Retrospective Facial Recognition System

This decision requests approval to award a contract for Retrospective Facial Recognition (RFR) software to Northgate Public Services for the total contract period of 4 years. The total cost, including implementation and annual running costs, of up to £3,084,000 is funded from approved budgets.

The MPS will benefit from an updated Retrospective Facial Recognition search capability to enable a more effective use of images and image frames from video data across all types of investigations. Technical advancements made over recent years would if seized now allow the MPS opportunities that were not previously available to support the detection and matching of faces. The opportunity also represents a chance to realise significant savings in terms of officer time it takes to reconcile an image of a person to that person’s identity. This helps prevent and detect crime and keeps Londoners safe.

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

1. Award of the Retrospective Facial Recognition software contract to Northgate Public Services for a maximum 4-year period. This contract award is for an initial 2-year term, with the option to extend for a further 2 years on a 1 year plus 1-year basis.

2. Implementation revenue costs including risk provision in 2021/22 with ongoing revenue business as usual running costs fully funded from approved budgets. The total cost, including implementation and the annual running cost for the new Retrospective Facial Recognition software contract, is up to £3,084,000.

1. Introduction and background

1.1. The MPS will benefit from a Retrospective Facial Recognition (RFR) search capability to enable the effective use of images and image frames from video data across all types of investigations. In parallel it will enable the MPS to effectively exploit those investigative opportunities that have occurred with the sharp growth in these image data sources. Rapid and ongoing advancements in this technology would if seized now allow the MPS opportunities that were not previously available to support the detection and matching of faces even when processing lower quality images and videos.

2. Issues for consideration

2.1. The main purpose of RFR searching is to assist in identifying suspects from still images or specific images extracted from video. These images will need to be lawfully held by the MPS. These may be images that have been captured by cameras at burglaries, assaults, shootings and other crime scenes. They could also be images shared by or submitted by members of the public. As well as assisting in preventing and detecting crime, RFR searching could also be used to help in the identification of missing or deceased persons.

2.2. The RFR use case is very different to Live Facial Recognition and seeks to help officers identify persons from media of events that have already happened and does not involve members of the public walking past the system ‘live time’. As such it would be a tool that helps aid the investigative process, by analysing still images or images that have been specifically extracted from a media source. The result of this analysis will present investigators with additional leads to consider.

2.3. There is a distinction between using FR where the results could impact on real-time operations and where the results would contribute to ongoing investigations and provide leads to verify and develop. Any change in its use would be subject to and supported by a specific policy and the MPS would seek to engage with stakeholders (including MOPAC and the London Policing Ethics Panel) to develop this policy with appropriate safeguards and controls.

2.4. Human-in-the-loop decision is a critical aspect of the RFR proposal and will be embedded into RFR processes.

2.5. This proposal supports making communities safer by helping the MPS target violent and other serious offences by identifying those responsible for knife and gun crime, child sexual exploitation and terrorism. RFR reduces the time taken to identify offenders and supports the delivery of improved criminal justice outcomes. It allows officers’ time to be best used, targeting criminality to keep Londoners safe.

3. Financial Comments

3.1. The initial contract award is for a period of 2 years with the option of further extending the contract on a 1 year plus 1-year basis. The total cost for implementation and ongoing yearly revenue costs, once fully implemented, of £3,084k over five years, is to be fully funded from approved budgets.

3.2. The first year 2021/22 is a part year with service due to go-live in Q4 of 2021/22.

3.3. Further detail of the costs is provided in the exempt Part 2 of this report.

4. Legal Comments

4.1. The Directorate of Legal Services has provided significant advice on the lawful use of RFR by the MPS including in relation to legal basis, human rights, data protection and equalities.

4.2. 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 £189,330 or above shall be procured in accordance with the Regulations. This report confirms the value of the proposed contract exceeds this threshold.

4.3. This report confirms this procurement will utilise the CDW/East Midlands Strategic Commercial Unit (EMSCU) Framework to conduct a request for proposal exercise (RFP) / mini-competition process. The MPS is a named police force on the Framework Agreement (as confirmed by TLT Solicitors). On this basis the MOPAC’s route to market is compliant with the Regulations.

4.4. The MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve:

• Business cases for revenue or capital expenditure of £500,000 and above (paragraph 4.8); and

• All requests to go out to tender for contracts of £500,000 or above, or where there is a particular public interest (paragraph 4.13).

4.5. Paragraph 7.23 of the Scheme provides that the Director of Strategic Procurement has consent for the approval of the award of all contracts, with the exception of those called in through the agreed call in procedure. Paragraph 4.14 of the Scheme provides the DMPC reserves the right to call in any MPS proposal to award a contract for £500,000 or above.

5. Commercial Issues

5.1. The route to market was approved by the MPS Portfolio and Investment Board, MOPAC and Commercial Services in the Dec 2020 and Jan 2021 granting authority to initiate the RFP competition.

5.2. This new contract will provide the MPS with a new provision for an RFR service that includes licensing and support provisions.

5.3. The MPS utilised the existing CDW Value Added Reseller (VAR) IT Framework Agreement (the Framework) with the East Midlands Strategic Commercial Unit (EMSCU) to conduct a request for proposal exercise (RFP) / mini-competition. The Metropolitan Police Service is a named police force on the Framework Agreement and (as confirmed by TLT Solicitors) this is therefore a recognised compliant route to market.

5.4. Three suppliers were invited through to the RFP competition (based on current and sourced suppliers within the facial recognition space/market).

5.5. Weightings in the tender pack were split into the following percentages:

• Commercial/pricing weighted at 30%

• Technical weighted at 70%

• Technical sections also included pass/fail marking criteria on key questions.

5.6. The RFP/competition pack was published on the Coupa e-tendering portal (Ref 47) / SS3/20/187 on the 5 February 2021 with a return date of 19 March 2021. A total of two completed RFP responses were received by the deadline date.

5.7. The technical and legal questions included a range of scored and pass/fail questions, which addressed key functional and non-functional requirements.

5.8. As the resulting contract will be awarded to CDW, Northgate Public Services as the successful supplier will be required to sign/agree the CDW/EMSCU terms and conditions, this was included as a key statement in the RFP/competition pack.

6. GDPR and Data Privacy

6.1. The MPS is subject to the requirements and conditions placed on it as a 'State' body to comply with the European Convention of Human Rights and the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018. Both legislative requirements place an obligation on the MPS to process personal data fairly and lawfully in order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of individuals.

6.2. 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.

6.3. The Information Assurance and Information Rights units within MPS will be consulted at all stages to ensure the project meets its compliance requirements.

6.4. A DPIA is required for this project and the selection of the vendor is crucial to the completion of the DPIA. This is because the DPIA and the associated control measures needed to mitigate any risk identified will be informed by the statistical accuracy demographic performance of the selected vendor’s product. The project will ensure a privacy by design approach, which will allow the MPS to find and fix problems at the early stages of any project, ensuring compliance with data protection legislation. DPIAs support the accountability principle, as they will ensure the MPS complies with its legal duties.

6.5. The MPS recognises the privacy implication of the use of such technology and as such is consulting with the London Policing Ethics Panel (LPEP) about the required governance controls for its use. This will include attending a session of the panel in October 2021 to discuss the development of this work.

7. Equality Comments

7.1. The use of facial recognition technology engages the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). Amongst other points, the PSED means that there is a need to take reasonable steps to understand the performance of a facial recognition algorithm. The draft MPS legal mandate outlines the legal requirements from the Equality Act 2010. In response to this and to mitigate risks, the MPS has completed a draft EIA (to a positon in time) to be included in this process and has embedded equality considerations into its structure. The ability to pass a MPS PSED assessment was a key pass/fail criteria and benefited from technical and legal scrutiny. The recommended vendor is a high performing algorithm which is best of breed based on the NIST 2019 tests (which report on race and gender) with a uniform demographic performance. The MPS is familiar with the underlying algorithm having undertaken considerable diligence to date. This diligence helps the MPS ensure the effectiveness of the algorithm and to understand and mitigate any risk relating to disproportionality, including in relation to (i) the overall accuracy of the algorithm (ii) race, (iii) gender, (iv) other protected characteristics (as most recently identified in a ‘live’ context by the then Surveillance Camera Commissioner, in his document ‘Facing the Camera’). The MPS has also considered equality considerations in relation to MPS users of the RFR system – these are addressed in the draft EIA. The recommended vendor also has adopted a number of accessibility points to ensure the system can be used as widely as possible.

7.2. The draft EIA remains subject to further policy development to embed the MPS’s policy priorities and create standard operating procedures for use. The EIA will be fully updated once a vendor has been selected and the product has been integrated.

8. Background/supporting papers

8.1. Approval to go to the commercial market for a Retrospective Facial Recognition system was provided in decision PCD 915.