Digital Public Contract Programme Grant for FY 2021/22

This decision seeks approval to accept the Grant from the Home Office for the running of the Digital Public Contact (DPC) programme for FY21/22. DPC is a Tier 1 NPCC National Policing Programme hosted within the MPS with MOPAC as the contracting authority and with CC Simon Cole QPM as the SRO.

Its primary products are currently Single Online Home (SOH), a web platform offering accessible, on-demand, interactive services (a Digital 101 offering Online Crime Reporting; Road Traffic Incident reporting; Firearms Licensing applications (including online payment); online chat; Domestic Abuse; ASB; Missing Persons and many more) and Police.uk (PUK) which is predominantly an information service for the public which transitioned from Home Office ownership onto the SOH platform in April 2020. Both of these areas now include COVID-19 reporting with a nationally consistent service available to 40 forces across England and Wales.

A key addition to the platform in FY21/22 will be the Strategic Integration Hub (SIH) which will provide the functionality to automatically transfer a report from a member of the public into a forces’ back office Records Management System, avoiding resource intensive re-keying. There are currently 27 forces fully or partially on the SOH platform plus the Auxiliary Bodies BTP and NABIS.

The hosting arrangement was established in FY20/21 and this new Grant Agreement is a continuation for a further financial year.

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:

1. Approve receipt of the Home Office Grant which has a financial value of £13,000,000 and a term of 12 months starting 01 April 2021 and use of this funding for the delivery of the outcomes detailed in paragraph 1.7 of the Introduction and background section of this document.

2. Note that MOPAC continues as the contracting authority for the DPC Programme as it has done for FY20/21 with the programme hosted within the MPS.

3. Note that the scope of the programme and high level milestones will be agreed between DPC, Home Office, MOPAC and Digital Policing prior to signing the grant agreement and the governance arrangements continue through the DPC Programme Board which is chaired by CC Simon Cole (QPM) as the Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) with MPS membership.

1. Introduction and background

1.1. The Single Online Home (SOH) has been delivered under the Digital Public Contact Programme and supported by Digital Policing. The MPS acts as the Host Authority for the SOH Platform, National Digital Team (NDT) and the DPC Programme. The NDT are responsible for the live running and service development of SOH. The DPC Programme, fully funded via Home Office grant award, is responsible for the ongoing onboarding of national forces to SOH and delivery of the wider DPC vision and objectives. The SOH platform and NDT are fully funded through the SOH Charging Model revenues every SOH onboarded force and auxiliary body contributes to as agreed through a Section 22 Collaboration Agreement. MOPAC, via the MPS, host all DPC contracts and the ongoing SOH service.

1.2. There are currently 25 forces fully onboarded to SOH; 2 forces with specific services only and 2 auxiliary bodies fully onboarded to SOH with a further 10 forces and 8 auxiliary bodies in development. The long-term vision is to deliver a national SOH.

1.3. The DPC Programme was allocated £13m of Home Office funding for the financial year 2020/21 to support the delivery of:

a. the procurement and subsequent development of a Strategic Integration Hub (SIH)

b. the development of new and enhanced SOH Services such as a national COVID breach reporting service taken up by 40 forces across the SOH and PUK platforms ; a new national Missing Persons service; a new Domestic Abuse service and an enhanced LiveChat capability

c. the onboarding of 6 new forces plus auxiliary bodies (British Transport Police and NABIS)

d. enhancements of the SOH platform to improve performance, resilience and security of the platform as more forces and services are added. The 24/7 operational support for the platform was also improved.

1.4. The DPC vision is to ensure that every digital interaction between the public and policing improves trust and confidence in the Police, by building a better relationship with the public. This will help keep the Public safe through improved safeguarding and will be achieved by providing a range of convenient, accessible, integrated digital policing services for the public, to meet Policing priorities.

1.5. DPC’s key objectives are to:

a. Encourage the public to access Policing services online to enable High Harm services to be available digitally to improve safeguarding

b. Adopt a dynamic, flexible, customer-centric approach to delivery. Keeping pace with changing customer needs, adopting good practice and innovation from across Policing

c. Complete roll-out of a Social Media framework and use what is learned to better engage with the public

d. Continue to improve SOH to provide interactive, two-way communication that evolves into wider customer service for a seamless citizen experience

e. Set and maintain data standards to allow integration between front-end and back-end systems to drive police efficiency enabling officers and staff through digital

f. Leverage commercial opportunities to deliver faster innovation, value for money and connectivity into wider public services and empowering the private sector

g. Contribute to wider Policing IT strategies and align with the emerging changes to national governance.

1.6. This paper seeks approval for MOPAC to accept the Home Office Grant for FY21/22 that enables DPC to continue to deliver its vision and objectives.

1.7. The total value of the Grant Agreement is £13m with the intention to include the following deliverables:

a. Strategic Integration Hub pilots for Online Crime Reporting for Essex and a Media Upload service for MPS

b. Further rollout of the integration service to additional forces and back office systems (this includes the Year 1 running costs of this new service)

c. New and enhanced SOH services based on the priorities agreed with the SOH National Steering Group comprising force leads and the SOH Product Owner

d. Final implementation of a PDS procurement framework for a Social Media management platform plus the continued development of best practice guidelines for forces use of Social Media

e. Up to 10 additional forces onboarded to the SOH platform based on either the core services only model or the full onboarding model

f. Up to 8 additional auxiliary bodies onboarded onto the SOH/PUK Platform

g. Development of a new Police.UK service strategy

h. Development of the 2-way engagement proof of concept.

2. Issues for consideration

2.1. The nature of a grant agreement is that payments are made by Home Office in arears so it will be important that the MPS and MOPAC are confident that the terms of the agreement can be met to ensure expenditure is fully recovered. DPC, MPS Digital Policing, MOPAC and Home Office will continue to work collaboratively to ensure the detailed grant agreement fulfils this need.

3. Financial Comments

3.1. The total value of the Grant Agreement is £13m and this will be administered through the MPS Finance team as it has been for FY20/21. Financial, delivery and commercial reporting will continue on a monthly basis to the HO SCIB as it has done for FY20/21. It is anticipated that the HO Grant Agreement will be based on standard terms and conditions, consistent with the previous year.

3.2. There is no impact on the MPS Capital Plan. All costs related to DPC are recovered through Home Office grant funding. There is no change to the MPS annual revenue contribution to SOH which is capped at £1.4m per annum.

3.3. Where appropriate the existing commercial arrangements for the suppliers engaged on the DPC programme will continue. DPC will continue to leverage MPS and national commercial frameworks.

4. Legal Comments

4.1. MOPAC is a contracting authority as defined in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("the Regulations").

4.2. Paragraph 4.8 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve business cases for revenue or capital expenditure of £500,000 or above and to approve bids for grant funding made and all offers made of grant funding.

4.3. MOPAC has an obligation to publish a grant agreement pursuant to Schedule 1, Paragraph 3(g) of the Elected Local Policing Bodies (Specified Information) (Amendment) Order 2012

4.4. The legal powers applicable to the acceptance of the Grant will be under Schedule 3, Paragraph 7 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 which provides that:

7(1) The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime may do anything which is calculated to facilitate, or is conducive or incidental to, the exercise of the functions of the Office.

(2)That includes—

(a) entering into contracts and other agreements (whether legally binding or not).

5. GDPR and Data Privacy

5.1. All privacy issue considerations were considered when the MPS took on responsibility and became the Host Organisation for SOH and the National Digital Team. Nothing has changed since this original commitment but appropriate assessments will be undertaken as part of the design of new services.

5.2. Under Article 35 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Section 57 of the DPA 2018, Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) become mandatory for organisations with technologies and processes that are likely to result in a high risk to the rights of the data subjects.

5.3. The Information Assurance and Information Rights units within MPS will be consulted at all stages to ensure the programme continues to meet its compliance requirements.

5.4. A DPIA has been completed for the Single Online Home (SOH). The SOH DPIA will be updated to reflect changes driven by DPC deliveries. As with the SOH, the DPC Programme will ensure a privacy by design approach, which will allow the MPS to find and fix problems at an early stage, ensuring compliance with GDPR. DPIAs support the accountability principle, as they will ensure the MPS complies with the requirements of GDPR and they demonstrate that appropriate measures have been taken to ensure compliance.

6. Equality Comments

6.1. Equalities assessments were carried out when the MPS took on responsibility and became the Host Organisation for SOH and the National Digital Team. Nothing has changed since this assessment was conducted but appropriate assessments will be undertaken as part of the design of new services.

7. Background/supporting papers

7.1. MPS Part 1 Report.