Blog: PDS Delivery update from Alex Bowen, Director of Delivery Services.
Hello, I’m Alex Bowen, Director of Delivery Services. Recently we gave an update at the Chaucer Roadshow, a virtual event which gives the opportunity for police officers and staff to hear updates on various national programmes relevant to them. If you missed the sessions, they will be available to watch back on the Knowledge Hub soon [please note that the Knowledge Hub is only available for those working in and with national policing].
With this in mind, I wanted to expand the audience and inform you of the current projects and programmes being delivered by PDS. Hopefully, this overview of the service will be useful, and if you have any further questions please email: engagement@pds.police.uk.
The PDS Delivery Services’ aim, is to provide policing with a centrally coordinated, locally delivered, coherent and consistent approach to the delivery of national digital projects and programmes.
We want to help forces to understand what capabilities are being designed and built at the centre, and how they can deliver these locally and also help them understand where it fits in an overall change pipeline so they can make informed decisions on local priorities and investments.
We absolutely see ourselves being a central support function to help forces deliver successful change.
Overview
The Delivery Services Directorate provides policing with:
- A consistent and coherent programme delivery team through a well-resourced, skilled and experienced delivery function; in order to support forces in their local implementation of national programmes;
- A centre of expertise to support forces in establishing a credible and capable programme delivery function locally; standardising the approach to allow the seamless flow of delivery from national to local and local to national;
- Timely and accurate management information through a single dedicated solution to inform timely investment decisions.
What’s Delivery Services?
The Delivery Services Directorate is a key function that enables PDS to be the vehicle for delivering the National Policing Digital Strategy.
There are three elements which make up the Delivery Services:
- Portfolio Management Practice – Supporting policing to do the right project at the right time at the right budget
- Project Management Practice – Delivering projects in the right way as effectively and efficiently as possible
- Service Transition Practice – Transitioning enduring capabilities/products in an efficient and effective way to a managed service for policing.
By implementing the Delivery Services Directorate in conjunction with other business areas, we are working to help forces and partners to address the common causes of project and programme failure.
Portfolio Management and Governance
- Furthering the investments already made in the Microsoft suite, we have deployed Project Online to help us co-ordinate all of our projects, backed up with dashboard reporting through PowerBI, we have a vision where we will have a central real time repository that policing can access to find out up to date progress on programmes.
- As a result of the overwhelming demand for assistance to deliver projects, we are now building a quality commissioning function to help policing to discover, assess and understand change requirements at the earliest opportunity.
- Delivery should not just focus on the technical elements of delivery which is why we are supporting changes to the way policing conducts business change through the anticipated Centre of Excellence for business change.
- Often Benefits of a project are over-looked which gives a false appreciation of the potential new changes can offer. We want to foster a more positive and supportive approach to the realisation of benefits to help policing fully exploit the capabilities it has invested in.
New or in-flight Delivery Programmes:
- Cloud: giving forces the flexibility to store files and tools remotely in the cloud and amending usage as requirements change.
- Digital Case File: replacing physical forms with digital case files integrated with force and CPS systems and with legislative requirements built in.
- Data Driven Commercials: Aims to give policing one place to leverage its buying power, informed by a collective understanding of the national digital, data and technology procurement landscape.
- Data Office: Ensuring a coordinated response for policing in all issues in relation to data. It aims to achieve this by giving direction, support and accountability so that the relationship between data and technology is sufficiently balanced to meet current and future needs of the service.
- Digital Evidence: Working to common standards and methods for using digital evidence with rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO).
- Law Enforcement Capability Model: Developing a national framework to help forces understand the capability levels of their services, identifying gaps between current levels and future plans and allowing for targeted change. Currently in proof of concept stage.
- Video Enabled Policing: Using video and tech develop to enable police officers and staff, simplifying processes and freeing up time.
Completed Delivery Programmes:
Frontline Digital Mobility
- A national document that identifies ‘standard’ capabilities already tried, tested and in use in UK forces for others forces to use and/or build on.
- A national Picture of FDM Maturity to help identify areas for greater collaboration, alignment and potential investment.
- A national catalogue that presents the data back to forces, to allow them and deliver these capabilities more readily, with reduced risk.
- A collective Product Suite providing forces and central bodies with the tools to identify FDM Opportunity, review the landscape, collaborate, plan and align.
Government Convergence Framework
- All police forces are now routing emails securely over the internet.
- £3.1m saving to policing by removing the GCF Vodafone contract.
National Standards
- Standards Platform for hosting & promoting standards, with a search/filter for searching and raising requests for assistance.
- Resolution of 126 requests for assistance with standards in the past year and establishment of 159 data & technical standards on the platform.
- Implementation of a new Governance Structure allowing policing to direct & oversee all work on standards at a national level.
- Establishment of a Community of Practitioners across a range of categories (such as data and forensics) which is open to anyone in Policing.
- Continually monitoring Policing and Government developments to ensure standards remain aligned with Policing strategy.
National Enabling Programmes
- 38 forces approved for the roll-out of Microsoft’s 365 (M365) suite of products, to a single, common, secure, national blueprint.
- Provided a national process, standards and mechanism for managing Police user IDs.
- Providing a national cyber security service, monitoring UK policing systems, providing a 24/7 service.
- £3.4m cashable benefits and £10.8m non-cashable benefits reported nationally. Further savings are predicted over time.
