Police markets: let's bring in the innovators

Changes to criminality and the augmented threat of terrorism pose massive challenges to policing. In our increasingly digital world, our police service - which has lost much of its technological and change management capacity over the last decade - needs help from innovators in the technology industry. It's a complex market - and difficult to penetrate. But tech suppliers should be persistent and work hard to do so, in the interests of our whole community.

I recently found myself studying the Police and Crime plan for London. It’s a lengthy, but well-written document that, notwithstanding its Metropolitan focus, provides a fascinating commentary on the police service today. These are tumultuous times: recent events at Borough Market and Westminster Bridge bring home only too clearly the terrorist risk Londoners face on a daily basis. But a walk through the document shows that there’s much, much more to preoccupy the new Commissioner than terrorism alone, however high its priority. Street gangs, moped-enabled crime (with all the policing headaches it provides) and the recent vogue for acid attacks all grab the headlines – but it’s the emergent crime types that provide the massive numbers. Indeed, the sudden appearance of over 5 million online fraud and cyber offences in January’s national crime figures propelled fraud to the position of being our most prevalent form of criminality.

The Plan reveals a service that knows it needs to change: it describes the problem of “different experiences of policing,” but goes on to suggest that what it really means is there’s still way too much unfairness and disproportionality, in spite of years trying to tackle it. It’s a service that, in some areas at least, wonders whether it has spent too much time over the last few years aiming at the wrong targets. The plan acknowledges – yes, in an understated and diplomatic way, but acknowledges all the same – that the erosion of neighbourhood policing, however understandable, was probably a mistake that should now be reversed.

Many in the service are now also breaking cover to acknowledge – and articulate publicly – the damage that austerity did. Of course, this has a lot to do with the overall numbers: if you take a fifth out of any organisation’s funding, it’s likely that it will end up rather weaker. But there’s also something about how the cuts were made. The protection of the front line over support functions, the favouring of local spending over institutions that sit strategically across policing, they’re understandable but they inevitably have consequences.

There are some bright spots in police technological innovation, but overall the gap between what an officer does on a personal device and the capability of the equipment provided at work has widened and widened.

In the field of scientific and technological innovation there is also plenty that requires attention. As spending went down, the overall resource devoted to police technology was undoubtedly reduced. There are some bright spots in police technological innovation, but overall the gap between what an officer does on a personal device and the capability of the equipment provided at work has widened and widened. The core systems on which the service has depended for years and years (some of which amount to little more than a computerisation of the paper processes of the 1970s) look increasingly aged and dated. Yet efforts to procure large scale consolidated replacements – police “Supersystems” - have been fraught with difficulty and there have been some hugely expensive failures and many false starts.

Increasingly, one hears about a collaborative environment and open standards and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The argument goes that if competing banking applications can sit happily side by side on my private phone, why can’t my work device accommodate the same configurable competitive diversity, and if my email account can pipe data into my address book and my exercise monitor to my mapper, shouldn’t the same happen with work apps? But progress to facilitate this has been painfully slow. The crowded national landscape of institutions, committees and programmes can encourage and exhort, but progress has not lived up to expectations.

The larger, established, survivors have their place – and the service is highly dependent on them – but the sort of disruptive change that the policing market needs will come from creative small and medium sized enterprises and from new entrants to the market. Yet while the need for fresh ideas has probably never been more acute, the challenge to new entrants in this market remain as strong as ever. Senior figures in policing are often unsure of their ground in their approach to the supplier community – with offers of collaborative discussion too often greeted with uncertainty, rather than being welcomed in the spirit of partnership. Procurement processes are often dominated by endless lists of detailed requirements, rather than an expression of an organisational challenge, together with an invitation to dialogue about the best way of meeting it. And the co-ordinating national infrastructure, that reminds operational colleagues that the requirements for a body worn video camera in a north-western village are really not that different from those in a south-eastern city, is less audible than it was a decade ago, not more.

....the police service is a great partner - once you have broken into it. It is loyal and prepared to work collaboratively with existing suppliers. And the relationships get stronger, the closer you get to the front line: officers and staff will give feedback, offer ideas and devote time to improving the products and services they buy.

I have spent many hours with downhearted clients who don’t understand the geography, the culture or the politics of policing and whose initial efforts to negotiate the landscape and become commercial partners of the service have stalled or never even got started. But my advice is always to persist, for two reasons. The first is that the police service is a great partner - once you have broken into it. It is loyal and prepared to work collaboratively with existing suppliers. And the relationships get stronger, the closer you get to the front line: officers and staff will give feedback, offer ideas and devote time to improving the products and services they buy. And secondly, we need to innovate and support the service because it’s the right thing for suppliers to do. It became unfashionable to make the observation for a period of years, but the sacrifice of PC Keith Palmer at Westminster on 22nd March and the heroics of officers from both the Met and British Transport Police in Borough Market on 3rd June are a reminder that we have outstanding public servants across policing. Society – including the technology sector – has a civic duty to ensure they are supplied with outstanding equipment.

Leaf through that Police and Crime Plan for London again. You’ll see the scope of the Metropolitan Police’s mission. Terrorism, gangs and cyber-crime yes, but sexual assaults, domestic abuse, hate crime, intolerance and modern slavery, too. Policing has never been harder – and the risks we face as citizens haven’t featured as prominently in our collective and individual thinking for many years. The police need more suppliers, not fewer and more innovation and competition. And we need to continue to break down the barriers – of whatever sort – that deter innovators from bringing their knowledge into this marketplace.    

This blog was first published in the August 2017 issue of the UK Public Sector ICT Services Suppliers Journal, which is produced by Breakthrough Search.