£80m police mobile device scheme saved little cash, delivered few benefits

By Gill Hitchcock Guardian Professional,

Programme to equip police with Blackberrys and personal digital assistants has not delivered hoped-for results, says the National Audit Office

The Home Office's £80m programme to equip police with Blackberrys and personal digital assistants (PDAs) has achieved limited cash savings and only one in five forces have used the devices effectively, according to a National Audit Office (NAO) report.
The Mobile Information Programme began with the Labour government's announcement in September 2007 that 10,000 mobile devices would be provided to police officers within the following 12 months. Previously such devices had been introduced in only a small number of forces.
The programme distributed £71m of central funding to forces between 2008-09 and 2009-10. By March 2011 more than 41,000 devices had been rolled out to police officers and police community support officers through the programme, in addition to the 10,000 already in use before the scheme began.
The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) was awarded £9m in funding to manage the scheme and the programme's delivery targets were consistently exceeded. However, the NAO found it had not properly considered how forces would use the devices, nor the amount of local expenditure needed.
The NPIA "undertook a high-level assessment of forces' mobile technology requirements, but only limited analysis of their capability and capacity to introduce it. The investment board criticised the business case for lacking sufficient cost-benefit analysis between the options, not knowing whether local forces were prepared for mobile technology and not clearly understanding the costs or local funding required," the report said.
While the devices have enabled police officers to spend more time out of their stations, an estimated 18 minutes extra per shift, not all forces have seen significant process improvement thanks to the scheme.
"22 [of the 32] forces responding to our survey cited drawbacks with their mobile technology projects including the speed with which forces were asked to roll out devices, low usage, technical problems or limitations, or lack of senior buy-in to the use of mobile technology. These are barriers to effective process change," the report says.
In addition, there was no assessment of the number of devices that each force would need under the programme, according to the report. In some of the forces surveyed by the NAO only 1% of officers had devices; 19 forces had devices for less then half their officers, while three forces had more devices than officers.
Only 10 of the 32 forces who responded to the NAO found they had derived savings from the programme.
"While the Mobile Information Programme did not explicitly set out to deliver cashable savings, these should have followed from objectives to reduce bureaucracy, increase efficiency and contribute to better policing. The focus
on increasing visibility and supporting front-line officers means that cashable savings to date have been limited. Some forces are, however, predicting greater savings in the future, for example in reducing control room costs," the report says.
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: "In the majority of forces, the benefits have not so far extended beyond simply allowing officers to spend more time out of the station.
"There is still the opportunity to achieve value for money, though, if more forces use the technology to improve the efficiency of their processes and make savings in their back office activities."
Among the report's recommendations are that both the Home Office and police service should learn from the forces that have made effective use of mobile technology to improve processes and integrated its use into daily operations.
Further investment decisions should be based on a robust analysis of costs, police force requirements, and their ability to use new technology effectively. The Home Office and the police service should also use the opportunities presented by future generations of mobile technology, including the proposed replacement of the Airwave radio system, to examine the merits of further convergence of infrastructure and improving business processes.
It calls on them to examine whether there are opportunities for converging with wider government approaches to mobile technology, such as under the government's ICT and end user device strategies.
Commenting on the findings, Margaret Hodge, chair of the public accounts committee, said: "Using technology to cut police bureaucracy and provide a more responsive service to the public is a good thing, but it is disappointing then that the full benefits of this programme are not being achieved.
"If value for money is to be achieved, mobile technology will need to be used to drive improvements that will reduce paper work and make police work more efficient."