Progress delivering the Emergency Services Network

The Home Office needs to test its overall programme plan, to determine whether the new schedule for launching ESN and shutting down Airwave is achievable. It should prepare a comprehensive plan as soon as possible, covering all key elements of this complex programme, to ensure it develops realistic and tested assumptions about the time required for each element and the dependencies between them. The plan should be used to establish whether the Home Office can achieve the December 2022 date for switching off Airwave. It should be appraised by the Home Office’s new supplier of “programme advisory and delivery services”, expected to be appointed in mid-2019, and should be agreed by ESN’s sponsors, users and suppliers.

Ref Page 13, point a · Implemented 05/2021

The Home Office needs to decide how the vital work to integrate all the ESN technology will be carried out. It should clearly set out whether this technical integration is part of the new contract for “programme advisory and delivery services” and if not, whether the programme team can do the technical integration itself or needs additional technical support.

Ref Page 13, point b · Implemented 08/2020

The Home Office needs to work with other sponsors and users to develop the arrangements for managing ESN once it is fully operational. How the ESN service will be governed and managed when it is a live service is still not clear, although we identified this risk in our report in 2016. This leads to a continuing risk that users’ requirements will not be met.

Ref Page 13, point c · Implemented 31/12/2026

The Home Office should develop a contingency plan that sets out what it will do if technology on which the overall ESN programme is dependent does not work. The contingency plan should be linked to key delivery milestones for the contractors and include clear criteria for activating it.

Ref Page 13, point d