ANPR NAS Management Server

The Home Office is replacing the existing National ANPR system with a new solution, the National ANPR System (NAS), which will centralise the current capabilities provided by law enforcement Back office facility (BOF) and replace the Home Office National ANPR Data Centre (NADC). To align to the new national system the MPS will need to invest in a Management Server to replace the current BOF as specified by the Home Office.

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to approve:

• The release of £1.164M Capital funding for the procurement of a Management Server to connect to National ANPR System fully funded from the MOPAC approved Capital Plan.
• Initiate tender action and award of a new contract for supply of a NAS Management Server plus a revenue support and maintenance at a cost of £555k p.a. over a period of up to 4 years.
• The awarding of a contract to enable connectivity via VPN in absence of PSN to the National ANPR Service via a compliant Crown Commercial Services Framework.

1. Introduction and background

1.1. The ANPR system is a vital intelligence tool to assist in policing and enforcement functions. An effective use of ANPR data in tackling crime is the access to cross-border and national data from other forces.

1.2. All Law Enforcement Agencies maintain their own ANPR system and data storage and are experiencing financial demands to host increasing data volumes as better quality data capture devices become available and camera numbers and their outputs increase. In London data volumes are expected to grow from 12m to 21m reads per day in the next three years chiefly due to the TFL camera strategy.

1.3. The National ANPR Service (NAS) is the replacement to the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC) and will become the primary ANPR solution in-force, negating the need for a myriad of different ANPR systems and data stores across the UK. NAS exploits cloudhosting platform to help address its scalability, performance and disaster recovery. The system proposes access to a broad range of Law Enforcement Agencies, allowing them to perform complex analytics and searching on the entire national data set when they need it. Home Office will launch NAS to meet the needs of UK Law Enforcement before the end of 2018.

1.4. The NAS specification from the Home Office is that each force is required to invest in a management server. The server will provide access to the national data and facilitate local disaster recovery in the unlikely event that the NAS was unavailable. Local data will be held for 7 days therefore limiting storage costs to locally received data rather than the national volume currently held by the MPS.

2. Issues for consideration

2.1. The National ANPR System is scheduled to be fully functional by March 2019.

2.2. The National ANPR System aligns with the new target operating model for future MPS Intelligence Service which is being delivered by the One Met Model (OMM) Programme 4: Transforming Investigation & Prosecution via the Intelligence, Tasking & Co-ordination project. NAS will deliver the outputs and capabilities to deliver benefits, however the benefits will be realised at programme level.

2.3. A Full GDPR assessment will be conducted via the MPS specialist team. The DPIA (Data Privacy Impact Assessment which is GDPR compliant) will drive the project’s privacy compliance through procurement.

3. Financial Comments

3.1. The required capital spend of £1.16m is funded in the Digital Policing capital plan. Additional revenue costs of £0.4m in 2019/20 for dual running of the new service will be funded from the Digital Policing project revenue budget. From 2020/21 there is an ongoing saving in running costs of £79k p.a.

3.2. This paper also seeks approval for the associated commercial actions:

• Initiate tender action and award a new contract for supply of a NAS Management Server plus a revenue support and maintenance at an estimated cost of £555k p.a. over a period of up to 4 years.
• The awarding of a contract to enable connectivity via VPN in absence of PSN to the National ANPR Service via a compliant Crown Commercial Services Framework.

4. Legal Comments

4.1. The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) is a contracting authority as defined in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (the Regulations). All awards of public contracts for goods and/or services valued at £181,302 or above will be procured in accordance with the Regulations.

5. Equality Comments

5.1. Equality and diversity have been consulted. It was agreed that there is no requirement to complete an equality impact assessment yet, but that when the project starts planning training that they would need to consult again.

6. Background/supporting papers

6.1. Report