Failure of IT system ‘set police back by f ive years’
THE collapse of a £60million supercomputer project has set Scottish policing back at least five years, the police watchdog has admitted.
Tom McMahon, director of strategy at the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) said the failure of the initiative known as i6 had caused major problems.
As a result, rank-and-file officers are saddled with creaking technology while top brass attempt to put together a replacement.
Senior officers yesterday demanded ‘urgent attention and investment’ amid fears that inefficient IT is hampering the fight against crime.
Last night, Scottish Tory justice spokesman Douglas Ross said: ‘Having a slick and efficient IT set-up has never been more important, yet the single force seems to be all at sea when it comes to an adequate replacement.
‘This again underlines why the SNP’s repeated failure to oversee a proper IT system for a range of public sector organisations is having a damaging impact on the ground.’
Mr McMahon, speaking to rankand-file officers at a recent meeting of the Scottish Police Federation (SPF), said the strategy for police IT was now to ‘pick the bits that work and invest in them’, because i6 had tried to do too much at once and ‘unsurprisingly it was carrying a lot of faults that then couldn’t be fixed’.
He added: ‘I can understand why you [officers] might be a little cynical, given that the failure of i6 has left policing five years at least behind where it should be.’
SPF general secretary Calum Steele described fears over poor technology as an ‘entirely legitimate concern’.
He said: ‘Five years seems a very generous underestimate because there is a significant degree of inefficiency.’
Gordon Crossan, president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, said the termination of the i6 project had ‘undoubtedly been a major setback’.
He added: ‘Urgent attention and investment are required to make the service more agile, flexible and efficient.’
Last year, SPA chairman Andrew Flanagan admitted it was ‘almost inevitable’ that i6 would collapse. He said the disastrous end to the scheme showed it had been wrong to ‘deliver an IT system covering such a wide field’.
Chief Constable Phil Gormley has said the successor IT project would be a less ambitious ‘off the shelf’ solution rather than a ‘bespoke’ one, and conceded the new system would not be ‘perfect’.
Martin Leven, Police Scotland director of ICT, said: ‘i6 was an important element of Police Scotland’s ICT plans – but not the sole element.
‘A digital transformation team has been formed to provide support to the review, planning and resourcing of ICT-enabled projects, potential projects and technical proposals within Police Scotland.’
‘Single force seems to be all at sea’