Counterterrorism IT system was critically defective: former officer
A key intelligence sharing system used by police to investigate extremists was dangerously flawed and unfit for purpose when it was first introduced, according to a former counter-terrorism officer.
The National Common Intelligence Application (NCIA) was known to be "clunky," "clumsy" and unable to provide consistent outcomes when it was introduced in 2014, former detective constable Tony Thorne has told the BBC.
NCIA was developed to consolidate regional information about potential violent extremists into a single searchable national database, thereby improving communication between MI5 and law enforcement agencies across the country.
The launch of the system in 2015 was lauded as a landmark event that would make a substantial contribution to the fight against terrorism.
But according to insiders, the database was plagued by multiple issues, including crashes and mass duplications that made sifting through vital intelligence almost impossible.
Thorne, who was involved in a pilot project of NCIA in 2013 and who retired in 2018, says he tried to warn his seniors about the system's flaws on numerous occasions, but his concerns were ignored and the system was allowed to go ahead.
During the 2013 trial, Thorne says users sitting side-by-side at computer terminals were observed while they conducted identical searches.
Right away, he says, he was worried to see systems returning different results for identical searches.
"They came up with different data - the bio details that were coming back were completely different. There was something wrong there."
The pilot also discovered that the system allowed data to be destroyed because users could accidentally overwrite it - and there was no way to determine whether or not any information had been changed.
In 2017, when NCIA was in the latter stages of its implementation, the UK saw one of its worst years in terms of terrorism, with five events resulting in 40 deaths and over 900 injuries.
The 22nd May that year was the date of the Manchester Arena bombing, when a suicide bomber detonating an explosive device killed 22 people and injured hundreds more.
Families of the victims told an investigation panel that there were "multiple opportunities" to avert the tragedy.
Twenty-nine-year-old Martyn Hett was among those killed. His father Paul said last month that he "can't understand" why the assailant had not been identified as a person of interest by law enforcement before the attack.
Counter Terrorism Policing claims substantial enhancements have been made to the system as a result of a thorough evaluation conducted after the terror acts in 2017.
"It is a matter for the chair of the Manchester Arena Inquiry to decide whether the systems Counter Terrorism Policing used impacted their ability to prevent the attack," a government spokesperson told the BBC.
The spokesperson added that the NCIA has significantly enhanced counter-terrorism efforts in recent years.
Thorne, on the other hand, believes that NCIA was implemented too hastily and put into operation before any flaws had been fixed.
"It should never have gone out," he said.