A FORMER police IT project manager has condemned the current force computer system for handling crimes in Scotland saying it is not fit for purpose.
Former chief superintendent Niven Rennie, who oversaw the beginnings of what would evolve into the botched introduction of a £46 million national computer network, has raised concerns that there is no plan to replace the patchwork of obsolete and poorly integrate computer systems.
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An Audit Scotland report into the failure of the project has urged Police Scotland to urgently reassess its IT needs after the collapse of the project The report said the i6 scheme to improve how Police Scotland records, manages and analyses information collapsed because of disagreements between the contractors, Accenture, and the government and the police.
The contract with Accenture was terminated in July 2016, with the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) said to have recouped the £11.09m it had paid Accenture, with a further £13.56m for staff and hardware costs associated with i6.
Now Mr Rennie, a former chairman of the Association of Police Superintendents who is now retired from the force, says it has left the service with a system that was "condemned" in a report by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland 13 years ago. "I don't think it is fit for purpose. In 2007 they needed urgently to replace it and we are ten years on from that," said Mr Rennie who said police are still having to record crimes in ledgers.
"The i6 would mean that manual labour was no longer required. The whole thing needs modernised and simplified and it has been needing it since the early 2000s. "They are still using it and at this time they don't have a plan as to how they are going to replace this crime management system and it is going to cost a lot of money.
"The search capability, the memory and all the other bits and pieces that go with it is 1980s technology.
"What's left is a police service in Scotland with a terrible legacy system of computer systems which is inefficient and unworkable to a certain extent."
It had been expected that i6 would have resulted in £200m in efficiency savings over 10 years.
It would have replaced the existing separate IT systems of the eight regional forces which existed prior to the creation of Police Scotland in April 2013, which are still in use.
Mr Rennie said the moves towards an integrated computer system for Police Scotland began in 2004 - nine years before the unified Police Scotland was founded. Initial consultants were on £1000 a day.
And he said one of the driving forces for the single force was the new integrated IT system, that would help deliver some £1.1 billion in savings by 2026, cuts that Police Scotland are still being held to.
He said before Police Scotland, the eight police forces in Scotland could not agree on a simplified new IT system and pointed out that when he was project manager for what became I6 in 2004 "double and triple data entry" was the main gripe from staff.
What Scotland has now was "built in the 80s and rolled out in the 90s", he said.
And he has warned that it would be wrong to say that it has not cost the taxpayer, as work on the project had begun nine years before Police Scotland came into being.
"The allegation that all that was lost was the money Accenture had and they have that back, is false.
"There has been fortune spent and it goes back a long way. It pre-dates Police Scotland and falls in with a whole load of failed ICT, the result of which is that the vast majority of systems don't speak to each other.
"And all the police and IT have been doing since it started is improve the hardware and the desktops around the country. The rest of your systems are in a shocking state."
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Mr Rennie who retired from the force in May, last year, said the failures were the result of "years of poor decision making by numerous strategic thinkers".
The Auditor General said the method adopted for developing the system meant the full scale of difficulties only became apparent when it was passed to Police Scotland for testing in August 2015.
But Mr Rennie said he did not understand how issues did not emerge during a series of reviews over the project "How you could get to the stage of testing in 2015 and finding it wasn't going to work, when all the scrutiny was there, I've no idea," he said.
Martin Leven, Director of ICT at Police Scotland, said: “Police Scotland acknowledges Audit Scotland's review of the i6 project which recognises that good practice was followed in planning and procurement.
"While ultimately the project did not deliver what it set out to, Police Scotland was committed throughout to working with the supplier, Accenture, and the Scottish Police Authority, whilst maintaining the integrity of ongoing discussions during that process and commercial elements of the contract.
"i6 was an important element of Police Scotland’s ICT plans - but not the sole element. Since 2013, more than 30 national applications have been implemented successfully. This includes replacing or upgrading a significant amount of out-dated hardware and real progress has been made towards the delivery of a new national network and standardised modern national desktop computers. Within six months of the decision to end i6 a new National Custody System was successfully launched across the country which was one of the key requirements of the i6 project.
“A Digital Transformation Team (DTT) has been formed to provide support to the review, planning and resourcing of ICT-enabled projects, potential projects and technical proposals within Police Scotland.
“Consultation is currently under way on 2026 – our 10-year strategy for Policing in Scotland – which recognises the importance of technology and the use of ICT to enable officers to carry out their roles.”
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