Police IT procurement plans probed
The government's plans to launch a police-led IT company have come under scrutiny from the Home Affairs Committee
The government has come under fire for failing to provide further details about its plans to reform police IT procurement.
Home secretary Theresa May announced in July that plans were afoot to set up a police-led company responsible for handling IT procurement for England and Wales' 43 police forces.
It was stated the move will reduce the £1.2bn spent annually on IT by police forces, and the company will be running by next spring.
But the plans were picked apart last week in the New Landscape of Policing report from the Home Affairs Committee, which urged May to inform parliament of her progress.
"There is so little detail that we find it difficult to reach a conclusion about viability," it stated. "The people setting up this body have a great deal of work to do in a short space of time if it is to be running by spring 2012."
Georgina O'Toole, public sector research director at analyst TechMarketView, told ChannelWeb that she agrees with the committee's findings.
"It is not clear what [the company's] aims are, who will have responsibility for it, and whether they have enough understanding of IT to make it work," she said.
"[The government] should have had better planning and a clearer idea about what this organisation would look like before it was even announced," she added.
The report also highlights the savings the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) has achieved since deciding last March that English and Welsh police forces must procure commodity hardware and software from integrator SCC via the Sprint ii framework.
The report comes after a retraction by West Midlands Police Authority over criticisms it made about the cost effectiveness of SCC.
The move was welcomed by SCC, which said: "SCC welcomes the full retraction and will continue to work with the NPIA to deliver significant savings for forces."