By Richard Johnstone | 30 August 2013
Decades of inefficient spending on computing systems by the Metropolitan Police has meant opportunities to cut crime in London have been missed, a report said today.
An examination of the police force’s IT procurement programme by the London Assembly found that poorly planned technology investment has left it with out-of-date, ineffective and overly-expensive systems.
Compared to other forces, both at home and abroad, the assembly’s budget and performance committee found the Met had not done enough to bring in new technologies, like predictive crime mapping, to reduce offending.
The Smart policing report also said that improvements to working practices had been lost as a result.
Overall the Met has a total of 750 separate IT systems of which 70% are redundant, the report estimated. However, given that the Met’s overall budget will be cut by 20% in the three years, the force faces a challenge to make up lost ground.
The report highlighted three areas where improvements could be made, covering the use of mobile technology by officers and social media engagement, as well as predictive crime mapping.
Assembly members highlighted that predictive crime mapping – when computer programmes uses historic crime statistics and other factors like weather patters to predict the areas where crime is most likely to occur – had been successful in other countries.
However, such a change would require significant investment. The committee called on the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, which sets most of the force’s funding, to do more to establish how much technology spending is needed.
Committee chair John Biggs said the Met ‘has been paying over the odds for technology for years’, with most spending going on ‘maintaining a collections of out-dated and increasingly inefficient systems’.
This has to change, he added, if benefits åof technological improvements can be realised.
‘Every other person has a smartphone in their pocket and yet the Met are only just starting to look at rolling out similar tools. They should also be working on predictive crime mapping, like that used in Los Angeles, to get officers in the right place at the right time to deter criminals and reassure the public.
‘At the end of the day, this kind of investment costs money and with plans to cut spending by 20% over the next three years, MOPAC urgently needs to determine what resources will be available to the Met to improve its technology. The force simply cannot afford to get this wrong again.’
