Metropolitan Police CIO Ailsa Beaton to leave next year

Ailsa Beaton, CIO at the Metropolitan Police, the top IT job in the police service, is to leave her post in mid-2013 after 12 years in the role.

Beaton, who arrived at the Met four commissioners ago, has led an across-the-board change in computing in the biggest police force in the UK.

As director of information, she arrived "before there was an organisation-wide email system, when information strategy was managed in a different business group from technology, when there were no service level agreements with the major outsourced service providers and before the introduction of a Police Authority in London," said the Met in a statement released this evening.

It added: "Her first major challenge was the then proposed Private Finance Initiative (PFI) programme, C3i, under which it was planned to outsource call handling and dispatch in the Met at the same time as introducing the new national police radio system. The outcome was an effective Met-led and operated service delivered on time and within the Home Office funding envelope."

Her key achievements over the past 12 years, according to the Met, include:

• The introduction of mobile technologies to operational policing;
• Significant improvements to the intelligence systems;
• The implementation of a ubiquitous ICT infrastructure;
• The introduction of new capabilities required by external changes such as social media monitoring;
• The timely provision of the ICT necessary to deliver an effective policing response during the Olympics, including the introduction of new capabilities particularly in the field of Geographic Information Systems; and,
• Providing the CT community with a secure national ICT infrastructure.

In 2005 Beaton became the first member of police staff to be elected by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) nationally as a portfolio lead, head of the information management business area, making her a member of both the ACPO 'cabinet' and Chief Constables' Council for the past seven years.

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