GMP’s troubled £27m computer system hit by ‘indefinite’ delay
THE switch-on of GMP’s troubled new £27m computer system has been delayed indefinitely – because of problems moving millions of crime records.
The new system should have gone live in November. It was delayed until March 20 to make it bigger – but IT experts ran into problems transferring millions of records about crimes, convictions, suspects and victims dating back to GMP’s inception in 1974 into the new system.
The start date has now been delayed indefinitely – with a senior officer saying the delay will be of ‘months rather than weeks.’
Contractors are said to be working round the clock to fix the problem and the force’s bosses hope the new system will be switched on at some stage this year. They say it remains within budget. The latest delay will also be used to tackle ‘bugs and defects’ that have emerged on a training version of the new system.
A number of companies have been contracted to deliver the new system, called ‘integrated Operation Policing System’ (iOPS), for £27m, part of a £66m budget to bring the force into the digital age.
It is designed to help GMP bosses to run the force and record details of crimes as well as prevent officers repeating identical entries into different systems.
It will use data centres at secret locations to store details about crimes, documents, pictures and video.
The new system is designed to enable officers to digitally link footage taken from body cameras to specific crimes and it automatically produces a map of an offender’s crime history instead of a list of offences.
It is designed to prevent inputting errors and will link automatically to the Police National Computer.
Chief Supt Chris Sykes, who is co-ordinating the project, insisted the problems in transferring data, which will still be kept on the out-going systems, would be fixed.
He said: “The delay is likely to be in months rather than weeks but my aim is to deliver it in 2018.
“The program is currently within its budget and we are working with our suppliers about how we make this operation as soon as possible.
“The process of moving our very complex records from our very old computer systems across into state of the art technology in cutting edge data centres is proving to be a technologically difficult process but with the ultimate aim of having clean, usable data for our staff to use.
“There’s nothing more crucial than getting correct data records of our victims, witnesses and offenders, missing from home data and intelligence accurately across into our new system so there’s no impact on operational policing or risk to Greater Manchester communities. When we do go live, Greater Manchester will have some of the best technology which will last for years to come and enable officers to be more efficient and effective and ultimately provide a better service. GMP has lost 2,000 police officers due to the reductions in budgets but this technology and future developments will enable our officers to be more effective at serving the public.”
However one senior source said: “It’s very frustrating. It keeps crashing during training sessions.”
In May last year, an independent assurance expert brought in to assess GMP’s readiness for the new computer system, Gerry Pennell, expressed concern the force ‘does not have adequate involvement with iOPS from a technical perspective.’