MPS Information Strategy – NSPIS custody & case preparation business case

Report: 15
Date: 7 December 2004
By: Commissioner

Linked to exempt item 18

Summary

The NSPIS Custody & Case Preparation project is the start point for electronic case file information in Criminal Justice (CJ) business environment, will improve victim, witness and offender management and will facilitate streamline working between CJ partners.

The MPS Resource Approval Committee (RAC) have endorsed the business case and commitment is needed to the expenditure required to progress the Force Wide Rollout of the NSPIS Custody and Case Preparation system and its associated business change.

A. Recommendation

That the MPA commit to the required investment relating to this business case.

B. Supporting information

Background

1. The Home Office and the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO), are committed to introducing joined-up Criminal Justice by 2006 on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government. NSPIS (National Strategy for Police Information Systems) is the tool by which police will implement common systems (e.g. Custody & Case Preparation) for use by police officers and police staff.

2. The MPS has intentionally deferred Information and Communications Technology (ICT) investment in support of its Criminal Justice business environment in anticipation of the NSPIS Custody & Case Preparation applications. The current custody system was old when implemented into the MPS in 1994, and has limited functionality, performs poorly and proves difficult to provide Home Office required management information. Currently there is no standard way of working in Criminal Justice Units (CJUs) or corporate systems supporting their work.

3. The NSPIS applications have taken longer than promised to become available. Consequently, further work is required by PITO to ensure compliance with the Information Systems Strategy for the Police Service (ISS4PS) and to upgrade the technology they use. They do, however, provide a core set of standard functions that exceed the capabilities of current MPS applications as well as delivering a set of interfaces across Criminal Justice Organisations (CJOs). These include the Police National Computer, the Magistrates Courts and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The adoption of these applications by police forces enables 65% of the information required across CJOs to be captured and shared.

Progress - funding

4. The MPS indicated its intention to adopt the NSPIS Custody & Case Preparation applications in 2002/3 subject to a technical and financial viable solution and approval by the MPA. This intention was re-affirmed on 1 July 2004 with the caveat that the MPS needed ‘whole-life’ costs before being able to seek MPA approval.

5. Stephen Rimmer (Home Office) wrote to Chief Constables and Chairs of Police Authorities on 22 July 2004 stating that forces must have NSPIS Custody and Case Preparation products with electronic interfaces, fully rolled out by 31 March 2006.

6. The MPA wrote to Stephen Rimmer (Home Office) explaining that it was not able to authorise the investment until the support costs and whether they would be met from central funds were known.

7. The Home Office have passed the allocated post March 2006 budget to Criminal Justice Information Technology (CJIT), who are compiling a Finance Strategy including support & maintenance costs beyond March 2006. CJIT have now advised that ongoing support & maintenance costs will be made available to forces until March 2008. Availability of funding from April 2008 will be subject to SR2006.

8. The delays to the approval process that have been caused by this uncertainty mean that the pan-MPS rollout cannot now be completed by 31 March 2006. Confirmation has been given by PITO that those rollout implementation costs that now fall in financial year 2006/07 will be met from central funds.

9. As well as the risk of increasing this potential funding gap there are other risks to delaying the Force Wide Rollout, namely:

• Loss of Directorate of Information (DoI) technical resource & Vivista business consultants and subsequent lead time to recruit and train a new team;
• Loss of reserved hardware (i.e. sold on the open market) and a two month lead time for re-ordering;
• Loss of booked training accommodation and additional lead time to secure a new site and equipment;
• Management of expectations & credibility of gap between the pilot phase and full force-wide rollout.

Progress - programme

10. A pilot of the two applications was undertaken at Newham for technology and business evaluation. The case preparation pilot went live on 15 June 2004 with an interface to the Magistrates Courts’ system. The Custody and MIS applications have been in pilot since 15 July 2004 with the Custody – case preparation interface soon afterwards. The pilot is now complete and an evaluation is currently in progress.

11. The objectives of the pilot are to:

• De-risk the full roll out of the programme
  (i.e. lessons learned will be taken from the pilot and applied to the full rollout, together with actions to mitigate disbenefits);
• Develop the benefits realisation plans
  (i.e. the pilot can also be used as a basis to set and agree the benefits measure, metrics and baselines, which will be gathered during the full rollout).

12. The pilot and subsequent rollout will provide the MPS with the following key steps:

• Information sharing;
• Management information;
• Supporting process change;
• Providing interfaces to other organisations;
• Starting the tactical steps towards a joined-up CJ environment.

The business change and implementation of the new system is the first of many steps towards joined-up criminal justice.

Benefits & business change

13. The currently identified benefits of this programme support the main strategic goal of revitalising the CJ system by:

• Development of pan-MPS information and process solution for the management of offences from custody reception to final resulting of the case
  • Single sources of information, available in real time, covering all aspects of a criminal offence from arrest to court outcome
  • Defined and common process for all aspects of Custody to trial that is agreed and followed by all partner organisations
• Delivery of corporacy and commonality in business processes from MPS – CPS – MPS
  • Development of corporate culture, involving all staff levels of the partnering organisations, which covers the wall to wall operation of criminal, victim and witness management from arrest to Judicial Disposal
• The development of the basis for centralised Management Information
  • Provision of the basis of data, information and intelligence for management to make decisions, identify operational progress and potential for improvement
• Additional support for witness and victim care, in respect to the result of court case feedback
  • Proactive and timely responses to victim and witnesses on the results of cases
• Providing additional cumulative improvements to the ‘Narrowing the Justice Gap’
  • Qualified and quantified judicial disposal information to identify specific impacts to the justice gap solutioned by NSPIS Custody & Case Preparation

14. These benefits will result in a set of outcomes, the measures and timeframes of which will be identified and quantified during the period leading up to the start of rollout. The anticipated outcomes are:

• Compliance with Home Office policy
• Reduction in ineffective trials
• Leading to a reduction in cracked trials
• Increase in Judicial Disposals
• Improvements in victim and witness view if the Criminal Justice process
• Increase public confidence in Criminal Justice

15. It is very difficult to attribute and measure the changes that this programme has on the environment in its own right (i.e. other business changes will effect ‘Narrowing the Justice Gap’ and ‘Victim and Witness Care’). The current identified benefits and PITO’s twelve national benefits will be reviewed to determine those that are most appropriate to current MPS strategic direction and can be measured as a direct result of this programme.

16. The extent of the business change within the organisation stretches to the implementation of new procedures and re-engineered the supporting functions. There is also an impact on the re-engineering of the main Criminal Justice business processes due to the complexity of partnership across criminal justice, and the need to adopt new ways of working in CPS and Courts. Therefore the level of change is regarded as medium to high as all of the following performance framework areas are effected:

• Culture and climate
• Work design and execution
• People and skills
• Formal management systems

C. Race and equality impact

1. As a national (NSPIS) system, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions are delivered by PITO according to the National User Group’s specification including needs of special groups. The MPS has discussed its requirements regarding users with special needs, for example members of staff who are partially sighted or who are wheel-chair users, and has received satisfactory responses.

2. Contractor staff will be governed by the same rules and guidelines as permanent employees with respect to behaviour and the needs of special groups.

3. The Business Change Team are working in collaboration with the appropriate representatives from the Police Federation and Trade Union Side (both also attend the monthly Programme Board meetings) to ensure the staff associations are fully involved in the development of this programme.

D. Financial implications

1. The financial implications of the award appear in the exempt Appendix 1 to this report, which has been jointly produced by DoI and Territorial Policing (TP).

E. Background papers

None

G. Contact details

Report author: Martin Darlison, Directorate of Information

For information contact:

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

Send an e-mail linking to this page

Feedback