Old and fragmented IT systems hampering Met's fight against crime, committee says

In a report into 'Smart Policing' (44-page / 666KB PDF), the London Assembly's Budget and Performance Committee said that the Met is failing to make use of technology "in a way that supports frontline police officers". It identified problems with the Met's governance over the use of ICT within the force and its expenditure on technology. It also criticised the Met's reliance on legacy systems and said a shortage of expertise is hindering its management of IT outsourcing contracts.

"The Met does not use technology as well as it could," the report said. "It has built up its current provision over a number of years without a coherent strategy. Crime is higher as a result and criminals with smart phones often have better technology than London’s police officers."

"The Committee is concerned that the Met lacks adequate support and oversight in improving its use of ICT. The Met’s Directorate of Information (DoI) has a key role to play in helping the force implement an effective ICT strategy; but it lacks capacity and capability. And the

Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), which should be ensuring its oversight of the Met’s new ICT strategy is robust, currently lacks a director to be responsible for this task," it added.

The Met is currently developing a new strategy on ICT which is expected to be finalised later this year. Currently the Met spends approximately £250 million a year on ICT, but has plans to cut the running costs associated with its ICT systems by £60m over the next three years.

The Budget and Performance Committee said that it is concerned with how the budget cuts could impact on the operations of the force and added that the Met also "urgently" needs to adopt new technology.

"Forces tend to go straight to a technology solution before working out the problem that they are trying to solve," the report said. "And rather than exploiting the ICT capabilities they already have first, police forces tend to buy new technologies and incorporate them with their existing systems – sometimes unsuccessfully. Due to the fragmented ICT systems at the Met, officers are not as effective and productive as they could be."

"These existing systems are approaching obsolescence so the situation could get even worse. Currently, 70% of the services’ ICT systems are redundant. This is expected to increase to 90% by 2015. Maintaining these elderly systems is expensive: the Met spends 85% of its ICT budget ‘keeping the lights on’, rather than supporting the frontline with modern technology and improving public access," it said.

The Committee said that the Met had too many "bespoke" ICT solutions that are costing too much to maintain. It said that the force should assess its outsourcing contracts and put in place new arrangements that will allow them to better access new technology in future.

"In the past, the Met, like other police forces, locked itself into long-term contracts with single suppliers, in the hope of achieving economies of scale," the report said. "These contracts have not always delivered value for money. The pace of technological change means that police forces should be drawing up short-term contracts in order to benefit from cheaper solutions that emerge from the marketplace."

"New ICT contracts should have three key features. They should be flexible: the cost of technology will decrease year-on-year. Good contracts also have break points; these would enable the Met to re-assess what technology is available on the market to ensure it gets the best deal. And by ‘future-proofing’ contracts, the Met – and not just its ICT suppliers – could also benefit from new developments in technology," the Committee added.

The Committee said that the Met could look to cloud computing, social media, mobile working and data analytics, among other things, to lower the costs, and improve their use, of technology.