Joint tender for FoI support system

Bedfordshire Police, Cambridgeshire Constabulary and Hertfordshire Constabulary are jointly tendering for a case management system and support for Freedom of Information requests.

The contract, worth £250,000 over five years, has the options for the system to be hosted in-house or by an externally-hosted (secure) G-Cloud platform. The closing date is May 23.

The forces have already run a ‘mini-competition’ based on the Digital Marketplace GCloud framework, but said “due to the set up costs and the limit of two years this was seen as impractical and two of the three forces currently have no system and require one urgently”. The tender specifies the three forces require an “existing working system, which can be demonstrated”.

The forces, which share services and procurement, are to implement a number of shared back office technology solutions from next year with an integrated system for human resources (HR), finance, payroll and duty management, as well as frontline services. The systems are expected to go live in April 2017 as part of a plan to share 50 per cent of all services by the end of next year.

The three-force strategic alliance is deploying a financial management suite, a collaborative budgeting and forecasting solution and a mobile approvals tool Advanced Computer Software, as well as HR and payroll technology from Midland HR and duty management software from Northgate.

Mobile and self-service access will be enhanced by enabling all 8,000 staff across the three organisations to obtain information from the system.

Chief Constable Alec Wood of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, the lead force for the project, said having efficient back-office functions will ensure they maintain a strong frontline presence and give confidence to the communities they serve.