Follow-up report on the Knowledge Bank

1. It is the practice of the Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland (IPS) to conduct follow-up inspections in order to promote improvement and assess the effectiveness of recommendations and their outcomes.

2. This report details the findings of the IPS follow-up inspection on the Knowledge Bank, published in December 2013.

3. A knowledge base is a library of information organised in a logical manner to allow easy access to information support to assist staff to perform their duties efficiently and effectively. A quality information knowledge base where information is relevant to users' needs, readily accessible, accurate and up‑to‑date with built in measures to review documents is an invaluable resource for service delivery organisations.

4. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) Knowledge Bank was established in 2008 as a 'Legal Knowledge Database' to provide legal staff with an information tool to research the law and provide guidance on how to conduct cases in court.

5. The aim of the inspection was to examine the operation of COPFS Knowledge Bank and consider the extent that it provides complete, useful, relevant, specific, accurate, and timely information support to all staff. We found COPFS was committed to providing staff with a quality information support system but there were constraints imposed by the IT capability of the COPFS internal website and content management system. These constraints had been recognised by COPFS and were to be addressed with the implementation of a new software platform.
A new internal website has since been developed and launched.

6. The aim of this follow-up review is to assess and report on the progress that has been made against our recommendations and to provide an update on the upgrade of the COPFS intranet.

Methodology

• Interviews with key personnel;
• Review of guidance, practices, procedures and systems, protocols and policy;
• Demonstration of the new internal website.