Tech Bar Project Final Business Case

The purpose of this project is to provide a walk-in Tech Bar service that will improve the customer experience for police officers and staff by providing face-to-face, onsite IT support for all IT related queries.

The service aligns with the BCU structure and will become an integral part of the BCU function. Its primary focus is to support the five local policing functions, although all Police Officers and staff can use the ‘walk in’ service, regardless of base location. The key outcome will be to support mobility and smarter working by reducing the downtime of Police Officers and staff.

Digital Policing are seeking approval to rollout the Tech Bars across the BCU structure by the end of 2019.

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

(1) The project to provide a walk-in Tech Bar service that will improve the customer experience for all police officers and staff by providing face-to-face onsite IT support and to proceed to Gate 4 and 5 (Build/ Test and Transition/ rollout).

(2) The first year 2019/20 funding to complete the project is covered in the DP approved budget.

(3) The annual revenue running costs to be covered by the existing DP revenue budget. This situation will be monitored throughout the year and built into the 2020/21 Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) business planning. Should the Digital Policing budget not be able to contain these costs then the intention is to manage these costs from within the overall MPS budget.

(4) All commercial arrangement to deliver the new Tech Bar service are covered in existing MOPAC approved construal and framework agreements.

1. Introduction and background

1.1. The Tech Bar trial project was initiated to ‘test’ the Tech Bar service in two sites. The key outputs from this trial project are a refined service-operating model for the full rollout and this Final Business Case. Both documents are based on the lessons learned and statistics from the trials.

1.2. The first Tech Bar trial was launched at Fresh Wharf Patrol Base within East Area Basic Command Unit (BCU) on 5th November 2018. The second Tech Bar trial was launched at Kentish Town Police Station within Central North Basic Command Unit (BCU) on 28th January 2019.

1.3. These ‘trials’ were initiated to address the following key challenges:

• Users who have a damaged or faulty device experience wasted time while waiting for resolution

• Concern that some users don’t engage with DP when IT issues arise

• DP are not fully and formally aware of all IT issues faced by users

• Support technology adoption to exploit its full capabilities

1.4. Users will walk into the Tech Bar and the engineers will provide level 1, 2 and 3 support simultaneously. In both trial sites, the users have found that the personal interface with the Tech Bar staff has been a far superior experience compared to using the telephone service. As a result, users are asking questions that typically they do not feel comfortable approaching the service desk for. Tech Bar is helping to increase the adoption of new technologies and improving utilisation of existing technologies, as well as being able to resolve their technical issues and problems.

1.5. From the trial statistics, average resolution time has reduced by 1.9 days per ticket when comparing the Tech Bar service with the Service Desk. Similarly, laptops are fixed 2.3 days quicker, tablets 3.41 days quicker and first time fixes have increased by 10%. In addition, 28% of users completed the Tech Bar survey, which is a high return rate for surveys of this type. Of those users, 91% rated the service as excellent, 9% rated it as good and 100% would recommend the service to their colleagues. They believe that other BCUs would benefit from their own Tech Bar and strongly believe their customer experience has improved and would like to see the Tech Bar as a permanent service offered.

2. Issues for consideration

2.1. The project will work with the Property Services Directorate (PSD) to determine the exact locations for Tech Bar deployment, which may influence cost and time. Contingency has been built in to cover this.

2.2. The other key issues are contained in the restricted section of the report.

3. Financial Comments

3.1. This information is contained in the restricted section of the report.

4. Legal Comments

4.1. The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) is a contracting authority as defined in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (the Regulations). Awards of public contracts for goods and/or services valued at £181,302 or above must be procured in accordance with the Regulations. The Tech Bar contracts for goods and services will be procured in accordance with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

4.2. Section 4 of the restricted report identifies a number of different procurement routes to source the various components of the project. Each are confirmed to utilise existing MOPAC contracts as being compliant routes to market.

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 the procurement strategy for all revenue and capital contracts of a total value of £500,000 or above.

4.4. Paragraph 7.23 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Director of Strategic Procurement has consent to approve the award of all contracts, except for those called in through the agreed call in procedure. Paragraph 4.14 provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime reserves the right to call in proposals to award contracts valued at £500,000 or above.

5. GDPR and Data Privacy

5.1. There are no new privacy issues created by the Tech Bar project as the service will use existing systems which have already had a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) as part of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

5.2. If the project creates bespoke systems in the future, which uses personally identifiable data, a DPIA will be completed as needed.

6. Equality Comments

6.1. The project has carried out site surveys of the seven potential Tech Bar sites. As a result, the project has been assessed as an equality and diversity neutral project neither promoting new equality and diversity issues nor reducing any existing equality and diversity issues. This relates to internal and external staff and/ or working practices.