement active throughout the lifecycle. Delivery doesn’t end at contract signature. Ongoing relationships through customer success programmes, training, user communities and roadmap discussions help systems work in practice, not just on paper. It also helps reduce any surprises when budget planning. This engagement helps manage commercial negotiations too.
A shared responsibility
Ultimately, technology can only reflect the way we work together as a sector. If the likes of UK Policing, Home Office, MoJ and all the wider agencies / trusted third parties aren’t aligned on the problem we’re trying to solve, and aren’t communicating clearly with each other, we can’t reasonably expect technology to join the dots for us.
Digitising crime & justice isn’t about buying more technology to solve the problem. It’s about taking control of information, embracing collaboration across the crime and justice system, and engaging technology partners as part of that shared journey. When we communicate openly and work together, across organisations and with suppliers, we all learn and digital change becomes more confident, more effective, and better suited to the people it serves.
