012/2013 – Firearms Deployment & Training Records System – 28 January 2013

Executive Summary and recommendation:

This paper is presented to the Police and Crime Commissioner to seek approval for the North Yorkshire Police (NYP) financial contribution to the purchase of a Single Firearms Deployment and Training Records System (SFD&TRS).

The overall aim of the YatH Firearms project is to increase local and regional resilience and capability in a specialist operational function. This will be achieved through interoperability of firearms through common policy, procedure, training and operations. The SFD&TRS is critical to the YatH firearms collaboration work as it will facilitate the College of Policing ‘s (formerly the National Policing Improvement Agency) accreditation of YatH firearms training and granting of a YatH Regional Firearms Licence. Achieving accreditation requires:

• Harmonisation of Forces’ firearms policies and procedures.
• Common training plans.
• Purchase, installation, population and management of a single firearms capability database.

It is recommended that:

A Single Firearms Deployment and Training Records System is established through procurement of Chronicle.

• Chronicle is procured with the Armoury Management module at an overall five year cost of £144,264.04 to be met in accordance with proposals in Paragraph 12.

An additional provisional capital sum of £2172.00 is earmarked from NYP budgets for the purchase of two hard drives.

• A £10k capital contingency fund is earmarked from within current regional budget provision.

SYP acts as the procurement lead.

SYP takes responsibility to host Chronicle and provide IS support in accordance with the costs stated.

Police and Crime Commissioner decision:

Approved

Signature Date 28 January 2013
Title Police & Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire

Part 1 – Unrestricted facts and advice to the PCC

Introduction and background

The overarching purpose of the YatH Firearms Project is to enhance capability through a dedicated specialist firearms unit. The outcome from this will be to increase effectiveness and resilience for North Yorkshire Police and the YatH in a key operational area by:

• Securing a nationally accredited licence to train officers in the use of firearms.
• Securing interoperability through common standards, procedures and training.
• Obviating the current risks from bespoke systems and procedures.
• Enhancing operational and management information through a Single Firearms Deployment and Training Records System.
• Ensuring that staffing levels are based upon pan-YatH demand rather than resilience for individual Forces.
• Generating financial savings through migration to appropriate staffing levels, IT systems and use of estate.
• Addressing requirements set out in the Home Secretary’s Strategic Policing Requirement.

Development of the Dedicated Firearms Unit is in two parts:

• Phase 1 – a regional approach to Firearms Training, Specialist Firearms, Close Protection Officers and Rifle Officers.
• Phase 2 – Armed Response Vehicles.

This Decision Notice focuses on the provision of a Single Firearms Deployment and Training Records System as part of the Phase 1 requirements for firearms training. A robust records system is key to interoperability in its entirety as, without a College of Policing licence to train, no further progress can be made.

Matters for consideration

The four Forces currently have three separate IT systems for Firearms Training Records. A range of factors render this arrangement untenable;

• College of Policing licensing requires that the Region has a robust training records system to undertake the business.
• College of Policing licensing requires that the Regional Chief Firearms Instructor (CFI) has ready access to consistently presented information.
• A YatH Regional Firearms Training Unit with fully interoperable Firearms Officers, working to a single set of Role Profiles, Tactics, Terminology, Lesson Plans and Standard Operating Procedures is most readily and robustly provided through a single Deployment and Training Records system. This will address current issues such as:
  • Historically two Force systems were designed as a ‘short-term’ fix, intended to be for a maximum 12 months pending a long term solution. This was some three years ago and needs addressing
  • A single database is necessary to dispense with individual paper records and provide collated information so Forces can take a common, pan-YatH approach to firearms strategy.
  • Produce information on tactics employed operationally in a consistent and readily available way including the outcome of debriefs and lessons-learned. This will link operations and training maximising learning and expertise.

The project has progressed through the appointment of a CFI in June 2012 and work is continuing to standardise the four Forces’ policies and procedures. The procurement of a regional web based product is now required as this addresses the shortcomings in current information requirements and is essential to achieving a Regional Firearms Licence from the College of Policing.

Chronicle is a software system developed by JML Software Solutions Ltd. It is a modular IT system encompassing the Operations Support / Specialist Operations business areas. Currently 30 Forces either have or are in the process of procuring Chronicle, including other collaboration areas including the six-Force NW collaboration, South Wales, and two Home Counties collaborations and the Norfolk / Suffolk collaboration.

Chronicle provides robust audit to firearms operations and operational deployments, training, accreditation and command. The purpose of the Chronicle Firearms Modules is;

• To ensure that officers are trained correctly and that any refresher training is carried out before it expires.
• To hold information on each operational deployment, the deployment details, review and what needs to be improved.
• The Armoury Management module enables instant accreditation and removal of accreditation of Authorised Firearms Officers (AFOs) regarding Armoury access and weapon issue.
• Critically and uniquely, to link the modules together e.g.
  • An officer who fails an accreditation shoot is instantly denied access on the Armoury system to the armoury and ability to draw a weapon
  • A need to understand or provide details of an officer’s training and operational deployment record is served by a single enquiry on the system to provide a complete chronology of their professional accreditation and operational competence
  • Complete operational and training history of each AFO and Commander is in one place and easily accessible.
  • Valuable in any post incident enquiry by reducing organisational risks of having patchy records which may be vulnerable in legal proceedings.

Other options considered, if any

In order to progress with a Single Firearms Deployment and Training Records System, the former intention was for current individual Force systems to be used for a transitional period with migration to a single system at an agreed point. Although the College of Policing had some reservations from a licensing perspective, the Project Team believed a compromise could be achieved by the CFI having access to all Forces’ systems through the 5th Domain. Subsequent delays to the 5th Domain project and the clarification that it would not allow system access to two of the three Forces has made this option redundant and escalated the urgency to progress the Single Firearms Deployment and Training Records System option.

South Yorkshire Police’s Information Systems Department (the YatH Regional Collaboration IT Leads) undertook a review of what each Force uses for the purpose of Firearms Deployment and Firearms Training. Their findings support the use of Chronicle for the region.

In order to achieve nationally accredited licensing a single database is required. If the option to purchase Chronicle is not approved then this will still need to be built or bought so as to provide the same deployment functionality.

Contribution to Police and Crime Plan outcomes

Police and Crime Commissioners are required to have regard to the Strategic Policing Requirement when issuing or varying their police and crime plans. Notably “The police service should have the capability at very short notice to mobilise and conduct mutual support across force boundaries, including the ability to easily deploy and receive reinforcements.” And “the requirement for consistency among forces for certain key specialist capabilities where the resources from more than one police force need to be integrated with, or work effectively alongside, each other.”

Approval of funding to deliver a Single Firearms Deployment and Training Records System represents a critical step towards achieving firearms interoperability for NYP and YatH.

Consultations carried out

Consultation has taken place with the operational chief inspectors and superintendents from the four YatH Forces as well as with the Regional Delivery Group (RDG) and Regional Collaboration Board (RCB).

Through the decision making process of the RDG and RCB, other Forces have confirmed their commitment to Chronicle with the Armoury Module.

Financial Implications

YatH Summary of Year 1 Capital, Annual Revenue & 5-Year Total Costs; Deployments & Training Records Modules With Armoury Module are attached at Part 2.

If the Armoury module is approved one PC Hard-drive and one PC Screen will be needed at each site. This would be a Chronicle only PC, operating the Armoury access and weapon allocation system, networked back to the main Oracle server in SYP, but with the ability to ‘standalone’ and keep Armoury Management running in the event of a network problem. Costs of the screens are included in the business case figures, NYP will be required to provide two hard drives at an indicative cost of £2172.00.

Implementation of this proposal will require that further resources, by way of staff expertise and equipment (power points, cabling), will be required. These costs will be clarified prior to implementation.

The lead SYP IT Department suggests building in a £10k capital contingency to cover any unexpected costs.

Value for money

• ML is prepared to ‘break’ the current SYP contract (half-way into the 5-year contract), at no cost, to migrate them onto the full YatH Regional contract so all four
• Forces are on a single contract and contracted for the same duration.
• JML is providing an overall 26% discount on the list price.
• This mitigates the situation where as individual Forces, SYP currently and WYP in line with the Firearms Private Finance Initiative, would incur increased cost from;
  • covering 100% of Server costs and IT support costs individually, and
  • not benefitting from collaboration discount.
• JML will archive historical SYP data at the point of migration at no cost.
• JML will harvest licences; not normal practice for them; to reduce volume costs for the YatH procurement.
• Upgrade developments are at no cost to contracted Forces and are customer-Force led.
• Upgrade installation work on Force IT is at no cost where JML undertakes the work remotely.
• JML will support at no cost* where SYP IT undertakes upgrade installation.
• A single pan-regional system will mean reduced ongoing maintenance and support costs, no duplication of internal hardware across the region and lower regional internal IT support costs.
• Lower administration costs once embedded. Record maintenance can be centralised and streamlined using better data.

Configuration

It is proposed that the YatH Regional Chronicle system is hosted in SYP on an Oracle Server platform and networked round the Region on a web browser arrangement. Also that the benefit of SYP IT Department’s experience of this system is used by them acting as the Single Point of Contact and providing the IT support in terms of upgrades, maintenance and helpdesk support to users. Costs for this support are included in the financial tables.

Procurement

• JML is a member of the Sprint II Framework removing the requirement for forces to engage in an extended European procurement procedure.

The timescales set for implementation of the Firearms Interoperability Project necessitates a Single Firearms Deployment and Training Records System to be procured, installed, trained and running by 31 March 2013.

Cross YatH Region networking is already in place and no major issues or hidden costs have been identified.

• It is recommended that SYP is the Procurement lead as this avoids the flagged VAT risk in all four procuring together. Appropriate sub-contracts, service level agreements and legal agreements will be progressed in terms of the relationship with the other three participating Forces.

Legal Implications

Substantive legal work on the contractual documentation has not yet been commissioned from the Legal & Compliance Services Directorate. As the report acknowledges, there is work to be concluded on the contractual and collaborative documentation underpinning the proposal in this paper.

With that caveat, having read this report and having considered such information as has been provided at the time of being asked to express this view, the Director of Legal & Compliance Services is satisfied that this report does not ask the PCC for North Yorkshire to make a decision which would (or would be likely to) give rise to a contravention of the law.

Equality Implications

Equalities implications relate largely to amendments to policy and procedure. Firearms policy is formed from Authorised Professional Practice, is under constant review nationally and revision needs to be effected quickly once stipulated. In view of this YatH has agreed that the ACPO Firearms Lead (ACC Spittal), or on some occasions the CFI, is authorised to approve revised operational and training policies on behalf of regional Forces.

Financial Implications

The financial implications of this proposal would ordinarily be considered alongside an original overall business case for the move to a “dedicated specialist firearms unit”(of which this functionality forms a part). The understanding is that the decision for the development of a “dedicated firearms unit” has been made in terms of it being achieved on a phased basis. This proposal forms part of implementation work and these financial comments are made in that context.

The capital expenditure associated with this Decision Notice is proposed to be funded from the currently forecasted under spend from regional working identified in previous reports. If Forces have different views on how they wish to fund capital expenditure, NYP would recommend that it’s contribution towards this initiative, in respect of capital costs, is funded from the NYP share of any forecast under spend for 2012/13 financial year.

Where the funding proposals for capital are not accepted at a regional level and NYP maintains it’s commitment to these proposals, the funding for capital expenditure would be approved from within the current Plant and Equipment rolling replacement programme. However this would diminish the amount available for local replacement programmes.
The revenue expenditure associated with these proposals would be funded from existing revenue budget as part of the NYP 2013/14 budget setting process.

It is recommended that any contingency sum is also earmarked from within current regional budget provision.

Conclusions and recommendations

To continue to be able to train firearms officers and achieve interoperability and make the subsequent gains in this specialised service, a robust database must be in place. Chronicle would provide consistent definitions of firearms incidents, enable standard collation of information relating to different events and enable full debriefing of issues (e.g. command, resources and tactics used, training requirements and equipment etc). Consistent logging of events will reduce the effort in gathering information to inform the Strategic Threat and Risk Assessment and a more accurate interpretation of the threat and risk will enable a more efficient and bespoke response in terms of equipment, skills and assets (avoiding an excess of assets, wasting both money and causing competence difficulties due to insufficient demands, whilst avoiding under resourcing leaving critical gaps in high risk protection).

It is recommended that:

A Single Firearms Deployment and Training Records System is established through procurement of Chronicle.

• Chronicle is procured with the Armoury Management module at an overall five year cost of £144,264.04 to be met in accordance with proposals in Paragraph 12.

An additional provisional capital sum of £2172.00 is earmarked from NYP budgets for the purchase of two hard drives.

A £10k capital contingency fund is earmarked from within current regional budget provision.

SYP acts as the procurement lead.

SYP takes responsibility to host Chronicle and provide IS support in accordance with the costs stated.

Section 1.1 – Equality Analysis
Chronicle Firearms Database

This template must be completed for all NYP initiatives (i.e. policies, practices, projects, strategies, programmes). Guidance on completing an equality analysis can be found on the Diversity Subsite.

An Equality Analysis (EA) examines the impact that NYP’s policies, practices, functions and services have on people from the protected characteristic groups. Undertaking an EA will identify any potentially discriminatory or negative consequences as well as potential benefits ensuring that, as far as possible, everyone has an equitable experience of policing services.

The sections below should be considered from the perspective of race, disability, gender, religion or belief, sexual orientation, age, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity.

1. Identify the aims, objectives and intended outcomes of the initiative.
   Purchase of a pan-force firearms database (Chronicle) that provides robust audit to firearms operations and operational deployments, training, accreditation and command.
2. Could any of the groups of people set out at d) be affected differently by the initiative e.g. in terms of access to a service, or being able to take advantage of proposed opportunities?
   This is a means of capturing and making use of officers’ accreditations and so it may be that individuals are removed as well as included on the database according to their situation.
3. What research have you done? What information/data has been considered?
   Firearms services are subject to legislation and national Authorised Professional Practice. This work is part of a formal YatH project subject to consultation with firearms officers as the service experts and staff groups during development as well as senior and chief officers drawn from all four forces for decisions.
4. Following the assessment of available information/data, has a positive (beneficial) or negative (adverse) impact been identified? OR is the initiative equality neutral, i.e. no particular/minimal affect on any group? Give details on whom the initiative impacts and how.

	Positive (High Impact)	Negative (High Impact)	Neutral(Low/no Impact)	Details
Race			X	The business case pertains to the purchase of a database only so impact is neutral.
Gender			X
Disability			X
Religion or belief			X
Sexual Orientation			X
Age			X
Marriage and Civil Partnerships			X
Gender Reassignment			X
Pregnancy and Maternity			X

If the impact is equality neutral (i.e. no particular/minimal affect on any group) this should be noted and no further action is required. Where a potential impact (positive or negative) has been identified, further assessment is required to determine what changes may be necessary to either reduce the negative impact or enhance the positive impact and sections e) to g) should be completed.

Tick to confirm statement √
Director/Chief Officer has reviewed the request and is satisfied that it is correct and consistent with the NYPCC’s plans and priorities.	√
Legal Advice Legal advice has been sought on this proposal and is considered not to expose the PCC to risk of legal challenge.	√
Financial Advice The CC CFO has both been consulted on this proposal, for which budgetary provision already exists or is to be made in accordance with Part 1 or Part 2 of this Notice	√
Equalities Advice An assessment has been made of the equality impact of this proposal. Either there is considered to be minimal impact or the impact is outlined in Part1 or Part2 of this Notice.	√
I confirm that all the above advice has been sought and received and I am satisfied that this is an appropriate request to be submitted for a decision Date 28 January 2013	√