Ministry of Justice(MIS100 2010)

By CIO Staff | Thursday, May 27 2010

2009 ranking: 30

Senior IS executive: Gerard Aberdeen, general manager ICT services
Reports to: Deputy secretary, strategy and corporate
Size of IS shop: 200

PCs: 5200
Mobile PCs: 500
Terminals: 520
Hand-held devices: 120
Total screens: 6340

Industry: Government and defence
PC environment: HP, Lenovo, Windows XP
Server environment: Windows 2000, 2003, NT; HP; Sun; Linux; Novell; Red Hat
DBMS: Oracle, SQL, Sybase
Address: Level 1 Vogel Centre 16 Kate Sheppard Place, Wellington
Website: www.justice.govt.nz
Key IS projects this year: Not disclosed.

The Ministry of Justice has undergone cut backs in the past 12 to 18 months, with staff reductions announced in 2009. The general manager of IT services, Gerard Aberdeen, could not be reached for comment, so it is unclear whether these cutbacks will extend to the Ministry’s IT department in 2010. Aberdeen told the MIS100 last year that significant investments would take place in virtualisation software and services, as well as ongoing investments in business continuity and disaster recovery, e-business development and remote working technologies.

The Ministry’s ICT department supports IT systems and services for 2900 staff across 103 sites in New Zealand, and supports the overarching goals of the Ministry of Justice, including developing robust policy advice that influences the direction of justice in New Zealand; supporting an efficient and accessible court system that is trusted by New Zealanders; and providing effective services to support independent judicial decision making.

The Ministry of Justice announced in March that it will seek funding in the May budget to implement a world first — transitioning of criminal court records from paper based to digital. Tony Fisher, manager for district courts, told the Auckland District Law Society’s newsletter that “by handling proceedings digitally, the criminal courts could make around 14,900 court appearances unnecessary each year, as well as slashing the police’s workload”, as reported by stuff.co.nz. If funds are approved, the project is predicted to take two years to complete and would allow for charges to be laid both electronically and remotely.