A Home Office agency has scrapped a "world-first"
secure, multi-million-pound online system that helped to reduce
crime by providing online links between the public and police
forces across the UK.
The
National Policing Improvement Agency has also cancelled a
contract for the system's replacement. The agency said that Police
Portal is no longer operational and that a replacement system from
defence and security specialist
Qinetiq is the subject of a legal dispute.
A spokeswoman for the agency told Computer Weekly, "This service
[Police Portal] is no longer available. The system that was in
development was not fit for live use - due a range of serious
defects and delays - and consequently failed user
acceptance
testing. It is not possible to issue more details as it is now
subject to legal proceedings."
The scrapping of the existing system will add another failure to
the Home Office's list of cancelled and troubled IT-related
projects.
That list includes failures of systems that supported
immigration services, the issuing of e-passports, the probation
service, criminal justice and the criminal records bureau. A Home
Office agency, the
Identity and Passport Service, is running the £5.3bn ID cards
scheme.
The scrapped system - the "Police Portal" - went live in April
2001 and was run by BT under a contract which expired at the end of
March this year. After this the service was suspended pending a
replacement system from Qinetiq. Now that the National Policing
Improvement Agency has refused to accept the replacement system, no
service at all is operational.
The Police Information Technology Organisation, which was
subsumed into the National Policing Improvement Agency,
commissioned the Police Portal in 2001. Pito described the system
as a "world-first". It linked dozens of police forces across the UK
and allowed the public to provide intelligence information, report
hate crime or non-emergency incidents via a secure link. Hate crime
is defined by the Home Office as any criminal offence that is
perceived by the victim or others as being motivated by prejudice
or hate.
Officers in various police forces also used the system to
communicate internally. The police used it shortly after the London
bombings to send messages to key teams, and to request information
from the public. The public was asked to send digital photos and
text video pictures for use by the Metropolitan Police.
Some forces had also started to use the Police Portal for
broadcasting appeals for information on missing people and cars.
The National Policing Improvement Agency has declined to say how
much has been spent on the police portal. A request under the
Freedom of Information Act elicited a statement that £5.1m was
spent on the running of the Police Portal in one year alone -
2006/7.
A spokesman for Qinetiq said that he was unable to comment other
than to say that his organisation is in a legal dispute over the
replacement system.
The National Policing Improvement Agency said there was a
connection between the system being unavailable and the matters
that are the subject of the legal dispute.
Those involved with the system believe it is ready to go live
and are not unclear why the contract has been cancelled. The
dispute is expected to go to mediation and if still unresolved may
go to court. One of the issues will be whether the system was
defective and unacceptably late, or whether the contract was
cancelled in part because it was proving difficult to fund and was
not fully supported by all police forces.