PCD 1763 Home Office grant funding for the Digital Public Contact 2024-2025

This paper seeks approval to accept grant funding from the Home Office (HO) to support the DPC programme for 2024/2025.  The programme is hosted within the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) as the contracting authority. The programme aims to offer clear, established and reliable national digital contact services between the public and the police that meet the needs of the public, enabling them to access interactive services, communications and information as well as supporting transactions and engagement with the police. 

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:  

1. Approve receipt of the HO grant funding for DPC programme for 2024-2025, a total of £20,698,000 for the delivery of National Police Strategies priorities detailed in paragraph 2.3 of the issues for consideration of this paper and paragraph 7 of Key deliverables section of the attached Appendix A document. 

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

1. Introduction and background  

1. The DPC is a Tier 1 NPCC National Policing Programme that facilitates integration for joint technological solutions and improved data sharing between forces in line with the Policing Vision 2025. The 2030 Policing Vision builds on the 2025 Policing to make transformative changes across policing. 

2. The programme led by the police in delivering transformation on behalf of the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) National Contact Management Strategy 2023/2025,  contributes to the UK Policing Vision being met and makes it easier for the public to contact the police wherever they are in the country, through capabilities, services, content and national standards that allow the public to be informed, reassured and empowered in transacting, interacting and engaging with policing digitally. 

3. The DPC’s programme’s primary products are currently; 

• Single Online Home (SOH), a web platform offering accessible, on-demand, interactive services and currently rolled out to 40 of the 43 forces in England and Wales plus British Transport Police (BTP). 

• Police.uk (PUK) which is predominantly an information service for the public, but which also provides the Public with access to high harm services and to the StreetSafe service. 

• Strategic Integration Hub (SIH) which provides the functionality to automatically transfer a report from a member of the public into a forces’ back office Records Management System and orchestrates outbound messaging from the MyPolice Portal which is now being rolled out to forces and enables two-way digital engagement between the members of the public and the officer in charge of a case. 

• Social Media platform target operating model. 

• Digital Youth Engagement live service and product development capability.  

• The development of AI capabilities for Contact Centres and; 

• The roll-out of an operational blueprint and standard toolset for the Rapid Video Response capability within all forces. 

2. Issues for consideration. 

1. The hosting arrangement was established in 2020/21. MOPAC) approved acceptance of grant funding from the HO (PCD 988 2021/22, PCD 1292 2022/23 & PCD1444 2023/24) followed by subsequent additional grant funding every year to support the programme. Therefore, accepting funding will support the continuation of the programme during 2024/2025. 

2. The programme’s mission is to continue to  deliver a set of  core programme capabilities  detailed in Appendix A to enable online access to police services, allowing the public and policing to engage and interact, and be a definitive source of self-help information and advice, thus improving services to the public, reducing demand on policing and improving efficiency and overall productivity.  

3. Key deliverables / Core capabilities. 

• Continued onboarding onto the Single Online Home (SOH) and POLICE.UK (PUK). 

• Continued support for MyPolice Portal to allow two-way interaction between the police and its citizens in parallel with defining and procuring a national solution. 

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) within contact centres through a selection of high value use cases for the introduction of AI technologies aimed at assisting call operators followed by the development of pilots to demonstrate how the technology would work within the Policing environment and how it can be scaled up to operate at a national level. 

• Rapid Video Response: Designing of a standard operating model for Rapid Video Response for Domestic Abuse as well as the rolling out of that model and the underlying technology to forces using a standard Blueprint and implementation process. 

4. The programme will mitigate strategic threats to Public Contact Management that have been identified by the National Lead for Public Contact by adhering to three principles: 

• Ensuring service is public focussed - Service delivery should focus on reducing citizen effort required to achieve the outcome needed for each contact 

• Effective channel management – Essential in a context where a range of contact channels will be required to meet demand in a way that is nationally consistent.  While the ‘999’ emergency system will remain the single preferred means to contact police in an emergency, there will be a range of routine channels 

• Prioritisation of contact – Takes into consideration several important factors, where real and immediate risk to life will be prioritised in all cases. 

5. The National Policing Digital Strategy 2020 – 2030 details policing’s ambitions for a concerted and coordinated approach to police use of digital and technology, together with Policing Vision 2025 and 2030. The funding will support the delivery of the following National Police Digital Strategy priorities. 

• Seamless citizen experience – The i-Hub provides the opportunity to link back-office policing systems with the Single Online Home, improving efficiency and the proposed Portal will surface this integrated capability to the public 

• Addressing harm – The programme has an active strategy to deliver and/or enhance more complex high harm services for policing matters such as missing persons, domestic abuse and rape/serious sexual assault. 

• Enabling officers & staff through digital – Building on existing reporting services, the i-Hub will further reduce system drag by lessening manual handling of policing data and allow for more cross organisation collaboration. 

• Embedding a whole public system approach – Complementing the police.uk website, which offers an opportunity for policing to have a clear national identity with the public, the i-Hub and the proposed Portal will provide the opportunity to join systems and processes outside of policing to enable a whole public services systems approach. 

• Empower the private sector – The SOH service will have a focus on Business Crime and Fraud specifically with potential to connect Retail crime systems to Policing systems. 

3. Financial Comments.  

1. Total funding for the programme for 2024/2025 is £22,098,000 of which £20,698,000 is to be provided by the HO and £1,400,000 match funding contribution from the MPS carried over from 2023/2024.  

2. All costs related to the programme will be recovered through HO grant funding so, there is no impact on the MPS Capital Plan. 

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 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. 

3. MOPAC has an obligation to publish a grant agreement pursuant to Part 1 of the Schedule, 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. 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) (as amended and updated by the UK 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. 

1. Report- Appendix A - MPS -Paper – DPC Programme HO funding 2024/2025.