Police ‘being held back’ by outdated ICT system
GUERNSEY Police is still struggling with an antiquated ICT system which is wasting officers’ time, several years after an independent report labelled it among the worst inspectors had seen.
A network of out-of-date and inefficient systems is hindering how local police share information and intelligence.
But there are hopes that the situation will improve this year.
At a public hearing organised by the Scrutiny Management Committee, it was revealed that staff are still working with many of the difficulties highlighted in a 2018 report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.
Under questioning, Colin Vaudin, States chief information officer, said there were ‘laws of physics’ involved in the 200-year-old police headquarters in Town, and a purpose-built headquarters was ideally needed.
He said that investment had been made in ‘must-haves’ over the last few years, but this had focused on back office areas, causing frustration for the front-line officers.
Covid-19 had meant the improvement work on the Police Station was paused, because the technical staff were redeployed to set up initiatives like the travel tracker and the vaccine centre.
Those staff will go back to working with the police once the pandemic situation allowed.
By the end of this year Mr Vaudin said that a new platform should be in place, and this would help to stabilise the network.
The work is being carried out by specialist third-party suppliers, rather than by the States IT provider Agilysys.
Head of Law Enforcement Ruari Hardy said that ICT was a ‘golden thread’ that ran through good, efficient policing, and it linked them with UK forces.
He agreed there was ‘a very long way to go’ because the current set-up was ‘still a very old system’.
The labyrinth building does not help, he said, and the amount of granite and asbestos were added hurdles.
Scrutiny president Deputy Yvonne Burford asked whether day-to-day operations were still being hampered by old technology.
Mr Hardy responded that while the force was not hampered, it was unable to take advantage of efficiencies.
He added that making the case for more funding ‘sucks in more of our effort’, although he acknowledged that there had to be a process for applying for resources because funding was limited and Law Enforcement was competing with other important committees.
The 2018 HMIC report highlighted how the police ICT system was very slow because it was a patchwork of additions.
Some officers had said the system was often down, and there was no certainty that they would even be able to log on.
