PCD 1797 Critical Voice

Executive Summary:   

This business case seeks approval to commence the procurement of MPS critical voice services, comprised of 999, 101, contact centers and enterprise voice services, as well as procurement of secure services to replace the current Call Routing Agreement Two (CRA2). 

Recommendation: 

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, via the Investment Advisory and Monitoring meeting (IAM), is asked to: 

• Approve the initiation of procurement action for a contract for maintenance and support of Critical Voice services with a term of five (5) years with 3 x 12 month extension options and delegate approval to award contracts to the Commercial Directors.  

• Approve the direct award of a contract for Secure Services connectivity to British Telecoms Limited with a term of five (5) years with 3 x 12 month extension options. 

• Approve project funding from the approved MOPAC DDaT 25/26 project revenue budget to manage the transition from incumbent to the new provider of Critical Voice Services. 

• Approve that, on completion of the procurement action, the Medium Term Plan (MTP) can be updated to align with the procurement as agreed with the Commercial Director and Chief Digital Data and Technology Officer. 

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

1. Introduction and background 

1. The purpose of this Business Justification Paper is to seek permission to approve commencement of two procurements.   

1. The first procurement is a competitive tender for a support and maintenance service for the MPS Mission Critical Voice Platform (MCVP) which routes calls from the public phone network to and from MetCC.  These calls include 999, 101 and high priority calls to other emergency services. MCVP was built and commissioned recently and will shortly provide a single 999 call queue serving the whole of Greater London to reduce 999 and 101 call answering times. MCVP already supports four business critical contact centres (soon five) as well as providing high availability telephony across the MPS estate.  

2. The second procurement is the direct award of services too sensitive for competitive procurement to replace the Secure Services currently provisioned under Call Routing Agreement Two (CRA2). 

2. Issues for consideration 

1. Ongoing service costs for the solution will be funded by existing MOPAC approved DDaT revenue budget for provision of Critical Voice Services currently contracted under the CRA2 agreement with British Telecoms Limited (BT).  

2. The Mission Critical Voice Platform (MCVP) is part of the UK Critical National Infrastructure, hence the importance of its support and maintenance.  

3. The current understanding is that there is no impact on the Command and Control (C&C) Programme. However, further engagement between C&C and Critical Voice teams will be needed to ensure alignment and assumptions are maintained as the Critical Voice project is approved and baseline dates are set. 

4. An Information Technology Health Check (ITHC) is required.  This will review the new Critical Voice Service provisions for interconnection to Wide Area Network (WAN), 24/7 monitoring facility, patching and tooling. 

5. There are no immediate additional costs involved in running the competition and the business groups, commercial and DDaT are funding the opportunity costs of running the exercise, which will amount to 47 days of effort. 

6. There will be no adverse operational impact from making these changes. 

7. There will be no negative equality or diversity implication, no adverse social impact and no GDPR impact associated with this BJP. 

8. This business case contributes to the New Met for London (NMfL) Plan and / or MOPAC Police & Crime Plan 2022-25 by: 

1. Ensuring the continuity and reliability of mission critical MetCC voice communications (e.g. incoming 999 calls) enabling MPS to Keep London Safe; 

2. Ensuring the continuity and reliability of business critical enterprise voice services supporting officers and staff at MPS premises across Greater London and beyond.  

3. Financial Comments 

1. Commercially sensitive finance, commercial and legal detail has been redacted. This information is contained in the restricted section of the report. This is to ensure a compliant procurement process. 

4. Legal Comments 

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 £214,904 or above shall be procured in accordance with the Regulations. This report confirms the value of the proposed contract exceeds this threshold.   

2. Section 4 of this report confirms the MOPAC’s route to market is compliant with the Regulations. Purchasing through a compliant Framework Agreement will comply with the Regulations where the proposed award is within the scope of the Framework Agreement. This report confirms the proposed contract award (for both Critical Voice Services and Secure Services) are compliant with the Regulations. 

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

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

2. 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. Paragraph 7.23 of the Scheme provides that the Director of Commercial Services 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  

1. This paper requests approval to procure Critical Voice Services via competition under Crown Commercial Services - Network Services 3 framework with a term of five (5) years plus 3 x 12-month extension options.   

2. The paper also requests the approval for the direct award of a contract for Secure Services connectivity to British Telecoms Limited (BT) with a term of five (5) years and 3 x 12-month extension options. 

3. In addition, this paper recommends the use of the Pegasus Infrastructure contract to procure a project delivered by Capgemini under Pegasus Infrastructure from the MOPAC Approved Digital Data & Technology (DDaT) Project for SD&I. 

6. GDPR and Data Privacy  

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. 

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 / project [delete as applicable] meets its compliance requirements. 

4. The programme does not use currently personally identifiable data of members of the public, so there are no current GDPR issues to be considered. If the programme uses personally identifiable data of members of the public at a later date DPIAs will be completed as needed. 

7. Equality Comments   

1. MOPAC is required to comply with the public sector equality duty set out in section 149(1) of the Equality Act 2010. This requires MOPAC to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations by reference to people with protected characteristics. The protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. 

2. This project will not impact Equality and Diversity. All work will be let through the Pegasus Infrastructure Tower and Pegasus Application Tower which are fully compliant with legal requirements, including Equality Law. This was confirmed with MPS legal advisors during framework review that was undertaken prior to competing. 

8. Background/supporting papers 

None. 

Part 2 - This section refers to the details of the Part 2 business case which is NOT SUITABLE for MOPAC Publication.   

The Government Security Classification marking for Part 2 is: 

OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE [COMMERCIAL]  

Part 2 of the Critical Voice and Secure Services proposal is exempt from publication for the following reasons:  

• Exempt under Article 2(2)(a) of the Elected Local Policing Bodies (Specified Information) Order 2011 (Data Protection Section 43 - Trade Secrets and Prejudice to Commercial Interests).  

The paper will cease to be exempt upon completion of the contract. This is because the information is commercially sensitive and could compromise future procurement activity.