IT AND DATA
Not-so-smart policing A
John Biggs AM chairs the budget and performance committee on the London Assembly. He talks to PSE about the recent review into the Metropolitan Police’s legacy IT.
lengthy cumulative failure to upgrade IT systems has led to the Metropolitan
Police spending the majority of its technology budget keeping old and increasingly redundant equipment going. This has had a huge impact on the effectiveness of its front-line productivity.
The London Assembly warned that this misuse of resources has even led to a higher crime rate in the capital. ‘Smart Policing’, a new report by the Assembly’s budget and performance committee, sets out the areas the Met must focus on to improve effi ciency and effectiveness in the force.
PSE spoke to John Biggs AM, chair of the committee, about the need for change.
Keeping the lights on
The force currently spends 85% of its IT budget maintaining old technology – which is simply unaffordable. By 2016, the Met’s total budget will be reduced by 20% compared to 2013, according to the Police and Crime Plan 2013- 16. There are 750 separate IT systems, 70% of which are already redundant. This fi gure is set to rise to 90% by 2015.
Furthermore, the force aims to reduce the running costs of technology by £60m in three years, with more police working remotely and exploiting existing data. 20,000 mobile devices are to be introduced over the next year.
The committee found that not enough had been done to introduce new technology into the force, and set out recommendations around mobile handheld devices, social media and even predictive crime mapping to help the force improve.
The report highlighted that the Met often went “straight to a technical solution”, before
properly working through the problem they were trying to solve, or making better use of existing technology. More training and better leadership, as well as greater collaboration, will also be needed to make the best use of IT both new and old, and to provide oversight and strategy for its implementation.
Playing the market
Biggs said: “They’ve got a lot of ancient and unmaintainable technology and they have had a jackdaw approach to improving their systems by selective innovation. Their current position is not sustainable, both for budgetary reasons but also because the effectiveness of policing is compromised by the effectiveness of IT.”
It was “for them to answer” how feasible it will be to invest in new technology in the face of budget cuts and stretched frontlines, he added, but pointed out that the maintenance and productivity benefi ts of better IT would quickly outweigh the capital cost of such a move.
“It’s a mixture of innovation and playing the market effectively. The nature of the IT business has changed since we got these big old contracts commissioned. We now can have a better IT platform with lower maintenance costs.”
Silos and strategy
Smart Policing focused solely on the Metropolitan Police, but evidence suggests that IT costs are way above average in the capital. Biggs said: “It’s not strictly comparable, but nevertheless it’s a very expensive service for what we get.”
The traditional build-up of multiple systems and out-of-date IT is mainly down to a lack of strategy, he suggested. “Historically the police
Above: The MPS Helicopters Twitter account is an example of police using social media effectively.
Clunky information
But the need to re-engineer the police’s IT systems “is now urgent”, Biggs said. “In terms of the frontline delivery of services, the lack of productivity that fl ows through some of this clunkiness of the systems is quite astonishing.
“If you arrest someone it takes 12 different entries of their name on the system; if it takes you half an hour to log on in the offi ce there’s clearly something wrong.”
IT is now a key management resource for the fl ow of information, Biggs said, which can be used to provide more cost-effective services. Good investment in modern technology could help to deliver better outcomes by improving this effi ciency, but getting it right can be complicated – it can’t just be technology for technology’s sake.
Biggs said that there’s been a historical neglect, siloed thinking and perhaps “a general fear” of modern IT in the force. Thinking can become “institutionalised and fossilised” in the police and shaking it up could have a real impact on the delivery of frontline services.
52 | public sector executive Sep/Oct 13
The mass of separate systems around IT is down to incremental procurement over the years, with individual IT solutions for individual problems, and a lack of a holistic strategy.
“It’s a lack of focus, a lack of corporate thinking about IT. You have a system and you don’t get round to it.”
force has been quite siloed. The world’s moved on and the police force needs to move on with it.”
Failing to keep up with the latest technology was part of a wider trend throughout the public sector, and the force needs to “recognise that the old approach is no longer working”.
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