WIREDGOV

The Home Office yesterday announced the latest awards for bids to the Police Transformation Fund. The PTF is Home Office fund for projects designed to transform policing by investing in digitalisation, a diverse and flexible workforce and new capabilities to respond to changing crimes and threats.

Of the £100m of funding that has been announced, £70m is for the continuation of four national policing programmes already underway, which will be familiar to much of the tech supplier community:

• National Enabling Programme: delivering a unified IT system across policing and deliverin more joined-up working within and between forces. Composed of three strands (Productivity Services, Identity and Access Management, and a National Management Centre)
• Specialist Capabilities Programme: Improving force-to-force resource sharing in key crime areas like roads policing, armed policing, and cyber-crime.
• Digital Policing Portfolio: Aiming to improve police’s use of technology. Composed of three strands (Digital Public Contact, Digital First, and Digital Intelligence and Investigation)
• Transforming Forensics: Improving how biometric services and digital forensics are used across law enforcement.

Of the remaining bids, there is £6m across 3 National Crime Agency projects, including £1.5m for the National Economic Crime Centre (as announced in the National Security Capability Review earlier this year).

There is also money for the APCC to continue work on Data Standards and Knowledge Sharing. And £1m for the Police ICT Company for a Transformation Programme (100 day foundation phase) under their new CEO.

Commenting on the awards, techUK’s Programme Manager for Justice & Emergency Services, Henry Rex, yesterday said:

“Today’s confirmation of another year’s funding for the national programmes is good news for policing and the tech supplier community. But perhaps the most interesting aspect about these awards is that that practically every project that has secured money is national in scope. Over the past year or so the Police Service has put more and more emphasis on collaboration, with talk of shared solutions to shared problems. Today’s successful bids demonstrate that approach has fully taken root in policing.

It is only by such collaborations that forces will be able to make the most of digital technology and drive real change across policing.

As national programmes become ever more prevalent, it is critically important that SMEs are given opportunities to engage. Policing must have access to a broad and diverse supplier base in order to harness the innovation they need to transform. techUK looks forward to working with the national programmes and Police ICT Company to ensure that they can make the most of the innovative capabilities in the tech community.”