Recommendations & Conclusions
6 items
2
Recommendation
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Not Addressed
The Department made poor decisions at the outset of the NLEDS programme and, despite signs it was going badly, was slow to make the necessary changes to correct this. The original scope and ambition for the NLEDS programme was unrealistic. The Department created a programme designed to replace two vital …
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The Department made poor decisions at the outset of the NLEDS programme and, despite signs it was going badly, was slow to make the necessary changes to correct this. The original scope and ambition for the NLEDS programme was unrealistic. The Department created a programme designed to replace two vital police information systems without fully understanding the police’s requirements or how these systems worked. The PNC had evolved over several decades as it was adapted and expanded. When the programme team attempted to understand how the PNC worked, it became clear that it was much more complex than the Department had anticipated, resulting in delays and large amounts of additional work. An early programme decision to merge the PNC and PND systems made the complexity worse because the two systems used very different data formats. As the consequences of these issues became apparent, a series of internal and external reviews highlighted that NLEDS was at risk of not delivering what the police needed. Despite these warnings, the Department did not step back to assess the fundamental problems that the programme had encountered, and its first programme reset in 2019 was not effective in addressing these problems. Following the second programme reset in late 2020, the Department then took several months to decide whether to proceed with the programme. Recommendation: The Permanent Secretary should ensure that he and other senior staff have sufficient regular oversight of NLEDS from now on, to ensure that he can quickly see problems as they arise and be prepared to take early and decisive action to recover or restructure the programme.
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Government response AI summary
The government states it agrees with the recommendation but then discusses environmental targets and the Environment Act 2021, entirely failing to address the request for increased Permanent Secretary oversight of the NLEDS programme.
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HM Treasury
3
Recommendation
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Not Addressed
Working effectively with the police is critical to the delivery of NLEDS and other technology programmes, but it is not yet clear that the Department’s new approach will resolve longstanding challenges in delivering national programmes for local forces. We recognise that the challenge of managing relationships with 45 operationally independent …
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Working effectively with the police is critical to the delivery of NLEDS and other technology programmes, but it is not yet clear that the Department’s new approach will resolve longstanding challenges in delivering national programmes for local forces. We recognise that the challenge of managing relationships with 45 operationally independent police forces to deliver a national programme is 6 The National Law Enforcement Data Programme a significant one, but the Department and police have long been aware of this. Contrary to good practice in other bodies such as the NHS, the Department failed to establish a joint vision with police until two years into the programme. As costs increased and the programme failed to deliver any meaningful capability in its first four years, police users lost confidence in the Home Office’s ability to deliver NLEDS and other technology programmes, to the point where the police’s most senior officers wrote to the Permanent Secretary to raise their concerns. The Department has now belatedly changed its approach to working with the police and is aiming to establish a partnership approach rather than a customer-supplier arrangement. The Department recognises that police forces may require additional funding to adopt the NLEDS system and will need to address this in the forthcoming Spending Review. Recommendation: The Department needs to carefully monitor its new partnership approach to ensure it enables joint and timely decision-making with the police. The Department should write to the Committee in six months with an update on the new working relationship and whether further changes will be required.
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Government response AI summary
The government's response addresses a different PAC conclusion regarding skills shortages in the civil service and does not engage with the committee's recommendation on monitoring its partnership approach or providing an update.
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HM Treasury
4
Recommendation
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Not Addressed
The police must continue to rely on the PNC for another five years, despite the risks to its availability. The PNC is the most important law enforcement technology system in the UK, and it is vital that it is constantly available to police and other users. Given its age, the …
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The police must continue to rely on the PNC for another five years, despite the risks to its availability. The PNC is the most important law enforcement technology system in the UK, and it is vital that it is constantly available to police and other users. Given its age, the current system is remarkably reliable. However, the PNC experienced a significant data loss in January 2021 and the knowledge of how it works has become harder for the Department to maintain. It is difficult and expensive to recruit people with skills and experience in the ageing technology used by the PNC. The team that maintains the PNC is under-resourced and several staff are nearing retirement, which means it is difficult for the team to run the PNC and also support programmes like NLEDS. The Department currently plans to run this piece of critical national infrastructure without full manufacturer support for the database after 2024, meaning it will not have that support for at least a year, though the Department plans to provide in-house support instead. Recommendation: Alongside its Treasury Minute response, the Department should set out for the Committee how it will guarantee that police will be able to access the PNC service until NLEDS is ready. This should include a full assessment of the risks of continuing to run the PNC and contingency plans for failure. This plan should include a review point at which the decision to replace the PNC’s operating system can be taken promptly.
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Government response AI summary
The government response does not address the recommendation to provide a plan guaranteeing PNC service access, assessing risks, and including contingency plans, instead providing an unrelated PAC conclusion.
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HM Treasury
5
Conclusion
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Not Addressed
The Department does not yet have a plan for maintaining the PND and combining its data with NLEDS in future. The Department has changed its plans for integrating the PND with the NLEDS programme several times, and it has now been excluded. The PND, introduced in 2011, is nearing the …
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The Department does not yet have a plan for maintaining the PND and combining its data with NLEDS in future. The Department has changed its plans for integrating the PND with the NLEDS programme several times, and it has now been excluded. The PND, introduced in 2011, is nearing the end of its original lifespan and will need a technology update. The Department intends to establish a separate five-year programme to update the PND, but this will not begin until
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Government response AI summary
The government's response is a generic statement about efficiency drives and does not address the committee's conclusion regarding the lack of a plan for maintaining the PND or its future integration.
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HM Treasury
6
Recommendation
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Not Addressed
There is a risk that the Department still lacks the capacity to prioritise and deliver major digital programmes on time. In common with many other government departments and agencies, the Department is reliant on a range of legacy technology systems that need updating or replacing. We have seen several major …
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There is a risk that the Department still lacks the capacity to prioritise and deliver major digital programmes on time. In common with many other government departments and agencies, the Department is reliant on a range of legacy technology systems that need updating or replacing. We have seen several major programmes to deliver such replacements encounter major problems and require resetting, for example the Emergency Services Network and Digital Services at the Border programmes. The Department’s failure to deliver NLEDS is another example. The Department has tried to do too much at once and has failed to prioritise programmes or develop the skills it needed to adopt ‘agile’ methods. It did not understand challenges posed by complex legacy systems and police forces’ operational independence, even though it should have been clear that these were present. In its evidence the Department recognised that it needs to be better at saying ‘no’ to unrealistic technology programme proposals. The Department has now made some changes to improve how it involves police users in such programmes and plans to use the NLEDS as a pilot for its new approach, which can then be applied to other police programmes. There is a clear risk that the Department still lacks the programme, technical and commercial skills needed to identify realistic timetables for its major programmes. Recommendation: The Department must be realistic about how long it will take to deliver major programmes, given the skills and capabilities and funding available. It should require all SROs of major programmes to report annually on how they will manage any gaps between the skills and capabilities required to deliver and those available in their programmes. The Department should write to us in six months’ time with an update on how this is being implemented. 8 The National Law Enforcement Data Programme 1 Resetting the programme
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Government response AI summary
The government response completely ignores the recommendation for realistic timelines and SRO reporting on skill gaps, instead making a general statement about department capacity during emergencies.
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HM Treasury
1
Conclusion
Twenty-Ninth Report - The National Law …
Not Addressed
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office (the Department) and from the Department’s Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for the National Law Enforcement Data Service (NLEDS) programme. We also took evidence from the Department’s previous …
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On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office (the Department) and from the Department’s Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for the National Law Enforcement Data Service (NLEDS) programme. We also took evidence from the Department’s previous SRO for the programme and from its previous Chief Digital, Data and Technology Officer (CDDTO).1
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Government response AI summary
The government's response refers to a different PAC conclusion about cost shunting and does not address the committee's factual statement about the evidence taken.
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HM Treasury