Police IT body admits to failings over national gun database

The Police IT Organisation admits to its failings

The now-defunct Police Information Technology Organisation (Pito) has admitted that the long-delayed National Firearms Licensing System was one of its biggest flops.

Pito’s last annual report - the body has been merged into the new National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) - said the gun register was one of a number of programmes which "continue to suffer" from lack of a clear business objective, high level of commitment from the user community and stable funding, leaving it subject to the disruption and uncertainty of continuous review.

The system, ordered by parliament following the Dunblane school shootings in 1996, was intended to rectify obvious shortcomings in paper-based gun licensing by individual police forces. Computing repeatedly uncovered continued delays to the project, even after the 10th anniversary of the Dunblane tragedy.

Others projects highlighted as having been problematic include the National Strategy for Police Information Systems, the Custody and Case system, and a system linking with the EU Schengen system concerning those member states which have open borders, said the report, which was released earlier this month.

An important lesson learned was that delivering business improvement requires business change which must be business and not technology led, although technology may be a stimulus for change, said the report.

Top of Pito’s list of essential factors for success is "strong customer requirement and user engagement".

The last Pito annual report was presented by Peter Neyroud, chief executive and accounting officer for NPIA and includes a foreword in which former Pito chairman Chris Earnshaw claimed the organisation had largely been a success.

He noted "disappointment" over lack of progress with Custody and Case but said: "The board notes with satisfaction that the organisation closes having substantially delivered on its promises of recent years."

Earnshaw hailed in particular progress rolling out Airwave to the London Underground and the Channel Tunnel and successes with the Violent and Sexual Offenders Register, the IDENT1 biometric management system, the development of the Police National Computer and the Holmes2 investigation management system.