Home Office seeks replacement for Holmes 2

The Home Office has issued a tender for a replacement for the Holmes 2 crime investigation system used by police forces, with an estimated contract value of £40-£60 million.

According to a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), the Home Office is seeking “expressions of interest for a replacement solution (‘Holmes 3’) to be delivered to the UK police service. It presents a good opportunity to seek innovation from the market to achieve value for money and rationalise business processes by moving to a nationally available model for service delivery, consistent with the Government ICT Strategy”.

The new provider will also be required to provide support and maintenance services for the Holmes 2 system while the new solution is developed.

Holmes – the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System – is a sophisticated application that is used by every UK police force to support the investigation of murders and a variety of other major crime investigations and major incidents.

In addition, the associated “CasWeb/MIRWeb” facilities provide a web-based interface to Holmes 2 for forces to input information from the public in response to major disasters or incidents.

CasWeb allows mutual aid forces to create, search and update records (missing persons, callers, survivors and casualties) and record messages on the host force`s system.

MIRWeb, an enhancement of CasWeb, uses the same architecture and provides forces with a mutual aid facility for taking telephone messages from the public during a high-profile murder inquiry. Both CasWeb and MIRWeb have continued to be enhanced in subsequent versions.

The Holmes system was developed and is maintained by the global IT company Unisys, receiving final accreditation in 2001. Updated versions have since been released, providing additional functionality as requested. It allows information to be recorded in different formats and provides modules for the management of documents, exhibits, actions, disclosure and case preparation. Incidents can be linked within and across police forces for the coordination of inquiries. Advanced search facilities assist in the retrieval of key information used in investigations.

UK police forces started to employ the original Holmes system in 1986 in all major incidents including serial murders, multi-million pound fraud cases and major disasters.

While Holmes proved to be a very effective administrative support system for investigating major crimes, the progress of technology revealed some fundamental weaknesses, particularly in the areas of investigation support and linking separate incidents. What police forces said they needed was a new solution that assisted them in exchanging information as well as in making better use of their information.

In 1994, the police service launched a plan to replace the then existing Holmes systems with Holmes 2 that would overcome these weaknesses. In December 1996, Unisys was subsequently awarded the contract for the sole supply of Holmes 2 under a PFI framework agreement with the National Policing Improvement Agency.