But What's the Job?

23431 - Project Manager - The Project Delivery Function aim is to have capable and empowered teams, delivering Project Delivery excellence... The MoJ’s Functional Operating Model is unique across government. All project delivery professionals are line managed through the Function and then assigned to projects and programmes across the MoJ and its Agencies. Successful candidates will be part of a flexible resource pool and may be placed in roles based on business needs. The Project Manager leads and manages the project and project team. They are responsible for driving and overseeing the delivery of the project to ensure objectives are clearly defined and achieved within agreed time, cost, and quality constraints. The national salary range is £42,914- £46,182, London salary range is £49,325- £53,081.

But what's the fucking job?

23392 - Change Delivery Officer - Midlands Team - The Change Officer role is an integral role within both Area and National Change Delivery teams which work across Prison and Probation. This role is pivotal in overseeing, and in the delivery of, both local and nationally identified change initiatives. With approximately 175 staff across 3 functions, our Change Group represents half of the Change Directorate.
£37,238 - £44,520

But what's the fucking job??

23239 - Change Systems Project Officer - The Project Officer role specialises in change systems and is instrumental in facilitating the smooth implementation of HMPPS Gateway Management System and HMPPS EQuiP Process Management system and processes within HMPPS. Facilitate comprehensive process mapping workshops to visualise current workflows and identify opportunities for process optimization.
£28,064 - £33,549

Uhh?

22878 - Senior Project Manager - The Project Delivery Function aim is to have capable and empowered teams, delivering Project Delivery excellence. ​Our people will be empowered to develop the skills they need to succeed, and our line managers will be accountable for upholding functional standards and demonstrating excellence in project delivery. Successful candidates will be part of a flexible resource pool and may be placed in roles based on business needs. The Senior Project Manager leads and manages the project and project team. The national salary range is £71,381 - £80,419, London salary range is £75,674 - £85,257

But what's the fucking job???

23405 - Senior Programme Manager - This is an important leadership role within the Service Centre expansion project, providing an exciting opportunity to shape and deliver a significant programme of change across probation services. Working under the governance of the Our Future Probation Service Programme, the postholder will oversee the full range of governance arrangements for the project, including reporting on progress, managing risks and issues, and ensuring clear and effective decision-making. We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

Communicating & Influencing (skilful bullying)
Delivering at Pace (intense bullying)
Leadership (incompetent bullying)
Seeing the Big Picture (erm, which one?)
The national salary range is £81,338 - £89,472, London salary range is £84,458 - £94,690.

Has anyone any fucking idea what the fuck they're drivelling on about?
ahh... "Some of MoJ’s terms and conditions of service are changing as part of Civil Service reform."

*****

This makes me laugh - hysterical laughter. They are doing this arse about face. OFPS launched February 2025. The OFPS program should have been informed by a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) project firstly. Ha ha they are now looking at doing the BPR and advertising roles 18 months later.You couldn’t make this up. Most important role advertised is actually the 23239 - Change Systems Project Officer who will be mapping the ‘as is’ processes and then design the ‘to be’ processes. I can guarantee you all that they will not consult with the frontline officers re the current and future processes. I have repeatedly said that frontline officers know the problems and the solutions but no, the officers are not considered clever enough are they! The officers MUST be part of the mapping processes.

Senior management who have come up with the whole OFPS are Fuckwits (excuse that but I don’t think this deserves me to find a more polite way of saying it). I will bet my last £100 quid this is not going to end well as JB regularly references. Anon

*****

So AI, what is a Business Process Reengineering Project? 

A Business Process Reengineering (BPR) project is a radical, project-based management strategy that completely tears down and rebuilds core organizational workflows, systems, and structures from the ground up. Unlike incremental improvement methods (such as Business Process Improvement or Six Sigma), which tweak existing routines, BPR aims for dramatic, breakthrough leaps in performance metrics like cost, speed, quality, and customer service.

Core Characteristics of a BPR Project

Radical Redesign: It challenges every existing assumption and tradition rather than patching current flaws.

End-to-End Focus: It shifts an organization from a rigid, department-based structure to a fluid, process-based one.

Information Technology as an Enabler: IT is used to fundamentally transform operations (e.g., replacing manual paper invoicing with automated electronic systems), not just speed up old tasks.

Finite Scope: It is managed as a distinct, large-scale project rather than an ongoing daily routine.

Typical Phases of a BPR Project

1. Define Goals: Align high-level business objectives (like reducing cycle times or cutting operational costs) with strategic targets.

2. Map the "As-Is" State: Analyze current workflows, document steps, and pinpoint bottlenecks or redundant tasks.

3. Design the "To-Be" State: Rebuild the workflow from scratch using fresh process diagrams and new technology foundations.

4. Implement and Manage Change: Roll out the new structure supported by heavy leadership commitment, staff training, and active change management to ease employee resistance.

*****

You were right, JB, productivity IS the answer!

"Barclays is cutting its staff by around 5,000 as it introduces more artificial intelligence (AI) into its work processes. Barclays said the changes were the result of an ongoing modernisation plan, with the use of AI being the "icing on the cake" of its strategy.... "AI has an important role to play and may have a more important role to play in the future."

Oh.

"The Ministry of Justice projects the tool will save around 450,000 hours annually for frontline officers... Productivity improvement: The Justice Transcribe AI‑enabled transcription tool... Identifying opportunities for productivity improvement ..."

"The Project Delivery Function aim is to have capable and empowered teams, delivering Project Delivery excellence... The Change Officer role is an integral role within both Area and National Change Delivery teams which work across Prison and Probation... an exciting opportunity to shape and deliver a significant programme of change across probation services...facilitating the smooth implementation of HMPPS Gateway Management System and HMPPS EQuiP Process Management system and processes within HMPPS."

* "Some of MoJ’s terms and conditions of service are changing as part of Civil Service reform."

** "Artificial intelligence plays a growing and transformative role in probation services, primarily by reducing administrative workloads, enhancing record accuracy, and supporting risk management."

*** "HMPPS does not have actual time saved data to monitor how far estimated time savings have been achieved."

--oo00oo--

AI Action Plan Explorer

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) is at the forefront of responsible AI adoption across government. One year on from publishing the AI Action Plan for Justice, this explorer highlights progress against our ambitions. We are committed to being transparent about how we use AI and will continue to work with industry, academia, civil society and the wider public sector to realise its benefits safely and responsibly.

Fred is an AI-powered chatbot that helps people on probation understand their requirements and stay on track with appointments, unpaid work, licence conditions, and rehabilitation activities. By providing clear, accessible information when it is needed, Fred helps people navigate probation more confidently and reduces uncertainty about what is expected of them.

As part of wider efforts to modernise probation services, Fred demonstrates how AI can make public services more accessible, responsive and user-centred. By providing personalised guidance and on-demand support, the tool aims to improve engagement, support compliance, and enable probation staff to focus on higher-value, person-centred interactions. Fred does not make any decisions regarding sentence management, nor does it discuss content outside of probation.

The project is currently being piloted in London, Norfolk and North Kent. Early feedback from both people on probation and practitioners has been very positive.

One individual reflected: “When I left prison, I was completely isolated, with addiction and mental health struggles. If I'd had Fred to talk to, it would have been a lifeline”.

Tipping Point Already Passed?

Once again we thank regular contributor 'Getafix for pointing us un the direction of this important contribution to the probation debate from Professor Mike Nellis and posted by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies:-  

Do We Want a High-Tech Future for the Probation Service?

The Independent Sentencing Review, chaired by David Gauke, was published in May 2025, and brought into the open – more or less – an alarming vision of the Probation Service’s future.

Implementation, under the rubric of ‘Plan for Change’, began apace, including, in May itself, the first roundtable discussion with the corporate tech sector about their expected contributions to justice innovation.

In June the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) announced £700m “new money” to support the Probation Service up to the 2028-29, although without any initial clarity as to how exactly it would be spent. Precise priorities had not then been set: The ‘Our Future Probation Service’ project, established in February 2025 to improve performance and reduce workloads by 25 per cent by 2027, was still working on them.

In his July McWilliam’s lecture, Lord Timpson, the Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending Minister, extolled the rehabilitative virtues of the old Probation Service, but was singularly unclear – no less that Gauke himself – as to how these would survive and thrive in a future Service focussed so explicitly on punishment and surveillance technology.

The MoJ made no official response to the Gauke Review, but published a Sentencing Bill in September 2025 to take forward what was, in effect, their joint agenda. A month afterwards the MoJ launched ‘Justice Transcribe’ into the Probation Service, a time-saving AI tool for speedily summarising and transcribing conversations with supervisees, in which massive hopes were being invested as a contribution towards resolving the crises of capacity, staffing and performance in the Service.

Keeping a close eye

The Sentencing Bill itself concentrated on more directly punitive technologies, which on the face of it contribute nothing towards resolving probation’s crises. It promised 30 per cent increase in the use of electronic monitoring (EM) – “the biggest expansion of tagging since the adoption of curfew tags in 1999”.

Numbers on EM were growing – 28,000 people were tagged at the end of 2025 – but achieving the MoJ’s target of 22,000 more (by an unspecified date) was a tall order. One contribution towards it was “a presumption that all individuals leaving custody will be electronically monitored for the period they would otherwise have been in custody... This will ensure probation can keep a close eye on thousands more individuals”.

“Keeping a close eye” was becoming a common trope in MoJ discourse on the future of the Service. Speaking of a new, four-site pilot scheme announced in September 2025, which would use remote check-in technology on offenders’ phones, and AI to confirm their identity, possibly in conjunction with GPS tracking, Lord Timpson said:

"This new pilot keeps the watchful eye of our probation officers on these offenders wherever they are, helping catapult our analogue justice system into a new digital age"

The emerging sense that the old Probation Service was being reconfigured as a punitive-surveillance agency was strongly affirmed when former Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood, looking back, declared her real intentions (£):

"When I was in Justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times."

Concerns over direction of travel

Over the twelve months following publication of the Gauke Review, the Probation Inspectorate (April 2025); the National Audit Office; the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee (PDF); and the House of Commons Committee on Public Accounts all published reports concerned about the state of the Probation Service and the direction of travel in which the MoJ was taking it.

The Inspectorate lamented continuing failings in leadership, staffing and services, inadequate material infrastructure (poor quality buildings) and outdated ICT systems. It noted cryptically that “there will need to be significant change to ensure sufficient capacity within the Probation Service to meet operational demand and improve the quality of services” without indicating what that change would be.

The recent HM Prison and Probation Service response (HMPPS) to the Inspectorate’s criticisms stated explicitly that the time-saving digital tools being introduced into the Service were indeed that change, the key to how capacity and quality of service was to be improved. It becomes increasingly difficult to resist the thought that the MoJ is using a human crisis in the Probation Service – one it has no interest in solving on its own terms – to accelerate its transformation into a punitive-surveillant agency.

The House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee “short enquiry” into EM was concerned with making EM a presumptive post-release measure, and – in an as yet unspecified way – “integrating” it into the Probation Service. The “blanket approach to tagging most prison leavers, regardless of crime and circumstances” troubled the Lords because it seemingly “diminishes the role of effective, targeted Probation interventions, and risks creating an unethical system that is overly punitive and disproportionate”.

Just because the MoJ had a legal justification for doing this, said the Lords, did not mean they should. EM had a place, they agreed, but it should not “become a proxy for effective probation work”, and they worried that some of the £700m notionally earmarked for probation would be spent in part on EM.

Wanting to forestall the MoJ’s perceived over-investment in EM, and restore confidence in rehabilitation, the Lords asked the MoJ to revise its most recent EM Strategy (2022), believing that any balanced and evidence-based assessment of EM and the Probation Service’s respective merits would favour the latter. The Lords were somewhat “retrotopian” here, not realising that within the new tech-driven paradigm in which policy on probation is now being taken forward, the MoJ regarded the evidence-base on which the old Probation Service’s authority had once rested, as a little passé.

The Lords’ concerns about EM were sadly not matched in their stance on AI. They did not demur when the MoJ spoke of “the potential for AI to revolutionise our approach” or of “maximising data use” to improve EM. They fell for the simple efficiency argument, that AI would lift “some of the burdens from probation practitioners’ shoulders so they can concentrate their time where it is most valuable.

They seem to have taken some cues from the Confederation of European Probation’s optimism optimism about AI tools, and accepted that any challenges they might pose for Probation would be risen to. Equally, the Lords may have been seeking a trade-off: go for AI, step back on EM.

The Committee for Public Accounts were more sanguine. Echoing the National Audit Office, which had mostly concentrated on the high-risk tech strategy which ‘Our Future Probation Service’ was pursuing, it too was unconvinced that reckless investment in digitalisation was adequate to resolving the staffing and standards challenges facing the Service.

They feared that the pace at which the HMPPS was planning to introduce them could be counterproductive, and was highly likely to “disrupt services, contribute to poor outcomes and staff stress... the short time-frame carries a high level of risk and the MoJ does not have a strong history of implementing digital change programmes well”.

Tipping point

The four post-Gauke reports on the multiple crises facing the Probation Service – and the way those crises are being used by the MoJ to drive fundamental changes in its character and ethos – have yet to be properly synthesised and discussed. There is as yet no organised resistance to the move towards a punitive-surveillant agency, which is not helped by a clear statement from the MoJ on how far it actually wants it to go.

Reassuring talk about only using AI for efficiency measures like transcription is misleading: even Gauke expected it to go further, writing of using “advanced AI” and expecting this to encompass “AI agents” for planning supervision schedules and, possibly, chatbot-driven dialogue with supervisees. The MoJ’s tight relation with the tech industry – particularly its own contract with OpenAI – bodes ill in this respect. It is in the nature of the AI industry to promote continuous innovation, and to hook users with the self-deprecating guarantee that ‘this is the worst AI you will ever have’.

A tipping point may already have been passed, such that resistance to AI-driven public services is already impossible. The emerging ‘digital rehabilitation and desistance’ movement offers slender hope, because while it is expressly not aligned with a punitive-surveillance agenda, it presupposes that digitalisation will be constrained by the culture and values of the ‘old’ Probation Service, and go so far and no further than these values allow.

Quite apart from the manifest threat to these values, a culture of continuous AI innovation makes ‘so far and no further’ a rather pious hope.

Mike Nellis