A multimillion-pound project that could introduce smart warrant cards to police officers in England and Wales has been delayed because of problems with the procurement process.

The smartcard-based scheme is being considered as part of a wider single sign-on project that had been scheduled to go live by April (Computing, 29 June 2007).

But the Police Information Technology Organisation (Pito), which is running the project, says it has been delayed because of the absence of policy and guidance notes during the tendering processes.

It has run into further hold-ups because of the creation of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), due to start on 1 April, which will take over the management of centralised IT programmes from Pito.

A Pito spokeswoman told Computing that all projects will be reviewed by the NPIA.

At the moment the police use multiple applications, each with separate user IDs and access rights. A single sign-on system would simplify access to data across all systems regardless of location and force ownership, with user details held in a national directory.

While the project’s missing policy and guidance notes have now been written, the specification could change again following the NPIA review.

‘The original scope may not match the requirements that NPIA identifies, so it will look at whether the project addresses the needs of the police,’ said the Pito spokeswoman.

Sarah Burnett, senior research analyst at the Butler Group, says the delays could affect the relevance of the project.

‘There is a business need for single sign-on access, but technology moves quickly and they have to keep up the momentum of the project,’ she said.

‘If they merge it with a portal and some kind of content management system they could put access rights on documents or use it to create audit trails.’