In a week when the Legal Services Commission won the technology award at the Civil Service Awards 2007 the LSC Online system which had triggered the award collapsed causing chaos in solicitors’ firms across the land.

In announcing the award the judges said:

Overcoming initial scepticism, the team have been successful in building excellent relations with their partners and moving to the electronic system has led to significant cuts in admin expenditure as well as improvements in quality of service to customers.
In fact nothing can be further from the truth. Solicitors, who depend on delivering their monthly figures to the LSC in order to receive payment, were expected to jump through a number of hoops including submitting claims after 7pm at night as the system could not cope. Eventually the award winning system was suspended indefinitely from 19th November. This caused a great deal of wasted man-hours and stress to firms all over the country. The CLSA has written to the LSC requesting a full explanation and seeking compensation for its members.

This debacle follows within two weeks of the LSC being forced to temporarily suspend one its suppliers contracts to provide telephone call centre advice to people detained in police stations when it transpired they had not obtained the necessary regulatory consent.

Joy Merriam Chairman of the CLSA commented:

What an utter shambles. There are many and wide reaching changes proposed in the next two months and the experience of LSC Online would appear to give weight to those many voices who have suggested that the tight timescale is over ambitious and doomed to failure. This could have irreparable consequences for access to justice.

Perhaps IT projects should be given awards after they have been proved to work in future.