Police Cloud Gateway Criminal Justice Exchange Replacement

This paper seeks approval for the procurement and award of a three year and two-month contract from February 2020 for the deployment of the Police Cloud Gateway (PCG) solution. MPS requires continued access to these networks in order to maintain connectivity to critical business and operational policing services.

The current criminal justice exchange (CJX) platform is now end of life and therefore requires existing MPS CJX services to be transitioned to its replacement service, the Police Criminal Gateway the (PCG), in order to maintain service continuity for operational policing.

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to approve the award of a direct call off contract to Vodafone, worth £2.025m, for a period of three years and two months, for the provision of PCG platform services (including the secure external gateway) from February 2020 from the Home Office’s Public Services Network in Policing(PSNP) Agreement. This is fully funded from Digital Policing MOPAC approved revenue budget.

1. Introduction and background

1.1. The business justification is to facilitate the transition of existing CJX services and connectivity to the replacement Vodafone Police Cloud Gateway (PCG) solution to enable MPS to continue to exchange information and share services with other UK Police Forces and government agencies.

1.2. The current CJX Network provides MPS with the necessary connectivity Public Service Network (PSN) and PSN(P) by which the MPS share information with other UK Police Forces Government agencies.

1.3. The current CJX platform is end of life and MPS, as the sole remaining user of the core CJX network, is now required to move all existing CJX services across to the Police Cloud Gateway service.

1.4. PCG will provide a compliant connectivity route to PSN and thereby provide increased information security and relevant compliance for transmission of operational critical information between UK Police Forces and other agencies.

1.5. The existing CJX management support and maintenance contract expires at the end of January 2020.

2. Issues for consideration

2.1. All existing MPS CJX services must be transitioned to PCG by March 2020 in order to maintain service continuity.

2.2. Further information is contained in the restricted section of the report

3. Financial Comments

3.1. The project implementation and ongoing revenue costs of the PCG service are all fully funded from within the Digital Policing MOPAC approved revenue budget.

4. Legal Comments

4.1. The Mayor’s Officer for Policing Crime 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.

4.2. The Financial, Commercial and Procurement Comments section of this report confirms that the proposed procurement route is to place a call-off contract under the Home Office’s Public Services Network in Policing (PSNP) Agreement. The MPS Directorate of Legal Services is instructed that the Framework Agreement was compliantly procured by the Home Office, the MOPAC is an eligible user of it and MOPAC may place direct call-off contracts under it. On that basis, the proposed contract award will be compliant.

4.3. Paragraph 4.13 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve all requests to go out to tender for contracts of £500,000 or above.

4.4. Paragraph 7.23 of the Scheme provides the Director of Strategic Procurement has consent to approve all proposals to award of all contracts with the exception of those called in through the agreed call in procedure. Paragraph 4.14 provides the DMPC reserves the right to call in any proposal to award a contract valued at £500,000 or above.

5. Commercial Issues

5.1. This direct call off contract to Vodafone is for £2.025m over a period of three years and two months, for the provision of PCG platform services (including the secure external gateway) from February 2020. This will be procured from the Home Office’s Public Services Network in Policing(PSNP) Agreement.

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. The project does not use personally identifiable data of members of the public, so there are no GDPR issues to be considered. There is no personal data (public or otherwise) stored or processed directly by the gateway itself and any associated GDPR impact assessment resides with the applications and services that utilise the gateway.

7. Equality Comments

7.1. This business case has undergone initial equality screening. Due regard has been taken to the Equality Act’s Public Sector Equality Duty. Real consideration has been taken to assess equality impact caused by the proposed business changes. As a result no positive or negative impact has been identified to any individual and/or group safeguarded by a protected characteristic and those who are not.

7.2. This is due to the migrating platform mirroring the same performance functionality. There will be a short transitionary period during migration and a back-up solution will be implemented to eliminate impact. Therefore, with the exception of financial efficiency, there is no real organisational change. Further reviews will be conducted, and if as a result any new Equality Impact is identified, a full Equality Impact Assessment will be initiated

8. Background/supporting papers

8.1. Report