HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPSS) is planning to create a set of new interfaces to provide staff with data from a number of systems.
Its parent department, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), has published a tender for system integration services to support the effort over the next two years.
It refers to a plan to replace legacy systems and build the digital capability as part of a large scale investment in prisons, saying there is a need for interfaces that expose data from a range of systems – including the National Offender Management System and nDelius for managing offender records – in a coherent and consistent way.
This could feed into the development of a single digital prisoner record, as outlined in the strategy.
Replacement and APIs
The notice says many of the systems hold data about the same individuals but use different structures, and the MoJ is planning on replacing at least one of them in the next three years. In addition, HMPPS Digital has a number of existing application programme interfaces and message queues that expose data, but these tend to be tied to legacy systems and data models.
In response, HMPPS needs to develop a set of new interfaces that makes it easier for the users to extract the data they need. These are likely to consist of a set of person focused APIs and another of queue based domain events.
Some high level data requirements have been defined and some technical standards are in place, and the service now wants a supplier to set up a new team to manage the delivery of the interfaces.
