Lincs Police / G4S risk register: more analysis

Steve Bachelder has written to me with his comments on the risk register I published a couple of days ago:

The point I want to make about the risk register is in relation to the length of the contract i.e. 10 years. This has always seemed ridiculous to me and I was somewhat surprised to see that it is not mentioned in the risk register. There has to be a risk that the service provided will not meet the standards required by Lincolnshire as happened in Cleveland with the custody suites that they brought back in house. There is also the possibility that the supplier might go bust and stop the service again no mention in the risk register. These are to me fairly obvious risks but apparently not to Lincolnshire?

Many thanks Steve. Good points.

I have been doing  looking some more at the risk register too...

Risk 12: Inability to implement t-police solution with required timescales - this is the only risk that is flagged red so I thought it demanded some attention. First question: "t-police" ?? Here is your answer if you want the full Cap Gemini presentation (pdf download). You will read that "transform police" means "Enabling more informed and connected police services through an integrated law enforcement solution – enhancing the frontline and support functions" I am now beginning to see why this risk is coded red... The probability of the risk occurring has been scaled up from 3 to 4. The recommended action is "Project Risk Register required for t-police. Increased scrutiny by CPT team. External visits are being sought to Cheshire and Nothants. Quality Assurance process required for t-police implementation" By the way is this the same Nothants where there is a by-election next week?

Probably not - but I could not resist it.

But, back to the risk register... so people are off to the forces which are implementing t-police to learn about good practice, I assume. What have they found I wonder? It would seem from this news story that Northamptonshire and Cheshire are still fairly early on in their joint journey.

Whilst "Cheshire Police Authority signed a framework agreement with Capgemini for IT services to support back-office policing activities in February last year", it transpires that in "the autumn the partnership will move to the next phase and introduce a human resources shared service and implement technology to support HR and duty management". So that is about now then....

Interestingly the article in Computer Weekly also says "despite Capgemini’s role, the forces stress it is not outsourcing, because ownership and accountability remain with Cheshire and Northamptonshire Police, with the two forces acting as equal partners". Hmmm. (My added emphases of course.)

So a key pillar of the G4S/Lincs Police partnership is hardly off the drawing board in two other police areas. The risk is coded red. We watch and wait to see what happens. Of course it will all be fine as we know the track record for joined up IT systems in the police service: efficiency improvements by the score!