Supporting police collaboration through a landmark IT deal
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key fact
Home Secretary Theresa May recognised the SEPSNSA programme as a landmark contract designed to transform the IT technology used by the police forces, enabling them to save money, share information more effectively, and deliver a better service for the public.
Negotiating a landmark deal for secure regional IT services for four forces in the South East, right from the initial business case.
Challenge
Police forces, like the rest of the public sector, are under pressure to share IT services to ensure they’re getting the best value from their resources and service providers. Four forces in the South East believed there was an opportunity to optimise their IT delivery, and needed help to drive thorough the transformation.
Solution
The aim of the project was to ensure the forces could save money, work together more effectively, and protect frontline services. Each force had its own complex network contracts for different technologies and services – in common with most forces in the UK – so the potential to collaborate, simplify IT, and save money was vast. Our team started by reviewing existing voice and data networks and associated technologies for each force to establish a baseline from which the future requirements could be understood.
This work enabled the police services to come to a shared vision, defined objectives, and agreement about where efficiencies could be found. We then worked with the forces to develop a business case, providing strategic, economic, commercial, and management recommendations for a collaborative sourcing strategy.
The next step was to determine the best procurement route. We worked with the forces to define requirements that would challenge the market to innovate. The requirements looked for tenderers to demonstrate capability and innovation through their technology and commercial proposals in a way that was new to policing. It ensured the solution found was innovative, transformational, and could deliver on the business case.
Outcome
The South East Police Shared Network Services Agreement (SEPSNSA) framework is helping to drive significant savings of up to 20% by standardising technology and service models, enabling economies of scale, and creating cost-effective networks. On the contract award of SEPSNSA, SRO ACC Amanda Cooper, Director of Information, Science and Technology for Thames Valley Police wrote: “The forces involved would like to recognise the contribution and project management that [the team] brought to the project in delivering this landmark contract for the policing region.”