The ongoing, and lengthy, Edinburgh Trams Inquiry is set to have a new £120,000 document management system introduced as the wait goes on to find out what Lord Hardie’s findings will be. There are over three million documents which are having to be considered as part of the Inquiry and this new system will allow these to be searched and analysed a lot quicker.
It was revealed late in 2021 that a further £500,000 was being made available by the Scottish Government to the Inquiry and its now been reported in Scottish media outlets that £120,000 of this will go towards the document management system which will be supplied by Atos UK.
The Edinburgh Trams Inquiry was set up in 2014 with aim of coming to conclusions just why the original project to return trams to the project went so far over budget and was severely delayed, with just a small proportion of the line being opened. Hearings took place between 2015 and 2018 and since then Lord Hardie has been involved in digesting all the information before he releases his findings – there is no date for when this may be with a spokesperson from the Inquiry saying progress was being made without committing to when we may hear more.
Its hoped that this new document management system will help to speed up the analysis of the documents and bring conclusions finally. Although with the Trams to Newhaven project already well advanced what lessons can be learnt when we do get these conclusions remains to be seen.