PCD 1562 Changes to the National Policing Programme Grant Agreement for 685 Digital Public Contact

PCD 1562 Changes to the National Policing Programme Grant Agreement for 685 Digital Public Contact

This decision seeks approval to accept additional funding from the Home Office for the Digital Public Contact (DPC) Programme in 2023-24 of: 

• £1,000,000 for the extension of the Single Online Home front-end to provide a portal capability with integration to Humberside Police’s crime management system. 

• £200,000 for continued development of the DPC Analysis & Insights reporting dashboard to include benefits and enhancements to the StreetSafe tool, to include reporting of public transport locations for richer dataset to inform community activities. 

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:   

1. Approve receipt of additional Home Office grant funding in 2023-24 of £1,000,000 for the extension of the Single Online Home front-end to provide a portal capability with integration to Humberside Police’s crime management system. 

2. Approve receipt of additional Home Office grant funding in 2023-24 of £200,000 for continued development of the DPC Analysis & insights reporting dashboard to include benefits and enhancements to the StreetSafe tool, to include reporting of public transport locations for richer dataset to inform community activities.  

PART I - NON-CONFIDENTIAL FACTS AND ADVICE TO THE DMPC 

1. Introduction and background  

1. Digital Public Contact (DPC) is a Tier 1 NPCC National Policing Programme hosted within the MPS with MOPAC as the contracting authority. 

2. The decision to accept the Grant of £11.9m from the Home Office for the running of the Digital Public Contact (DPC) programme for 2023-24 was approved in July 2023 (PCD 1444).  

3. MOPAC continues as the contracting authority for the DPC Programme, as it has been for FY 2022/23 with the programme hosted within the MPS. 

4. The total Grant Agreement of £11.9m included the following deliverables: 

• Continued onboarding of forces onto the Single Online Home.  

• Continued development of services. 

• Continued delivery of a Strategic Integration Hub (i-Hub) to integrate Single Online Home services with back-office functionality in individual forces.  

• Strategic development of the police.uk website.   

• Supporting the adoption of a digital desk by the forces will enable control rooms, communications, and neighbourhood policing to collaborate more closely on how the public contacts the police via social media. 

2. Issues for consideration  

1. Following a decision by the Home Office Commissioning Board on 14 July 2023, additional funding of £1,000,000 was awarded to the Digital Public Contact Programme for 2023/24 for the extension the Single Online Home front-end to provide a portal capability with integration to Humberside Police’s crime management system, to enable members of the public in that force area to: 

• Register for, and verify, a user account; 

• View crime and Officer in Charge (OIC) details; 

• Interact with OIC through two-way communications; 

• View knowledge articles; 

• Access local and national content. 

2. In addition, on the 7th of September 2023, the Home Office Technology & Innovation Portfolio Governance Board approved additional funding of £200,000.00 for the Digital Public Contact Programme for 2023/24 to provide the following deliverables: 

• Continued development of the DPC Analysis & Insights reporting dashboard to include benefits; 

• Enhancements to the StreetSafe tool, to include reporting of public transport locations for a richer dataset to inform community activities. 

3. Financial Comments  

1. The Home Office  agreed to provide  additional funding for the DPC Programme in 2023-24 totalling £1,000,000 for the extension of the Single Online Home front-end to provide a portal capability with integration to Humberside Police’s crime management system as well as, £200,0000 for deliverables of continued development of the DPC Analysis & Insights reporting dashboard to include benefits and enhancements to the StreetSafe tool, to include reporting of public transport locations for a richer dataset to inform community activities. 

2. Details of the work and a breakdown of costs for the additional funding of £1,000,000 are listed in the table below.   

DPC Citizen Portal details of work and break down of costs. 

3. There is no impact on the MPS Capital Plan. All costs related to DPC are recovered through Home Office grant funding. This does not change the MPS annual revenue contribution to SOH of £1.4m in 2023-24.  

4. Legal Comments  

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

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 bids for grant funding made and all offers made of grant funding. 

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. 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. The Grant is subject to number of reasonable requirements by the Home Office including the management of the Grant, maintaining records, provision of information, and adequate data protection controls in place.   The requirements regarding the Grant are not onerous and have not been materially changed by the Grant Variation Letter dated 5 April 2022, therefore the additional Grant funding can be accepted by MOPAC. 

5. GDPR and Data Privacy  

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.  

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. 

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. 

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  

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 

8. The decision to accept the Grant of £11.9m from the Home Office for the running of the Digital Public Contact (DPC) programme for 2023-24 was approved in July 2023 (PCD 1444).