Police still using ‘sub-optimal’ IT system chief promised would go two years ago

Photo: GMCA

GMP chief constable Stephen Watson at the Police, Fire and Crime Panel on January 26, 2023

Officers at Greater Manchester Police are still using a ‘sub-optimal’ IT system that the Chief Constable said would be abandoned two years ago.

The software, PoliceWorks, was blasted in the inspection which placed GMP in special measures after it was found the force failed to properly record an estimated 80,000 crimes. The Chief Constable brought in to turn GMP around, Stephen Watson, said the programme would be abandoned in March 2022.

Mr Watson said that, with the contract renewal date for PoliceWorks being June 2023, ‘we have reached a favourable time to consider change’. However, speaking at a Police Accountability meeting on Tuesday (5 March), the Chief revealed the force was still using it.

Techies have been able to ‘make improvements’ to PoliceWorks, and it ‘is hardly holding back our performance’, he added. But Mr Watson did admit that PoliceWorks remains ‘sub-optimal’.

He told the meeting: “We got into a pickle with one bit [of iOPS called PoliceWorks] and it’s that we are seeking to replace. All of iOPS will remain bar PoliceWorks.

“That’s difficult. That’s what we declared some time ago.

“We are currently in the throes of – if I’m honest – a rather more protracted procurement process than I would like. We have concomitantly made improvements to PoliceWorks.

“There have been updates and improvements to PoliceWorks which remains in use, but of course, we still consider it to be a sub-optimal product. We think the actual implementation date will still meet our target. We are proceeding in this space cautiously, I have a low risk appetite for this.

“We are trying to be conservative with a little ‘C’ with [something] that we know will work. But the market only has a couple of products which we would need to tweak. What we are working with is hardly holding back our performance.”

The meeting also heard Mr Watson talk up the force’s turn-around since he took over, saying the force now is ‘objectively, tangibly, and factually the most improved [force] in the country’.

Ethan Davies, Local Democracy Reporter