Home Office National Public Safety IT Delivery Landscape Reform Strategy – Industry Roundtable Summary
The Home Office recently conducted an internal Major Law Enforcement Programmes review to surface the common themes that have contributed to the delay in several large complex public safety IT programmes. Following on from this review they are exploring the optimal approach to delivery and support of National Public Safety IT Programmes, and the Home Office is seeking industry views to inform a Reform Strategy and to understand industry’s views on the optimal delivery model for NPS Programmes and IT Systems.
One of the key findings of the review and a principle of the Reform Strategy is that many of the National Public Safety IT programmes and systems would be more likely to be successful if delivered and supported in the sector, rather than from the Home Office.
The aim of this roundtable session with the Home Office and techUK members was to discuss Industry’s view of this hypothesis and the role the Home Office should play in a reformed delivery landscape, exploring key questions such as:
- What is Industry’s view on the optimal approach to National Public Safety IT Capability delivery and operations?
- What role(s) would Industry ideally like to take through the National PS IT capability lifecycle?
- What role(s) do Industry think the sector and/or Home Office should play in the commissioning and delivery of outcomes?
- What concerns (or benefits) would Industry have with a move to contracting with public sector bodies other than the Home Office for National PS IT Capabilities?
Introduction
Georgie Henley, Head of Justice and Emergency Services at techUK, ran through the agenda before handing over to Bethan Page-Jones from the Home Office.
Bethan Page-Jones ran through the context and the background of the work she and her team are doing. The Home Office has responsibility for very large, national technology programmes for policing, lots of which are very high profile and have received some high-level public criticism. The police questioned the Home Office ability to deliver the National Police Systems and so an investigation was launched that looked at how policing is set up in the Home Office and how the systems are run. This resulted in a number of recommendations, funding models, and a new commissioning unit: The Home Office Capabilities Reform Unit, which is a delivery landscape reform programme and new collaborative partnership.
The main ask is where the delivery of these services should sit, and how to deal with the imbalance that resulted from the question around who had decision rights – the police, or the Home Office? The idea is that if delivery is moved closer to the sector it might improve how it functions. Questions were posed to the group, such as: How might such a process work? Are there particular candidates? Should capabilities be commissioned on both infrastructure and systems, or should they be split up? Is it good to think about infrastructure and then explore capabilities on top of that? The Home Office note that in order to deliver these programmes well they need to be more transparent.
Another area the Home Office is looking to explore is how to get a more coherent approach to data capabilities and making sure they have thought about business potential opportunities when looking at the replacement of the service and asking where the business impact and driver is.
It’s important to the Home Office that as it is designing policy in this area that they have consulted industry and got their views. Looking at the delivery landscape industry is key, and the Home Office want to know how to manage these contracts in a more responsible, outcome-based way.
Discussion
Intellectual property rights and what the desired target is as this determines the approach to the market. Home Office would like an unrestricted, unlimited right to use what is developed by suppliers, whether they would like full ownership or exclusive ownership is yet to be decided. This also depends on whether the Home Office is looking for a solution or a service, because this changes the suppliers approach and how much they are willing to invest.
Some SME’s expressed concerns over the degree to which dominant suppliers role and IPR issues can put them at risk and act as a disincentive to investment and innovation.
The Home Office said that they would need IPR in order to make sure the ecosystem won’t “suddenly be held to ransom” by a dominant player. A potential solution to this is for the Home Office to discuss the IPR issue ahead of issuing the tender and making it non-negotiable.
Key takeaways
Question 1: What is Industry’s view on the optimal approach to National Public Safety IT Capability delivery and operations?
- Look at the recommendations that came from the review and understand why some things failed.
- Issues surrounding how the Home Office attract investments
- Issues surrounding capacity and capability in the programmes themselves plus who has decision making rights.
- Home Office is interested in testing whether they pull the delivery of services back into the Home Office or put it to industry.
- Is there a need to refresh the systems all together or just add new functionality?
- Area of concern: how this will be pushed out across the right areas in the Home Office to make it as consistent as possible.
- The ability to stand up a capability and culture that can deliver services is significant and removing the Home Office from some of the responsibility when things go wrong would perhaps free up time and space for delivery.
- Central v’s Local: should national programmes be run by the Home Office by default? The Home Office team are keen to know if the Home Office is making it more complicated by essentially being the middleman. What would industry’s reaction be if they said suppliers are not going to be contracting directly with the Home Office? The funding, however, will always come from the Home Office.
- Benefit in delivery coming from outside of the Home Office
- If this is going to be done correctly it needs to be ensured that organisations are prepared to give up resource and another body doing the levelling of commissioning would be useful for industry. Finding an organisation that gets the needs of different forces and their specific requirements is also really important when looking at the optimal approach to delivery. Moving the delivery from one place to another won’t solve the problem, it’s about having the right infrastructure to manage it effectively.
- Home Office to take the review findings and refresh the services all together. The need for a strong centre with the right governance and the issues around IPR aren’t new problems, the lack of standards across the forces and lots of different frameworks are another big challenge. Structurally it should be delivered from the centre outwards and be standardised.
Question 2: What role(s) would Industry ideally like to take through the National PS IT capability lifecycle?
- Early market engagement and continued engagement.. Concept viability event or events for better understanding of challenges/ solutionising?
- The Home Office is trying to be a more intelligent customer and they are also interested in industry views as to what they should be commissioning from industry and what they shouldn’t. The worry is that if they disaggregate too much, they might overcomplicate things and it will be unclear who is responsible for what.
- Getting industry involved in the policy formulation from the very beginning would help the Home Office work out what to commission and what to ask for, especially those who specialise in specific technologies and services.
- Concern: Some suppliers are in direct competition with one another and so might not want to work with one another on delivery, however it tends to be that most of these services cannot be delivered by one single company anymore. Members of the roundtable highlighted that a lot of companies are very likeminded and do want to collaborate with one another, so that is still an option.
Question 3: What role(s) do Industry think the sector and/or Home Office should play in the commissioning and delivery of outcomes?
- Scaling up for centralised model in a way which doesn’t stifle innovation. De-centralised v’s centralised approaches.
- SME invitations to central projects allowing the opportunity to feed up with the larger organisations. Home Office concerns around disaggregation. What is being done around system integration? Case by case can be looked at but broader understanding needed as to who holds the responsibility at a central level.
- Home Office are keen to ensure they do not tied themselves to one particular suppliers.
- Updating not replacing legacy systems. How to transition from ‘where we are now’ to ‘where we need to be’.
- Can we take learning from other sectors?
Question 4: What concerns (or benefits) would Industry have with a move to contracting with public sector bodies other than the Home Office for National PS IT Capabilities?
- Commercial progression and working with Blue Light Commercial and Police Digital Service. Suppliers highlighted that it doesn’t matter who ‘they do business with’ as long as they are backed by the Home Office. Industry however needs processes which wont slow them down.
- Product centric view around what PPPT has. How much ownership needs to be put on other business change aspects?
- Ownership needs to sit somewhere and, forces need to have an intimate role in this but, greater understanding as to what needs to change and what needs improving.
- NMC and NEP highlighted as good examples.
Next Steps
This is an ongoing conversation. The strategy – time to think it through. Time to get it right. Challenge set to get something to the permanent secretary in June. Working group with NPCC, PDS with Operational policing/ IT and home office. Question posed to the group – degree to which you would want similar events to this? More concrete provocations. ‘Our decision is X, what do you think?’ Do we need to finesse it/ shall we run more of these sessions? Does the format work? Group agreed and were supportive of working with the Home Office on future sessions such as these via techUK.
Georgie Morgan
Georgie joined techUK as the Justice and Emergency Services (JES) Programme Manager in March 2020, progressing to Head of Programme in January 2022. Her portfolio then expanded in January 2024 where she now leads our work across fraud and economic crime.
Ellie Huckle
Ellie joined techUK in March 2018 as a Programme Assistant to the Public Sector team and now works as a Programme Manager for the Central Government Programme.
