The McCue Interview: Criminal Justice IT director-general John Suffolk

Bird flu is on John Suffolk's mind at the moment - nothing to do with his day job in charge of the government's £2bn Criminal Justice IT programme, unsurprisingly, but rather his other life running a rare breed conservation farm with his wife in the Peak District.

Among the rare breeds are about 100 chickens that roam freely outside and Suffolk is worried about how they will cope if they have to be moved indoors in the event of any bird flu prevention restrictions being imposed in the UK. (He's also got a litter of pigs cheekily named after chief executives and royalty.)

But he's taking it all in his stride, as you would expect of someone tasked with hauling an independent-minded and locally structured criminal justice system - police, prosecutors, courts, civil servants and probation workers - into the 21st century in what has been called the biggest change to the legal system since the Magna Carta.

Suffolk is not your typical, stuffy Whitehall bureaucrat and his easy-going, approachable and straight-talking manner is evident as he laughs and jokes with his staff as we walk round the open plan CJIT base at the Home Office headquarters in London on a tour of the "Criminal Justice IT Experience".

The CJIT Experience is a role-playing walk-through of how the new IT systems are being used in the criminal justice system. It follows a crime from when it is committed to prosecution and conviction.

I, for my sins, am given the character of a teenage girl called Moira who is an accomplice in a burglary at a stamp shop. I get given community service, you'll no doubt be relieved to hear. Suffolk, who is the character of the main robber, fares less well and gets three-and-a-half years in the slammer.

Evidently it is a role that Suffolk ends up playing every time there is a demonstration for visitors. "I must have been sent down two or three hundred times now," he jokes. In recent months, visitors of the tour have included representatives of various governments and Suffolk says the UK and Canada are now the two most technologically advanced national criminal justice systems in the world.

It is hard to truly reflect the scale of the job of joining up and modernising the UK's criminal justice IT systems and the myriad agencies and departments involved but Suffolk has to deal with four different ministers, the Home Secretary, the lord chancellor, the attorney-general, 43 independently policed forces, 156 independent youth teams, crown courts and magistrates courts - all with their own way of doing things.

Suffolk says: "The sheer scale and the sheer complexity of the amount of interdependence you have - you cannot apply traditional techniques to transformation in terms of this. This is a give and take. It is our job to get them to the finish line. Overall we don't do a bad job and the vast majority of the work is done."

Indeed, although the current ministerial target for the completion of the CJIT programme is March 2008 the main IT projects are due to be completed by the end of March this year. The final two years will see rollout of the IT systems to the Metropolitan police - which has been left to last because it will be the largest single implementation, with 40,000 users - and the joining up of the rest of the systems.

The CJIT programme was set up in the spring of 2002 to provide anyone involved in criminal justice - professionals, victims, witnesses - with easy access to the information they need by 2008.

Key strands of the programme include providing secure email and internet-based services to everyone working in criminal justice, and providing the police, Crown Prosecution Service and magistrates courts with national systems for managing cases. The final stage is to link all these using the secure Criminal Justice Exchange so the information can be shared and accessed by those authorised to see it.

Suffolk readily admits that it's not been plain sailing and that mistakes have been made along the way but says the programme is now firmly on track and on target to achieve £3bn of efficiency savings - a mixture of cashable savings, cost avoidance and productivity gains - over 10 years.

He says: "I think that's a blooming good performance."

One of the ways Suffolk has ensured the technology being introduced is "fit for purpose" is to introduce proof-of-concept trials with IT suppliers - where they demonstrate how to solve a real-life problem in the criminal justice system using the existing secure network.

He explains: "I tell them you put some money in, we'll put some money in - it's tens of thousands of pounds, not expensive - and you must show us within 12 weeks how, out of the box, no custom coding, you can fix problems."

A good chunk of Suffolk's day is spent dealing with suppliers, whom he keeps his door open to because he says they are critical to the success of the programme. A typical day sees him at the office by 7:30 before a breakfast meeting with suppliers at 8:00 and then back in the office by 9:00.

He says: "I dedicate my core hours to CJS IT work, whether with the agencies or with the teams. My day normally ends with another business meeting or a business meal and I normally get back to the flat between 10 and 11pm."

On Thursday he heads back home to the Peak District and works from home on Friday doing "tidy-ups" - emails and report writing - before turning his attention back to his farm at the weekend.

"I spent my birthday moving sheep around, worming them and getting them ready for lambing," he jokes.

But he has no regrets about taking on the CJIT challenge. "You don't get many opportunities in life to come along and change the way a country's criminal justice system works and this has been a great opportunity," he says.

He has no firm plans about where his next career move will take him after CJIT although his background as former MD of Britannia and business trouble-shooter suggests it won't be something too cosy or relaxing.

"I look for big and horrible stuff," he says. "I'm not into steady state. I get bored with steady state."

And if the CJIT programme keeps on track there are likely to be no shortage of job offers for Suffolk - that is unless his own staff don't lock him up and throw away the key first.