Recommendations & Conclusions
4 items
20
Conclusion
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Accepted in Part
The PNC has consistently met its service availability targets in recent years; from January 2020 to March 2021 the PNC’s availability was 99.74%, exceeding the Department’s target of 99.65%. However, in January 2021, the PNC experienced a data loss affecting 112,697 person records. The Department’s efforts to recover the data …
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The PNC has consistently met its service availability targets in recent years; from January 2020 to March 2021 the PNC’s availability was 99.74%, exceeding the Department’s target of 99.65%. However, in January 2021, the PNC experienced a data loss affecting 112,697 person records. The Department’s efforts to recover the data lost were made more difficult by the ageing technology on which the PNC is based.37
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the observation and is undertaking specific mitigation activities, such as upskilling internal teams, to extend support for the ageing PNC technology until 2025. They acknowledge a more significant re-platforming effort would require pausing the NLEDP programme for 2-3 years due to …
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HM Treasury
21
Conclusion
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Accepted in Part
Concerning the January 2021 incident, the Department told us that all deleted data had now been recovered and everything that had gone wrong in January had been put right.38 The Department said that the data had been recovered by the end of May, and that until then there had been …
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Concerning the January 2021 incident, the Department told us that all deleted data had now been recovered and everything that had gone wrong in January had been put right.38 The Department said that the data had been recovered by the end of May, and that until then there had been ways for police to access what they needed, just not through the PNC.39 It told us that the incident happened because of human error, not because the PNC is old.40 The Department had accepted all of the 21 recommendations made by Lord Hogan-Howe after his independent review of the data loss.41
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the implicit recommendation regarding PNC reliability and states that while some software will be unsupported by 2024, mitigation activities like upskilling internal teams and engaging partners are in place, considering this an acceptable risk to ensure continued availability.
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HM Treasury
22
Conclusion
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Accepted in Part
The Department also confirmed that there had been an outage earlier this year, which was due to a problem with network availability and the ‘wider PNC ecosystem’ in its Hendon data centre, affecting the ability of the police to access the PNC.42 It said it was investing significantly in this …
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The Department also confirmed that there had been an outage earlier this year, which was due to a problem with network availability and the ‘wider PNC ecosystem’ in its Hendon data centre, affecting the ability of the police to access the PNC.42 It said it was investing significantly in this ecosystem to make sure the issue with not being able to access the PNC was unlikely to happen again.43 The Department’s former CDDTO (who is now Executive Director of the Government’s Central Digital and Data Office) stressed that the PNC had consistently met its service levels, but acknowledged also that outage at some point is “an inevitability in a legacy system.”44 While ideally all infrastructure and software would be kept at a supported level, she said that the challenge with the PNC was that it was so old that some components would go out of support in the next five years. The former CDDTO acknowledged that there have been cases where government has been over-optimistic about when new technologies would come on stream, and had therefore neglected to invest in legacy systems and created a backlog of problems. But she said that had not happened with the PNC, which had been maintained and supported throughout its life.45 36 C&AG’s Report, paras 15, 3.7 37 C&AG’s Report, para 15 38 Q 2 39 Qq 92, 93 40 Q 7 41 Q 2 42 Q 6 43 Q 8 44 Q 10 45 Q 11 The National Law Enforcement Data Programme 15
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the implicit recommendation regarding PNC resilience, acknowledging that while some software will be unsupported by 2024, mitigation activities like upskilling internal teams and engaging partners are in place, considering this an acceptable risk.
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HM Treasury
23
Conclusion
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Accepted in Part
As the NAO reported, the PNC’s current technology will no longer be fully supported beyond 2024. The Department told the NAO that it had decided to accept the risk of running the PNC without support for the database after 2024.46 In our evidence session the Department claimed that there would …
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As the NAO reported, the PNC’s current technology will no longer be fully supported beyond 2024. The Department told the NAO that it had decided to accept the risk of running the PNC without support for the database after 2024.46 In our evidence session the Department claimed that there would only be one small element of the system that will be unsupported beyond 2024, which was also the most stable element with no incidents against it for the last four years. The Department said it was investing significantly to ensure it could provide internal support mechanisms for that element. The former CDDTO confirmed that while the element would be unsupported by the vendor, the Department would provide that support in its stead. The Department said it was confident it would have the necessary expertise itself to deal with anything that came up.47 Replacing the Police National Database
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Government response AI summary
The government agrees with the implicit recommendation to address unsupported PNC technology, stating that while some software elements will be unsupported post-2024, mitigation activities like upskilling internal teams and engaging partners are in place, deeming the remaining risk acceptable.
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HM Treasury