Shambles in £60m police project was ‘inevitable’
THE head of Scotland’s police watchdog has admitted it was ‘almost inevitable’ that a major £60million supercomputer project would collapse.
Andrew Flanagan, chairman of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), said the disastrous end to the scheme showed it had been wrong to ‘deliver an IT system covering such a wide field’.
He admitted it was ‘almost inevitable that [approach] was not going to work’, despite the SPA previously voicing confidence in the project.
Officers had been depending on the i6 project to bring together disparate computer systems from the now-disbanded eight territorial forces.
Last night, Mr Flanagan was criticised for suggesting the demise of the project was effectively unavoidable.
Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Douglas Ross said: ‘You have to question the leadership in the SPA with this latest statement, which basically suggests the i6 project was never achievable, yet years and millions of pounds were wasted on it.
‘It’s little wonder SNP ministers were keen to keep the termination of i6 under wraps as long as possible to minimise the opportunities for parliamentary scrutiny but this shambles of a project should be looked into.
‘Police have been saying for some time they need improved IT systems but by putting all their eggs in the i6 basket, the SPA and Scottish Government have let them down.’
The i6 scheme was abandoned after the SPA, Police Scotland and controversial technology firm Accenture agreed to end their contract this summer.
In an interview, Mr Flanagan said: ‘In this day and age, you wouldn’t embark [again] on a strategy to deliver an IT system covering such a wide field and do it in a big bang approach. It was almost inevitable that was not going to work. The question is how we plug the gap that has been created by i6 not being delivered. There are a number of parts of systems that are already in place that can be upgraded.
‘I actually don’t think there will be a significant issue for us in terms of i6 not being delivered. There will be no “son of i6”.’
The comments raise the prospect of police having to make do with upgrades of creaking IT infrastructure. The new system was supposed to replace the mix of obsolete and incompatible IT platforms used by Scotland’s eight police forces before they merged in 2013. The scheme was to be rolled out Scotland-wide by the end of 2015.
It was designed to cover crime management, missing and vulnerable persons, intelligence and custody. But the i6 contract was ditched after repeated delays and technical glitches.
Despite warnings over its chequered record, Accenture, which was previously involved in an English NHS computer fiasco – one of the world’s biggest public sector IT scandals – was hired to build the new system. The budget quickly ballooned from about £45million to £60million and major doubts emerged about Accenture’s ability to deliver i6 after Police Scotland said it found multiple faults following handover of the project.
In February, Nationalist MSP Christine Grahame, then convener of the Holyrood committee that holds Police Scotland to account, said she would not trust Accenture to fix leaky pipes.
The plug was discreetly pulled on the contract on the day Holyrood broke for summer recess – amid the political chaos following the Brexit vote.
Last night, an SPA spokesman said: ‘Future [IT] options will be informed by the independent “lessons learned” review of i6 being conducted by Audit Scotland and the work being currently progressed to set out a vision and strategy for policing over the next decade.’
Comment – Page 16
‘Millions of pounds wasted’