MPS Bichard Inquiry team update

Report: 8
Date: 25 November 2004
By: Commissioner

Summary

This paper provides an update on how the MPS is progressing the recommendations contained within the Bichard report. It provides a summary of the methodology being utilised, the current position, the likely deliverables and future opportunities, the threats posed, our links to the national position and a financial and other resource overview.

A. Recommendation

The Authority is invited to:

• Note the methodology and progress to date
• Note the interim deliverables likely to be in place by December 2004
• Consider any further matters they would like the MPS Bichard Team to address.

B. Supporting information

Methodology

1. Following the conviction of Ian Huntley for murder, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) raised concerns as to whether forces could withstand scrutiny into their enhanced disclosure process. This issue was discussed at Management Board and resulted in Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations (ACSO) David Veness sponsoring an inspection to assess how the MPS complied with its responsibilities for disclosure under Part V of the Police Act 1997.

2. In January 2004, an inspection took place of the MPS Character Enquiry Centre (CEC - SO4) by the MPS Inspectorate to assess the MPS process and this resulted in twelve recommendations, of which four are now complete and the remaining eight are either partially completed or are awaiting changes to current policy and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

3. In March 2004 and in parallel to the above inspection and review, a working group was set up and chaired by Commander Simon Bray to anticipate the Bichard recommendations and to scope the business areas affected by the report and to suggest the most effective way to take the recommendations forward.

4. In July 2004 this scoping exercise resulted in the formation of a dedicated MPS Bichard Inquiry Team to co-ordinate activity in the affected business areas.

5. A Steering Group headed by DAC Yates oversees the work of the Inquiry Team. The Steering Group consists of amongst other, an Independent Advisory Group member, an MPA Representative (Deputy Clerk) and a member of the National Bichard (IMPACT) programme. This group meets twice monthly and the outcomes are reported direct to Management Board.

6. A Programme Board headed by Commander Simon Bray meets twice monthly prior to the Steering Group and is supported by an independent consultant (ICG), a project manager and project co-ordinator. Attended by nine ‘identified’ strand leads, the Programme Board is fully minuted and acts as a ‘feeder’/conduit process for the Steering Group.

This diagram shows the reporting structure of the management process.

CDR Bray
Chair
Programme Board

• Intelligence IT
• Information Management
• Interface With CRB
• Vulnerable persons and sex offenders
• Training
• Communication
• PNC Issues
• Homicide lessons
• Inspection and Review
• Corporate Risk Management

DAC Yates
Chair
Steering Group

• Director of Information
• Independent Advisory Group Rep
• Deputy Clerk MPA Rep
• SO4 (Character Enquires)
• National - IMPACT Rep
• CDR SCD5 (Child Protection)
• CDR Territorial Policing HQ
• DAC Ops Support
• Senior Advisor Strategic Development
• Internal Advisory Group Rep
• Head of Corporate Risk Management Group
• Head of Police National Computer Bureau
• CDR Bray, Programme Board

D/Supt McDonagh
MPS Bichard Inquiry Team

Bichard Inquiry Team to co-ordinate activity:

• 1 Band C
• 1 DI
• 1 Band E

7. A briefing was held at the commencement of the project, which outlined strand remits and project parameters. The strand leads were tasked to hold working sub-groups to analyse the threats and opportunities that are facing the MPS in respect of the 31 Bichard recommendations. A list of the 31 recommendations is attached at Appendix 1.

8. A series of documented workshops and working groups have been held. Issues have been identified across the individual strands and the inquiry team and nominated ICG consultant have benchmarked the issues against each other to establish any commonality in terms of conflicts or opportunities.

9. The findings have been centrally collated by the team into a risk register that is fed back into the Programme Board and the Steering Group for their information, observations and agreement to the next stage of the project cycle.

10. The MPS is represented nationally at senior level, on both the information management and IT strands. All activities are being corporately risk assessed and managed, with the assistance of The Strategic Development Directorate (DCC2).

Information Technology

11. Following September’s IT workshop and follow-up work 14 major IT projects have been identified and analysed as potential contributors to the Bichard recommendations. Additional factors such as the National Intelligence Model (NIM), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and operational effectiveness are being managed within current projects, set within an overall Directorate of Information (DoI) strategic outline (see Appendix 2). The DoI is currently investing considerable management focus and co-ordination on Bichard IT issues, including the IMPACT programme.

12. The Intelligence Management Prioritisation Analysis Co-ordination and Tasking (IMPACT) Project was established to deliver a range of compatible products to support the full implementation of the National Intelligence Model (NIM). This Project has now extended into a series of work known as the IMPACT Programme and will incorporate recommendation 2, a national IT system for England and Wales to support police intelligence.

13. The MPS was represented at a national Bichard IT ‘Champions’ seminar on 21 October and is presently identifying likely business change drivers and IT systems gaps in relation to IMPACT. Following on from this seminar AC Ghaffur has circulated a discussion paper presenting a clearer view on the way forward.

Co-ordination with activity around the IMPACT Programme

14. The ACPO Implementation Team has made a bid to the Home Office for funding to assist forces with data cleansing and associated issues. The mechanism for allocation has yet to be decided. The MPS will need to ensure that its data sources are compliant with nationally agreed standards, once they are known.

15. There are likely to be significant resource implications and opportunity costs associated with training. The IMPACT team are negotiating with the National Centre for Police Excellence (NCPE) for training support and delivery but due to the time scale and existing commitments it is likely that this will fall to forces themselves in the short term at least. Much positive work has been undertaken and completed around these issues on the Home Office Working Group B.

Police Local Exchange (PLX) – interim/full

16. The PLX is a nominal database, which will ‘flag’ that intelligence is held on an individual by a particular police force. This will enhance character enquiry checks. Bichard recommends that the PLX system should be introduced in England and Wales by 2005. (Bichard is no more exact on this date - Recommendation 2.)

17. The MPS will be an early participant in Interim PLX (IPLX) by about March 2005. Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) will pay the cost of MPS system changes for IPLX. A Character Enquiry Centre (CEC) Enhancement Project is now in place to enable the MPS to meet the requirements, such as an enhanced search capability, of the subsequent ‘full’ PLX.

Police National Computer (PNC)

18. PNC business has been affected this year by a large increase in activity since the introduction of DNA/fingerprinting of suspects on arrest. The MPS awaits further information from PITO before commencing an MPS upgrade to replace the current X25 link to the main PNC. A thematic inspection of the PNC Bureau is scheduled for February 2005 to look at the timeliness and quality of data as outlined in the ACPO Compliance Strategy and the 2001 ‘On the Record’ review. NSPIS Case and Custody will eventually allow remote inputting of results. The MPS has been preparing for the forthcoming national PNC Codes.

Information management (IM) codes

19. New Information Management (IM) Codes on the way the Service creates, reviews, retains, deletes and shares information are currently being developed through the Home Office and NCPE. It is essential that the MPS be in a position to comply. These form some of the most important recommendations emanating from Bichard and are the ones in which we as a Service play a critical and central role.

20. Compliance with the Codes will have training, supervision and on-going inspection dimensions. Much will have to be delivered locally but it is felt that policy, emerging best practice and an inspection regime would be best managed centrally.

21. ‘High level’ IM Codes of Practice will apply to all police information. The MPS has successfully negotiated involvement in the working group responsible for scoping the codes. The codes will be ratified circa June 2005 with detailed guidance to follow. The MPS IM Business Change Programme has placed the MPS in a strong position to influence and comply with both the codes and the guidance. NCPE has indicated that there ought to be a senior MPS champion and implementation team in place in the MPS from January 2005. The DoI is profiling this requirement and will be submitting a financial business plan incorporating staffing costs and expenditure. This financial plan will be submitted to the Information Management Steering Group (IMSG) via the Bichard Steering Group.

Vetting processes

22. The ongoing Service Improvement Review (SIR) will consider the case for combining the separate vetting units. A new MPS vetting board oversees all policy, performance and operational issues in relation to vetting. The SIR is due to be finalised in December 2004 and a full report will be submitted via the next full Authority meeting in the New Year. The likely outcomes are expected to be recommendations to further enhance information sharing and a Head of Profession.

Training

23. Significant scoping and co-ordination work on training issues has been conducted and key risks identified and managed, with specific focus on current and future development of intelligence and intelligence systems. In order to address ‘ senior level’ operational issues around intelligence led policing, a strategic real time exercise is currently under construction by the MPS Training Command and the NIM team. The Bichard Team will link into this piece of work to incorporate lessons learnt.

Managing dangerous offenders

24. With several units, projects and systems currently in place across the MPS involved in the risk management of “dangerous” offenders work is underway to rationalise inter-business group working in this area. Following detailed scoping work; a joint Territorial Policing (TP) and Specialist Crime Directorate (SCD) review is now underway and is due to be completed by early January 2005. The initial scope of the review will consider information exchange protocols, risk assessment models and a ‘Dangerous Offenders List’ for potential sharing with partners and agencies.

25. In support of this strand, the Violent and Sex Offenders Register (ViSOR) system will rollout in December 2004 and January 2005. ViSOR is a national networked IT solution implemented to all England and Wales police forces, to collate and manage violent and sexual offenders.

In summary:

• The MPS commenced extensive preparatory work well in advance of the Bichard Inquiry report being published and will be responding to Sir Michael Bichard in December 2004 although not directly required to.
• The Violent and Sex Offenders Register (ViSOR) system, Full solution will commence rollout end of 2004/early 2005.
• A clear decision is due on how best to leverage legacy data, based on which approach (or combination of approaches/products) meets a defined user requirement. This will require analysis of IIP -v- Semagix to establish which project is best placed to deliver against the needs of the Bichard recommendations. The user requirements will take account of the National IMPACT delivery requirements.
• Formation of the Character Enquiry Centre Enhancement Project to agree and plan a schedule of work to meet PLX requirements. Work continuing throughout 2004, into early part of 2005.
• Formation of amalgamated MPS vetting processes under one Head of Profession embedded with enhanced information sharing protocols. This could be achieved by early 2005.
• MPS influence and involvement in the formation of Information Management (IM) Codes of Practice and the Police National Computer (PNC) Codes of Practice – both by Dec 2004.
• Sir Christopher Kelly’s Chapter 8 Review comparison against MPS lessons learned – Nov 2004.
• Protocols / Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) regarding information exchange between SCD5 Child Abuse Investigation Command and SO4 Character enquires Centre to be in place by Dec 2004.
• Initial project scope into dangerous offenders to be delivered by Dec 2004
• MPS Submission Report to the Bichard Inquiry – Dec 2004.
• Bichard issues to be incorporated into a programme of work by SCD9 NIM and the Crime Academy relating to a strategic real time exercise aimed at senior police officers/staff – early 2005.

26. It can be seen that the MPS has invested significant resources into the initial Bichard recommendations and will continue to do so. It is worthy of note to mention at this time that the MPS has not been required to respond directly to the Inquiry but due in part to the position that the MPS plays within the national policing arena, it is at this time preparing to do so (the initial submission time-frame is set for 20 December 2004).

27. There are several major challenges to address. For example, the MPS has large numbers of records on the Criminal Intelligence system (Crimint) that have never been reviewed or weeded, the intelligence databases are especially fragmented, each borough has a separate criminal intelligence database and do not meet national data standards. (e.g. 5X5X5 system of categorising and disseminating information), however, work is currently underway (Crimint plus) to drive this identified areas of work forward and to rectify these issues in order to position the MPS ahead of many of the other forces throughout the UK.

C. Race and equality impact

There are no identified equality or diversity implications arising from this report.

D. Financial implications

The Bichard Steering Group will influence decision-making and recommend action where appropriate; any business cases will be routed via the appropriate decision board for the affected business area. Significant IT spends are already committed and projected via the Information Management Steering Group (IMSG). Full costs will be shown in separate business cases as applicable (i.e. Information Management Codes, IT costs).

MPS Bichard Co-ordination Team - following the reconvening of the Inquiry in January 2005 there will be a need to continue to measure and manage all the activities associated with benefits realisation and ensure that continued accrual of benefits can be achieved and measured after the project or programme has been completed. Therefore consideration needs to be given to the continued support of an MPS co-ordination team. A business plan expanding on future roles, remit and financial implications is currently under construction and will be submitted to the Steering Group by December 2004.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author and sponsor: DAC John Yates

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Appendix 1: The Bichard Inquiry Recommendations

1. A national IT system for England and Wales to support police intelligence should be introduced as a matter of urgency. The Home Office should take the lead and report by December 2004 with clear targets for implementation (Page 132)

2. The PLX system, which flags that intelligence is held about someone by particular police forces, should be introduced in England and Wales by 2005 (page 132)

3. The procurement of IT systems by the police should be reviewed to ensure that, wherever possible, national solutions are delivered to national problems (page 133)

4. Investment should be made available by Government to secure the PNC’s medium and long-term future, given its importance to intelligence-led policing and to the criminal justice system as a whole. I note that PITO has begun this work (page 134)

5. The new Code of Practice, made under the Police Reform Act 2002, dealing with the quality and timeliness of PNC data input, should be implemented as soon as possible (page 134)

6. The quality and timeliness of PNC data input should be routinely inspected as part of the Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF) and the Baseline Assessments, which are being developed by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) (page 134)

7. The transfer of responsibility for inputting court results onto the PNC should be reaffirmed by the Court Service and the Home Office and, if possible, accelerated ahead of the 2006 target. At the least, that deadline must be met (page 134)

8. A Code of Practice should be produced covering record creation, review, retention, deletion and information sharing. This should be made under the Police Reform Act 2002 and needs to be clear, concise and practical. It should supersede existing guidance (page 138)

9. The Code of Practice must clearly set out the key principles of good information management (capture, review, retention, deletion and sharing), having regard to policing purposes, the rights of the individual and the law (page 138)

10. The Code of Practice must set out the standards to be met in terms of systems (including IT), accountability, training, resources and audit. These standards should be capable of being monitored both within police forces and by HMIC and should fit within the PPAF (page 138)

11. The Code of Practice should have particular regard to the factors to be considered when reviewing the retention or deletion of intelligence in cases of sexual offences (page 138)

12. The Government should reaffirm the guidance in Working Together to Safeguard Children so that the police are notified as soon as possible when a criminal offence has been committed, or is suspected of having been committed, against a child – unless there are exceptional reasons not to do so (page 139)

13. National guidance should be produced to inform the decision as to whether or not to notify the police. This guidance could usefully draw upon the criteria included in a local protocol being developed by Sheffield Social Services and brought to the attention of the Inquiry.

14. The Integrated Children’s System should record those cases where a decision is taken not to refer to the police.

15. The Commission for Social Care Inspection should, as part of any social services inspection, review whether decisions not to inform the police have been properly taken (page 139)

16. Head teachers and school governors should receive training on how to ensure that interviews to appoint staff reflect the importance of safeguarding children (page 141)

17. From a date to be agreed, no interview panel to appoint staff working in schools should be convened without at least one member being properly trained (page 141)

18. The relevant inspection bodies should, as part of their inspection, review the existence and effectiveness of a school’s selection and recruitment arrangements (page 141)

19. New arrangements should be introduced requiring those who wish to work with children, or vulnerable adults, to be registered. This register – perhaps supported by a card or licence – would confirm that there is no known reason why an individual should not work with these client groups.

The new register would be administered by a central body, which would take the decision, subject to published criteria, to approve or refuse registration on the basis of all the information made available to them by the police and other agencies. The responsibility for judging the relevance of police intelligence in deciding a person’s suitability would lie with the central body. The police, as now, would be able to identify intelligence, which on no account should be disclosed to the applicant. Employers should still decide, based on good selection procedures, whether or not the job required the postholder to be registered and should retain the ultimate decision as to whether or not to employ. The central body would have the discretion to ignore any conviction information judged not to be relevant to the position in question. Individuals should have a right to appeal against any refusal to place them on the register and that right should be exercised before any information is made available to a third party. The register should be continuously updated and available to prospective employers for checking online or by telephone. The register should be introduced in a phased way, over a period of years, to avoid the problems associated with the introduction of the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). The DfES, in consultation with other government departments, should decide whether the registration scheme should be evidenced by a licence or card (page 154)

20. HMIC should develop, with ACPO and the CRB, the standards to be observed by police forces in carrying out vetting checks. These should cover the intelligence databases to be searched, the robustness of procedures, guidance, training, supervision and audit (page 142)

21. All posts, including those in schools, that involve working with children, and vulnerable adults, should be subject to the Enhanced Disclosure regime (page 144)

22. The Registered Bodies’ precise responsibilities for checking identities need to be clarified urgently (page 145)

23. Registered Bodies, or the CRB, should be able to check passports and driving licences presented as proof of identity against the Passport Service and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) databases (page 147)

24. There should be an expectation that documents produced to confirm identity should, wherever possible, include a photograph (page 147)

25. Fingerprints should be used as a means of verifying identity (page 147)

26. Guidance should be issued to Registered Bodies on how to verify that applicants have given a full and accurate account of their current and past addresses (page 147)

27. Registered Bodies should be required to confirm that they have checked the information on the ‘Police Check Form’ in accordance with CRB guidance (page 147)

28. The consents that applicants currently give on the ‘Police Check Form’ should be sufficiently broad to enable the requisite checks to be undertaken (page 147)

29. Incomplete or withdrawn applications should in future be returned to the Registered Body, and not to the applicant (page 147)

30. Proposals should be brought forward as soon as possible to improve the checking of people from overseas who want to work With children and vulnerable adults

31. As a priority, legislation should be brought forward to enable the CRB to access the following additional databases for the purpose of vetting: Her majesty’s Customs & Excise, National Criminal Intelligence Service, National Crime Squad, British Transport Police, and the Scottish and Northern Ireland equivalents of the protection of the protection of Children Act list and the Protection of vulnerable Adults list (page 147)

Appendix 2: IT & Bichard recommendations

1. Introduction

The MPS response to Sir Michael Bichard’s recommendations presents an opportunity to reconsider, and where necessary refine the medium term IT investment plan to ensure it converges with:

1. The Bichard recommendations
2. The National IT Programme (IMPACT)
3. The emerging MPS business strategies
4. The objectives of the current IT programme

2. Purpose

This paper proposes a strategic approach to these issues. Once the broad strategy identified in this paper is agreed, specific costed plans will be developed. This strategy will require some modification of existing projects in the medium term.

3. Current approach

An output from various workshops (involving key stakeholders from the relevant business change and IT projects) is a route map of the existing programme in the light of the Bichard recommendations. It has been mapped against:

1. broad areas of business benefit
2. Bichard recommendations
3. the timeline for each project.

Even at summary level it shows a large number of projects running in parallel. Each of these projects will contribute in some way to meeting some of the Bichard recommendations. However this never was developed as a cohesive programme with the specific purpose of meeting these recommendations. In addition to the projects listed at Annex A there are a number of other initiatives aimed at improving access to data in legacy systems and presenting it in various ways to assist in analysis and various “intelligence” processes. The 14 major projects which need to be considered are:-

• CRIS Enhancements
• Crimint Plus
• Forensic Analysis (Solcara)
• Semagix (Asset)
• IIP
• TIU
• i2
• NMIS
• PLX
  • Interim
  • Full
• PNC Access
• CEC Enhancement
• Impact
  • CRISP
  • Flints
  • NNI
• National Visor
• NSPIS Case & Custody

4. Current status

Of the 14 projects identified above more than half of them are at an early stage where they are pilots, proofs of concept at initiation, or in some cases at the scoping study stage. Many of these projects have taken a discreet and partial view to handling data in respect of:

• Access to data from legacy systems
• Extract of data from legacy systems
• Transform of the data for various purposes
• Load into a warehouse
• Analyses of the data for various purposes

Many of these projects have begun with users attempting to solve specific business problems and in some cases by using proprietary tools (eg Solcara/Semagix).

Each project has a sponsor and there has been some debate about one project being superior to another project.

5. Business requirements

A number of exercises have been conducted by DoI and police colleagues in an attempt to map the 28 recommendations from Sir Michael Bichard onto high-level police business requirements.

At the most strategic level the business requirements are to:

• Have the capability to meet the new code of practice on handling information.
• Provide data (to an agreed national standard) from the MPS to the PLX. There is an interim requirement by March 2005 and a separate full requirement by March 2006.
• Use a national IT capability – the IMPACT programme – The timescales and user requirements have not yet been defined.
• Provide a capability to search across specified MPS legacy systems to support operational and intelligence activity, tactical, and strategic analysis.
• In additional to the above, there are requirements to share intelligence across the MPS and with other agencies and meet RIPA legislation (this pre-dates the Bichard recommendation).

6. Requirements analysis

At the time of writing DoI is working with the business to better define the user requirement necessary to meet the Bichard recommendations.

Early views are that the user requirements for NMIS, IIP and ASSET are discreet and separate. In other words these are different tools being developed to meet different needs.

7. Common requirements

All of the above projects have a number of common requirements. They need:

• Defined business rules and logic – a consistent rule across the MPS eg a person can only have one warrant number.
• Improvements in data quality
• The ability to extract, load, store (and to various degrees transform) data from legacy systems.
• Specific forms of analysis (they need to cut and slice data then present the output).

8. Different requirements

Some of the projects are designed for use by large numbers of users 10,000, others are aimed at highly specialised users such as analysts with a user population of circa 400 and some are tools for strategic assessment with a user community of between 40 and 100. This implies very different levels of training and support for these differing communities.

9. Data warehouse

Many of the above projects are building their own warehouse. This means the MPS is paying several times for different suppliers to extract data, build a warehouse and then get more suppliers to support and maintain their warehouses. This is neither a strategic nor a cost effective solution.

10. Proposal

It is proposed that the MPS take a strategic approach to the requirements at para 5 above. The basic principles are:

1. The DoI establish a Meta Data Team and drive data quality up. (this is the subject of a separate paper).
2. A strategic systems architecture be designed based on one data warehouse (this will require migration from multiple “pilot” warehouses)
3. Each project define its data requirements and where appropriate the data held in a strategic warehouse is optimised for a given purpose (this may require the setting up of a number of data marts – see Annex B).
4. A number of tools (Semagix, i2, NMIS and the front end of IIP – plus others as necessary) are implemented for a specific user community to meet agreed user requirements.
5. Business users decide which tool they need access to and pay on a “user” basis for training and access. (All tools would access the same data).

11. What does this all mean?

Existing projects continue to pilot and proof of concept end stages. The end stage reviews determine how these projects are then modified to be compliant with the strategy identified above.

Project sponsors would re-define subsequent stages of their projects to focus on user needs rather than systems architecture. The DoI will define a migration strategy which takes us from the current position to one where we have a cohesive set of projects which collectively converge and meet the needs of the Bichard recommendations.

Richard Earland, Group Director IPG, DoI

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