By Andy McCue, 24 June 2005 13:05
NEWS The Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) is to be replaced with a new central agency that will be responsible both for national projects and management of the £750m annual local IT spend by the UK's 43 police forces.
The decision follows an in-depth independent review of PITO's performance, which concluded that despite some successes the organisation has "largely failed" to meet the needs of the police since it was set up in 1998.
The report, which has been presented to the Home Office this week, said: "Around 80 per cent of the police expenditure on IT is within forces. PITO has been unable to influence this to any significant degree. Thus beyond the large projects, the success of which has to say the least been mixed, PITO's contribution to police ICT has been marginal."
Under the proposals PITO's police IT responsibilities will transfer to a new Police National ICT Group (PNICTG) headed by a CIO who will report into a board made up of representatives of the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities. The PNICTG would form part of the broader National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which is due to come into force during 2007.
The PNICTG will be tasked with making police IT more efficient and effective by providing better management and co-ordination of national and local police IT, which is currently dispersed across 3,700 IT workers in 43 police forces
"The fundamental requirement is for a central capability for delivering both the national dimension of police ICT and ensuring greater effectiveness and efficiency at force level. There is an existing consensus that 43 separate IT departments is unsustainable; a consensual and evolutionary strategy that leads to their rationalisation is required," the report said.
A separate public sector body is also being proposed to act as a custodian for the police information databases, such as the Police National Computer, in recognition of the explosion of information held nationally on these systems across the police and criminal justice system.
Phillip Webb, head of PITO, welcomed the publication of the report findings and said in a statement that the organisation will be examining the issues raised in the coming months.
"In the meantime, PITO has a considerable work programme that the police service is relying on us to deliver. While that is our immediate focus, we will also play a full and active part with the Home Office and other partners to improve the provision of police ICT and to shape the development of the NPIA," he said.
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. Dick Vinegar
Blame macho Chief Constables, and their trade union, ACPO, for PITO's failures. I have heard three presentations over five years about how hard it is to join up policing across 43 police forces. Each time the speakers say that the situation is getting better, and there is goodwill all round, and ACPO is being helpful. But nothing improves. There have to be red-necked turf-defenders who are obstructing national databases, and should be named and shamed. One might have thought that that Soham might have taught them something.
Instead of appointing a new bit of alphabet soup, with much the same functions as before, Charles Clarke ought to bang a few helmeted heads together very hard.
2. anonymous
I have not yet read the report, but it seems that once again the Government is just replacing one failed organisation (PITO) with another probably later-to-fail one (PNICTG). If the existing people from PITO are moved to PNICTG, then what problems will that solve?
3. Angus Cleaver
Requirements vary between police forces and often 'uniform national' systems satisfy nobody, having taken years to design what everyone sees as a compromise, which they are then forced to adopt and do not 'own'. We produce variants to our specialist systems for UK police forces because in practice there are differences in policing conurbations, large rural counties, international airports, etc.
While at first glance uniformity looks good, in practice the areas where there needs to communication between forces is limited. We already have more than enough 'centres of excellence', 'best practice recommendations' and central bodies giving advice without practical experience, without coming up with yet another set of initials.
4. John Thompson
What the police, and other public sector areas like the NHS need is a central body co-ordinating standards for each sector in terms of functionality, data interchange etc.
This stops the need for massive projects that are bound to fail, but without ending up with fragmentary systems that can't talk to each other.
This would give a clear standard for suppliers to build to allowing access to any supplier and giving purchasers a clear way of comparing competing products.
5. anonymous
In my experience the problem lies largely with Chief Constables, who remain fiercely independent and focussed largely on local initiatives to boost their career prospects given their relatively short fixed-term appointments and the thinly disguised 'competition' between forces. In addition their lack of knowledge of IT means that they delegate too many decisions to local force IT managers, many of whom are preoccupied with defending their local power base and local favourite flavour of technology. Important decisions on joined-up working rely on collaboration which many Chiefs are reluctant to engage in, if it impacts their own local plans. As a result the new central IT organisation will also fail unless it has some 'teeth' and the ability to mandate approaches.