The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) prosecutes criminal cases that have been investigated by the police and other investigative organisations in England and Wales. It makes its decisions independently of the police and government.

CPS’ are seeking to discover innovative ways to improve their Case Management System (CMS) to save time and improve user experience. As the nature of crime continually evolves, CPS consistently adapts, with digital capability forming the foundational pillar of its response and commitment to enhancing justice.

esynergy partnered with CPS to modernise its infrastructure and make their CMS more efficient. This collaboration aimed to accelerate CPS’s digital transformation and support improving prosecution rates, and reducing case backlogs. The central focus for the project was to find a viable technical solution for seamless connection to the CMS, enabling users to easily review, redact, and search case records.

The project commenced with a discovery phase, where the teams identified the complexities in managing two separate CMS. A crucial step involved rapid prototyping and highly specific user research (UR) to pinpoint issues faced by CMS users and assess if these problems were recurring patterns within CPS. The existing case management process relied on a browser-based CMS application with an Oracle database backend and a Microsoft ASP.NET frontend. Accessing case data and documents within the CMS was previously restricted for third-party applications due to the sensitivity of its production data. Consequently, users had to manually redact and search cases, leading to inefficiency.

The solution, named Casework App, was developed using serverless architecture, leveraging infrastructure-as-code principles and CI/CD processes. In building the Casework App, multiple approaches were explored to interface with the legacy system and connect to the CMS.

Upon realising that direct CMS endpoint connection was impossible, the teams responded innovatively by pivoting and building their own CMS integration called DDEI (Direct Document Extraction and Ingestion). Taking ownership of an internal digital product and its infrastructure marked a first for CPS. The approach revolved around the reuse of API interfaces already exposed by the legacy application. System analysis identified well-structured and stable GraphQL and SOAP APIs integrated into the CMS. To streamline access, a RESTful API was developed to serve as a controlled facade over these existing APIs.

Outcomes

By improving the case management process, CPS has realised new value from the first phase of replacing its CMS;

Value delivered

In addition to providing added value, the new CMS has unquestionably played a crucial role in supporting CPS in their mission to achieve justice efficiently. Since October 2023, the team has implemented over 500 improvements to the Casework App based on user feedback and suggestions. One of the biggest improvements to date has been the integration of the Casework App with CPS’s redaction log system, automating a previously intrusive and time-consuming process for CMS users and increasing expected time savings. This support is exemplified in the substantial time saved by CMS users when reviewing cases. On average, users save eleven minutes per case review and thirteen minutes when redacting each case. This translates to an estimated one-hour daily timesaving for prosecutors and a combined total of 18,000 hours saved to date and allows prosecutors to focus on reducing the case backlog.

From a recent benefits analysis, the Casework App is expected to save pre-charge review activity 60,953 hours per year and 51,098 hours per year for post-charge review activity. Given the current run rate, the Casework App is expected to save over 160,000 hours over the next 12 months, which is more than 40% above the original forecast for the first 12 months. Given the substantial user base of 3,000 daily users, the impact on prosecution rates is expected to be significant.

However, the Casework App represents more than just the creation of a groundbreaking system. It has fostered innovative WoW within CPS, and its API has been reused in other projects. An example of this is DDEI’s consumption for email automation which is expected to save the operations team 88,000 hours per year.

Today, the service is fully accessible throughout CPS, and the spirit of innovation continues to thrive. Current plans include integrating the Casework App with CPS’s redaction log system, which will automate a previously intrusive and time-consuming process for CMS users. Additionally, there are future endeavors to harness AI to enhance the redaction process through automated user suggestions.

The Casework App also holds a promising avenue for enhancing CPS’s Video Review Service (VRS), aimed at simplifying video access for lawyers. Through extensive UR, it was revealed that lawyers invest a considerable amount of time in video evidence review. The current VRS suffers from several pain points, including: