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Police ICT spend profile for 2010/11
Business and Infrastructure ICT investment by police will outstrip the total spent on front line systems by almost two to one in 2010/11, according to new research.
Storage, e-mail, finance, desktops, networks, telephony and other business applications account for £139m, or 42% of total ICT capital spend by the 43 forces in England and Wales.
Around half of this figure goes to operational or front line systems such as crime, intelligence, command and control, radios and mobile data. These add up to £71m or 21.5% of total capital investment for the new 2010/11 financial year.
The research was carried out by Police Market Report, the monthly ICT bulletin. It found ICT spending is mainly divided between 34 systems – 18 covering back office and infrastructure and 16 dealing with operational or front line policing.
Overall, capital spending on ICT will rise to £330m in the new 2010/11 financial year - 17% up on the 2009.10 total of £280m. The Metropolitan Police accounts for the bulk of this with £136m or 41% of total spend.
The profile of front line system investment shows several peaks and troughs. Mobile data, the single highest spending operational item, falls to £13.6m in 2010.11 - 28% down from the £19m recorded last year. Intelligence, however, leaps ahead from £3.7m in 2009.10 to £6.1m in 2010/11.
Infrastructure investment, which covers desktops; servers; networks and telephone systems shows a healthy 8.2% increase rising from £104.6m in 2009.10 to £113.2m for 2010.11.
Specific uses for £120m or 36% of ICT capital cannot be identified because details are not disclosed by several forces. The figures do not include 2010.11 ICT capital spending by the central National Policing Improvement Agency.
“The rise in infrastructure spending shows attention is being paid to business process improvement”, comments John Rowland, Police Market Report editor.
“Forces are looking at better networks to save time with applications such as video conferencing”
“The full impact of collaborative work on ICT systems is still being worked out and renewal of many core police systems lies ahead because of this.”
Rowland added “there’s some slow down in mobile data as forces try and realise solid business benefits before going further.”
“Investment in other areas remains steady, with an increase in Airwave radio equipment spend noted as the need to replace elderly hardware kicks in.”
