Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Ellis shared his ambition for a ‘game-changing’ level of transformation for Staffordshire Police with prospective IT partners on Wednesday, 3 December.
Mr Ellis, together with the Chief Constable, has embarked on a ‘game-changing’ level of transformation for Staffordshire Police. In November they announced their wish to acquire a Strategic Partner to improve the capacity and capability of police IT services.
The scale and scope of change required is significant and one key part of this is a more efficient and effective ICT landscape which will set a new standard for provision of policing services and enable public services such as the Courts, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Probation to work more collaboratively across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent.
Spending public money better and achieving better services for local people is the PCC’s obsession. By public services sharing power, ambition, responsibility and resources together they can deal with the causes of crime and social ills and not just the effects, resulting in better outcomes and better value for money for taxpayers.
The ambition is to adopt a radical and different approach to technology that puts Staffordshire at the forefront, and the most effective, efficient and agile police service in the UK. This was shared at the IT Partners Day on Wednesday at police headquarters in Stafford which over 80 people attended, representing more than 50 companies.
Matthew Ellis said: “It’s my job to work with the police to make sure that services are as effective as they can be and deliver the best value for money. This investment in IT is essential to make services fit for the future, reduce waste and make sure that money is spent in the most effective way possible. As the Partners Day heard, it’s about having information supremacy over criminals – knowing information faster and first.
“Our ICT strategy is far more ambitious and joined-up with other agencies than ever before and it needs to be. We need to be able to share information more easily across other public sector agencies, embrace digital working, free up policing time that is wasted on having to deal with a myriad of incompatible systems and engage on a whole new level with the public. Technology that is on its way next year is already set to free up thousands of hours a week of more frontline policing in Staffordshire.
“I want a police service for the people of Staffordshire that is easy to contact and do business with, a service where officers are free to do the job they are trained to do and a service where money is spent on the right things. Getting the IT infrastructure right and working digitally is part of the journey to achieving a police ICT that is future-proof.”
Chief Constable Jane Sawyers said: “This is a really exciting opportunity for us to develop our Information and Communications Technology (ICT). We are inviting the IT industry to help improve the way technology assists us in delivering our policing plan.
“We are constantly striving to improve the service we deliver to our communities and partners, and it is vital we get the best value for money. This is not about outsourcing technology; it is about taking every opportunity that assists in the transformation that we will be making over the next five years.”
