Metropolitan Police tenders for £150m integrated policing system

I saw this announcement in Computing today and it sparked my interest due to my involvement earlier in my career in NSPIS. The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) has tendered for the provision of a “Met Integrated Policing Solution” (MiPS) on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). It is looking for a commercial off-the-shelf product that would deliver “a single integrated, unified, operational policing system that managed information end-to-end business policing processes in relation to investigation, detention (custody), intelligence and case management”. The Met Police is looking for a single supplier to deliver these services in a 10-year deal worth between £80m and £150m.

In a tender notice, MOPAC said its requirement was for a resilient, high availability solution for key modules that operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that can flexibly meet the demands of policing London. The key services it is looking for as part of the procurement include: integrated licences for Investigation, Custody, Intelligence and Prosecution; provision of third line support call-handling and management system integrated with the Met’s SIAM service provider Atos implementation and data migration, testing services integrated with the Met’s service delivery and integration management provider; the development of interfaces and APIs and training planning, administration and delivery.

The Met is looking for two hosting options. One mandatory option is to install and operate the solution from MPS-nominated data centres and another “desirable” option includes the provision of secure data centre hosting. “The purpose of this optional requirement is to allow the authority to choose to move to a cloud-hosted option before or at the end of the initial term if it is deemed appropriate,” MOPAC explained.

I find this interesting as I was a member of the PITO team responsible for the first set of national systems for the police in England and Wales. The Met is after Police Scotland the largest force in the country, but although this sounds like it could be a model for all other forces, I know that this is not the case as rural policing requirements won’t be part of the spectrum covered.