What does the Met Police want from its £150m integrated policing system?

"Core systems are not integrated, resulting in officers having to re-key information to ensure that all systems are updated" - Met Police

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has revealed further information regarding its integrated policing system tender, released earlier this month.

According to the tender document, the ‘Met Integrated Policing Solution' (MiPS) would be an off-the-shelf product provided by a single supplier in a 10-year deal, worth between £80m and £150m.

In a statement sent to Computing, the Met Police said that it currently had seven core IT systems for recording police-related information. They include CRIS, CrimInt, Merlin, Airspace, NSPIS, COPA and EWMS.

"They range from how we manage intelligence and investigations through to arresting someone and prosecuting them. However, these core systems are not integrated, resulting in officers having to re-key information to ensure that all systems are updated. This also means we have to search the databases individually, which is time consuming and keeps officers and staff away from other duties," the MPS said.

It added that while the seven systems contained a lot of useful data, none of this was linked and therefore it made it difficult to get a comprehensive picture of a person, vehicle, location or anything else that could be helpful to prevent or detect a crime.

The new system will hold all of this information in one place, meaning that the Met can create just one record for every victim, witness, suspect or offender that it encounters.

"The benefits of having one system will mean our intelligence will be better and more up-to-date, enabling our investigations to be more thorough and improving officer safety. There will be savings to be made as maintenance costs will pertain only to one system as oppose to seven," the MPS said.

MPS emphasised that its intention was to buy a product that had been tested and used by other police forces, so it won't be building from scratch. It said that once the new solution was implemented, its existing systems would be decommissioned.

"It is a lengthy process to make sure that we buy the right system and that it meets the needs of the Met. We are bound by the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, therefore suppliers will have to express an interest via the EU Supply Bluelight Portal if they wish to bid for this tender," the Met said.

"As we will be spending over £80m of public money on this we need to get it right," it added.

The anticipated 'go-live' for the system will be spring 2018, with full rollout across the MPS expected to be completed by mid-2019.