The Home Office will not consider the business case for
a new national police intelligence system for England and Wales
until September, despite earmarking £140m for the project last
June.
The creation of the Impact system was one of the main
recommendations of the Bichard inquiry into the deaths of Jessica
Chapman and Holly Wells, which published its first report last
year.
Plans for such a system were laid down in the National Strategy
for Police Information Systems in 1994, but they were dropped in
2000 just as police chiefs were agreeing a National Intelligence
Model which would place intelligence at the heart of policing.
The delay in agreeing the business case was revealed in
Bichard’s second report, which was published last week. The report
revealed that a new Impact programme director had been appointed
and his first task was to impose project management discipline on
the programme.
Bichard said, "A dedicated programme director has been appointed
and I understand that his early input is that more formal programme
disciplines are required, with urgent priority to be given to
completing a clearly set-out statement of the approach, the plans,
costs and benefits.
"I understand that, for the sake of getting the essential
groundwork settled, the outline business case resulting from this
work will not now be considered by the Department’s Investment
Board until September this year. The 2007 target for programme
implementation is nevertheless retained."
Bichard raised a series of other concerns about the progress of
Impact and said, "Impact is a major scheme requiring significant
investment and containing complex interdependencies. Its successful
implementation is by no means guaranteed yet."
The report said that only 38 out of 43 forces had signed up for
the Cross Regional Information Sharing Project (Crisp), a system to
allow police office to share and search information within a force
and between forces.
"This must be a matter for concern and further monitoring," said
Bichard, who described it as "a crucial test" for the police
service and its leadership.
Impact will draw on the data held in forces’ existing systems,
including, but not limited to, intelligence systems, and will
eventually provide standardised data and intelligence at force
level which will be capable of being searched at a national
level.
But Bichard warned that this required common standards that were
not yet in place. "Business rules and processes also need to be put
in place to ensure that the data used in Impact is of a common
standard," he said.
This could be the biggest obstacle to Impact’s success, said
Georgina O’Toole, a senior analyst with Ovum. "There is a low
emphasis on business change; it seems to be a last thought. Systems
get all the attention. Business change is the issue of making
people work differently, so they input information correctly.
Without that, the system will not be what it needs to be."
O’Toole questioned whether the Police IT Organisation, which is
responsible for the development of national systems, would be able
to drive business change and implement nationwide systems as it had
no power to mandate individual forces.
An independent review of the future of the Police IT
Organisation has been finalised and sent to Home Office ministers.
The review was due to be published last month but the Home Office
said there was now no date set for its publication.
Why not use the Scottish system?
Scottish police forces already have a national intelligence
system, but English and Welsh forces must wait until 2007 before
theirs is in place.
Six English police forces are in advanced negotiations to use
the technology behind the Scottish Intelligence Database, which
will be made available through an application service provider
model.
But in his final report, Bichard backed the development of a
system for England and Wales. He made a distinction between the
system as used in Scotland and the system being built in England
and Wales under the Impact programme. It is this difference that
makes the Scottish system inappropriate for England and Wales,
rather than any technical limitation, he said.
"At an early stage in determining what it wanted, the
Association of Chief Police Officers asked its Scottish colleagues
to provide a high-level project plan outlining an option for
implementing the Scottish approach within the police service of
England and Wales.
"It was agreed that England and Wales would independently
develop their own user requirements and business processes to
underpin the Impact programme. [Home Office officials] have pointed
out that the Scottish Intelligence Database provides a system for
sharing developed intelligence and would not by itself provide
either the wider information-sharing capability for which Acpo has
identified a need, nor the modernisation of the Police National
Computer. These are convincing arguments that persuade me to
support the Impact programme."
Police intelligence and information systems
Impact
Proposed system for information sharing, analysis, briefing,
investigation and crime recording. Due to be delivered in 2007.
Crisp
The Cross Regional Information Sharing Project can enable the
sharing and searching of information within a force and between
forces (and any other approved organisation). Crisp is part of the
Impact programme.
PLX
The Police Local Cross Reference System is a national nominal index
of people on whom police forces hold information. An interim system
is already in place, with a full system expected later this
year.