Department of Corrections

Department of Corrections

Context

The Department of Corrections' (Corrections) core business is the management of custodial sentences, non-custodial sentences and orders imposed by the courts. Corrections also provides information to the judiciary to inform decision making, and provides support services to the New Zealand Parole Board.

Corrections manages New Zealand's public prisons, and the offices of Community Probation Services and Psychological Services. Other prison-based operational services include units for rehabilitation treatment.

Department of Corrections E-government Initiatives

• Data interfaces with NIA
• Consolidation and improvement of existing systems
• Improve internal system integration especially IOMS
• Data warehouse

Summary

Ready Access: Corrections' website and metadata is of a high standard, allowing ready access to information and services.

Alignment: Corrections uses the Internet and networks effectively to integrate data and information. The focus at present is on fine-tuning internal information systems that have been introduced during the past five years.

Internet and Communications Technology

The Corrections website provides information about the department, including information about prisons, guidance for inmates' visitors and additional contact details.

Corrections' Information Technology Operation Strategy outlines intentions for IT systems, networks and the Internet up until 2008. The Strategy explains that the focus is on fine-tuning the internal information systems that have been introduced over the past five years. This includes improving automated information sharing with other justice sector agencies, making information more accessible, and introducing systems that can support a knowledge based organisation. Better knowledge management will be supported with a data warehouse.

Central to Corrections' information management is the Integrated Offender Management System (IOMS). It is highly networked and supports at least 1500 concurrent users, at peak time, to exchange information about 20,000 people on probation and 6,000 in prisons. IOMS can be accessed from 230 sites using desktops and remotely if required. Only incremental changes to IOMS are planned in the next few years.

Most staff cannot send external emails and access to the Internet is limited. Corrections has not adopted SEEMail because the cost - based on the number of mailboxes - is prohibitive. Corrections will continue to use alternative messaging options until SEEMail becomes more affordable.

Corrections' Information Technology Strategy outlines some intentions for the intranet, including making it more integrated with the data warehouse, and using it to automate some administrative functions.

A challenge for Corrections is to ensure that its systems can quickly be modified to accommodate evolving legislation and system changes within the justice sector.

Ready Access to Information and Services

Metadata

Corrections has a total of 16 metadata records. The quality of these records is above average when measured against our criteria.

A number of gaps in the content of Corrections metadata should be addressed. More supporting documentation could be created for existing services on the portal, such as Community Work.

Website Assessment

Websites assessed during June 2004 included: www.corrections.govt.nz

Overall, the Corrections website is of a high standard.

Overall strengths are in information delivery and required government content. In future, the usability of the site could be improved.

Key quality issues noted during the assessment included:

• Reasonable range, depth and presentation of information content.
• Usability and site navigation could be improved for easier use.
• Missing accessibility features such as navigation skipping, access keys and style sheet problems may impede some physically impaired people's access.
• Several broken links prevent people from accessing some content.
• The addition of consultation documents would make it easier for people to offer feedback on proposed changes to policy or procedures.
• Some documents are in PDF only, excluding people who are unable or unwilling to read this format.
• Required email addresses were not answered during the assessment.
• More links to other related content would be useful.
• Contact details could be more specific to enable responsive handling of enquiries.

Alignment With E-government Goals

Convenience and Satisfaction

People can use the Corrections website to find information about the Department, prisons and other services provided.

Online interaction may be incorporated into the website for groups, such as victim support. A secure logon would need to be introduced to provide select groups with specific information, such as inmate release dates and offender appearance dates.

Integration and Efficiency

Corrections is developing data interfaces to integrate its systems into the Justice sector's National Intelligence Application (NIA). Up until June 2004, Corrections had data interfaces with the Law Enforcement System, which is being replaced by NIA.

Corrections shares data manually (using data-dumps and batch downloads) with agencies outside the justice sector. At present the costs of automating this data sharing is not justified.

As Corrections has been sharing information with agencies in the Justice sector for some time, standards and policies and are in place. Systems standardisation is increasing and data dictionaries are used to make information sharing effective.

One of the aims for internal systems is to improve the entry of data, so that can be entered once and used in a number of different ways.

Participation

As Corrections is primarily a delivery agency - rather than a policy agency - the scope for public participation in Corrections' core activities is limited. However, people can download research papers, policies and manuals.