MPS information strategy – approval to place a call-off consultancy contract

Report: 17
Date: 23 October 2003
By: Commissioner

Summary

A formal competitive tender exercise for a service contract and recommendation for award of contract.

A. Recommendation

That the Committee approve the recommendation for the award of a consultancy service contract for a two-year period to the company named in the linked exempt appendix.

B. Supporting information

Introduction

1. In September 2002, the Finance Committee confirmed its continued support for the implementation of the MPS Information Strategy and noted the overall budgetary implications of that decision.

2. This support was endorsed in June of this year when the Committee agreed to commit resources to the provision of the underlying technical infrastructure upon which the strategy depends.

3. The outcome of these decisions is that the aims of the Information Strategy with respect to improved efficiency, on-line access to all MPS information systems and mobility are on course to being realised.

4. Thus far the Strategy has delivered:

• The Aware (office automation) programme - to time and within budget
• Secure e-mail linking MPS boroughs to the Crown Prosecution Service
• CRIS (Crime Reporting Information System) Release 10
• An MPS-wide database for Stop and Search (with a proof-of-concept for mobile access due by the end of November)
• Access to a single criminal intelligence database for pan-London units
• Significantly improved Crimint (criminal intelligence) searching capability for Borough Intelligence Units
• A customised intelligence application giving access to legacy data
• MPS-wide database of missing persons
• Corporate mapping and gazetteer facilities

5. Further, over the next 12 – 18 months, the Information Strategy will deliver solution such as NSPIS Case Preparation and Custody, Crimint Replacement, MetDuties and the Integrated Information Platform, that will enable business change programmes in relation to:

• Justice for London (JfL) and improvements to the criminal justice process
• The implementation of the National Intelligence Model (NIM)
• C3i and Modernising Operations
• Forensic Case Management
• The Operational Policing Measure (OPM)

Why consultancy support is required

6. The programme to outsource major areas of work, undertaken in 1997, resulted in a significant reduction in directly employed technical staff. In essence, the problem now faced by the DoI is that demand from the business, as reflected in the business change programmes above, far exceeds the capacity of our in-house resources to deliver. In addition, the Directorate of Information (DoI) is committed to the renewal of our current outsourcing contracts and faces the same recruitment issues as other MPS support functions.

7. To illustrate this point, at present the Information Programme Group within the DoI has approximately 90 qualified staff working on over 80 Information Computing and Telecommunications (ICT) projects. Even though our work programme is now organised to allow in-house staff to work on multiple projects and hence maximise productivity, there is nevertheless still a discernable gap between the business need and our ability to supply.

8. Moreover, in terms of the development of ICT solutions, the 2003/04 programme requires specialised technical skills that are no longer available in house.

9. To address the shortfall, the DoI favours having the ability to go to the external market place, on a single-supplier, call-off basis. Our policy is to recruit permanent staff where possible, but the flexibility to fill the gap and match demand is essential. The main advantages of this approach are:

• Supply can be matched to demand – the “tap” can be turned on and off as required;
• Work can be packaged and let against set deliverables;
• Specialists can be engaged at short notice for fixed periods;
• There is access to a wider range of skills
• There are no overheads such as recruitment and training;
• The contract stipulates that skills are transferred to in-house staff;
• There is no need to manage multiple, external suppliers;
• Volume discounts can be negotiated through a single supplier.

The roles consultants will undertake

10. The consultants engaged by the DoI will be engaged in a range of technical activities such as:

• Programme planning and critical path analysis
• Project management
• Project development
• Test manger
• Benefits realisation
• Baseline improvements
• Requirements specification
• Business change
• Infrastructure design and development (fixed and mobile)
• Project support
• Data and component modelling
• Database design
• Database administration
• Data extraction and integration
• Systems migration and integration
• Procurement and supplier management

11. As outlined above, consultancy resources will be used to supplement in-house staff in order to implement the MPS Information Strategy and in particular:

• Deliver information and infrastructure solutions required by C3i and Modernising Operations
• Implement Airwave and Mobile Data
• Roll-out the national Case Preparation and Custody products in support of Justice for London
• Replace the current criminal intelligence application and deliver an intelligence data warehouse in support of the National Intelligence Model (NIM)
• Implement the next generation of the ICT infrastructure
• Deliver resource and management information solutions in relation to the Operational Policing Measure
• Implement a Forensic Case Management system
• Continue with the replacement and integration of legacy applications

12. The need for a procurement exercise to provide the DoI with the consultancy support it requires was accepted by the committee at its meeting in April and resulted in the OJEC tendering process described below.

Formal tender process

13. Procurement Services placed the OJEC advertisement and received 46 expressions of interest.

14. Technical and Commercial evaluation teams from the DoI and Procurement Services evaluated the expressions of interest.

15. Companies were issued with the ‘Invitation to Tender’ of which one declined to submit a tender.

16. The same technical and commercial evaluation teams evaluated the tenders against a pre-defined evaluation criteria.

17. 3 companies were shortlisted for a presentation and interview.

18. Presentations were made to DoI senior management and representatives of the Information work stream packages.

19. The rates tendered by the recommended contractor have been benchmarked against a recently conducted procurement exercise for consultancy support and against S-Cat indicative prices and show that the rates quoted compare favourably with current market trends.

C. Equality and diversity implications

Contract award is expected to be neutral in terms of equality and diversity. No assessment of the impact of the Commercial Strategy on race equality has been carried out, because there are not considered to be any equality and diversity implications in the proposals. The contractor’s staff will adhere to MPS policy in relation to equality and diversity.

D. Financial implications

The financial implications of the award appear in the exempt appendix to this report.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: George Corral, Information Strategy Programme Director, Directorate of Information, MPS.

For more information contact:

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

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