Decision

The Director of Children, Family &
Education has decided to
award a contract to CACI for a Cloud based Youth Justice software
system with effect from 01/06/2025 for a term of 4 years at a total
cost of £120K via the Crown Commercial Service Framework -
Vertical Applications Software - RM6259 - Lot 2.

Reasons for the decision

The Youth Justice Service provides a service
for young people aged 10 to 17 who have been involved in offending
behaviour. It is a multi-agency service, made up of social workers,
youth justice workers and staff from education, police, probation
and health.

The service currently uses a 3rd party ‘on-premise’
system known as ‘ChildView’ supplied by CACI Limited.
The system can record and report, capture victim information,
assessments of need, risk of harm to the public, safety and
wellbeing assessments, and appropriate interventions can be
designed and delivered according to need. As more local authorities
are moving away from ‘on-premise’ applications to the
Cloud, the planned roadmap of CACI for ‘Childview’ is
for the Cloud solution. Additionally, the ‘on-premise’
application is managed by one individual officer in DDaT, and this
can cause delays in responding to the Youth Justice System requests
and presents some resilience concerns.

A key objective of Wirral’s Digital Strategy (2021-2025) is
the adoption of cloud technologies and work is currently underway
to develop a cloud migration roadmap. Moving to cloud solutions
will facilitate the decommissioning of the council’s existing
datacentres and associated reduction in costs. This proposal aligns
with the strategy and recommends the migration of the current
on-premise solution to a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution
provided by CACI, utilising modern technical and security
standards.

The ChildView cloud solution is fully browser-based and can be used
on any computer, laptop or tablet device. It provides ‘single
sign-on’ and self-service user setup and password reset
functionality.

Moving to a cloud hosted solution, version releases will be managed
by CACI and scheduled for outside of YJS office hours, maximising
system availability and reducing the overhead on DDaT.

Adopting a cloud model will ensure that the Youth Justice Service
is operating the latest nationally approved assessment tool known
as ‘Assetplus’, reducing the risk of non-compliance
with the latest Youth Justice Board requirements.

As this is a relatively small application with the Wirral IT
estate, there is a risk that DDaT resources cannot respond to the
urgent service demands within the required timescales, and this
could lead to potential safeguarding issues arising. Moving to a
cloud model will mitigate this risk.

Alternative options considered

Do Nothing – Keep the Youth Justice
system running as an ‘on-premise’ application. This
option was rejected for the reasons below:

• ‘On-premise’ computer applications do not align
with corporate Digital Strategy or Council Plan
• Increased risk of a loss of service via cyber-attack on
Wirral’s Digital infrastructure
• Wirral has no current contract in place with supplier for
support, currently renewing on an annual basis.
• Supplier is not developing ‘on-premise’
solution, its product roadmap is for a Cloud based solution.
• Downtime is currently required for system upgrades (provided
by DDaT) which has impact on Youth Justice Service. Supplier will
provide all support for Cloud application, with upgrades being
performed outside of office hours, this maximising service
availability and reducing the overhead on DDaT