If Scotland Yard has a black museum of IT embarrassments, the national firearms database must be a star exhibit. A national database of shotgun and rifle licences was recommended by the inquiry into the 1996 Dunblane massacre, and it has been government policy since 1997. A database was due to be in operation in 2002: it wasn't.
This week, the Police IT Organisation (Pito) announced that the National Firearms Licensing Management System had reached the landmark point of "alpha testing". This means it is ready to go out to police forces to see if it works. It will then go on to beta testing, which means it will handle real data. Lancashire Constabulary and the Metropolitan Police will run it alongside their local registers.
Only after this pilot testing will the register be ready for full service. The target is December: it will then be plugged in, force by force, across Britain, starting in England and Wales.
If this 21st-century system is proceeding at the pace of a Bow Street Runner, it's not the fault of any individual. Rather, it is a consequence of history: the UK has 52 geographic and six non-geographic police forces, constitutionally independent and each more or less responsible for its own IT.
Last June, the Bichard inquiry into the Soham murders blew a whistle on this arrangement. It called for a revolution in police IT to ensure "national solutions are delivered to national problems".
When local police budgets are matters for local accountability, it is not easy to reach a common acceptance of IT solutions. Bichard also called for a national IT system for England and Wales to support police intelligence "as a matter of urgency" and investment in the Police National Computer (PNC).
Pito, which describes itself as the "integration and technical authority for the police service", is the agency bearing the brunt of most of this work. But despite being a sizeable organisation with 700 staff and a spend of £370m this year, it has little power to tell local forces what to do.
Its latest business plan, published last week, paints a picture of an over- stretched agency under heavy pressure to deliver a lengthening list of systems. Introducing the report, chief executive Phillip Webb says that shortfalls in funding have led the organisation to "curtail some planned work". This includes enhancements to the national police web portal, www.police.uk, to make it a two-way service.
Webb says that while the portal will continue in service, without additional funding "its position as a significant route through which the public can supply and receive information cannot be enhanced". Upgrades to a national command and control system have also been held up.
Webb warns that "resources are tight" in two other major projects, the Airwave digital radio communications system, and Visor, a register of violent and sex offenders.
Airwave is important because it replaces forces' individual analogue radios with a single national digital system, capable of transmitting data (albeit at a slower rate than commercial GPRS) as well as voice calls. Its deployment has been dogged by controversy - first from officers worried about safety and reliability, now by public opposition to new radio masts.
Webb says that "growing opposition to the siting of Airwave masts and the significant technical challenges presented" are an obstacle, especially in Scotland.
With Visor, the main difficulty is transferring data from police forces' existing systems. The system is timetabled to be ready for service in March.
Pito's plan says that several other areas of work await funding allocations. One is modernisation of the PNC, a rare example of a nationally used system that is technically obsolete. "Technically, the PNC is showing its age," says the plan. One enhancement the government would like to see is links between the PNC and courts.
Pito says it has piloted such links between magistrates courts in Staffordshire, allowing clerks to put details of warrants directly into the computer, rather than passing them on to the police. The Staffordshire trial tracked down 680 offenders in seven months. Representatives of the various organisations are due to meet this month to discuss expanding the project, but no date has been set for its completion.
Meanwhile, to cope with what it calls a "substantial and expanding programme of work", Pito says it will need more staff over the next two years. Whether that will be possible depends on a Home Office review of the organisation, expected to report in the new year. It will almost certainly recognise that police IT needs more resources - but also that it needs to be run by an organisation a bit more Dirty Harry than Dixon of Dock Green.
Links
www.police.uk
www.pito.org.uk
www.bichardinquiry.org.uk
