Recommendation 5

It is still not clear how the Department will ensure that there are clearly defined responsibilities or plans in place for operating ESN as a live service, raising questions about whether ESN will provide the intended benefits for the emergency services. The expected benefits from ESN will only materialise if it is run effectively. For example, there will need to be a way of ensuring that any unforeseen consequences of ESN, such the prioritisation of ESN users preventing the public from communicating in an emergency, are appropriately managed. It will take at least 10 years before financial benefits from ESN will recoup the taxpayers’ investment, and widespread use of commercial mobile data by emergency services has already reduced the potential efficiencies that ESN might bring. ESN could still help emergency services to coordinate their responses to major events and The Emergency Services Network 7 standardise approaches to data. The latter will only happen if apps are developed for emergency services to use, but ESN has no current plans to enable this. The Department’s current plans assume it will be responsible for running ESN as a live service, but it has paused work to design a future operating model. Recommendation 5: As part of the new business case, the Department should create a plan for how it will restart work on how ESN will operate as a live service and ensure the emergency services agree that the future operating model meets their needs.