Police ICT Company nominated for excellence award

The Police ICT Company and its commercial arm East Midlands Strategic Commercial Unit (EMSCU) have been shortlisted for a procurement award.

EMSCU and the Police ICT Company worked together in the negotiation of a single commercial deal with Adobe.

The National GO Excellence in Public Procurement Award recognises excellence in procurement within the public and private sector.

All the entries were reviewed by a panel of judges made up of experts in UK procurement including Ainslie McLaughlin, who works as a director of procurement for the Scottish Government.

CEO of the Police ICT Company, Martin Wyke, said being shortlisted for this prestigious award demonstrates how far the company has come.

He added that the award recognises its partnership work with Adobe and is significant because of the challenge of having 43 police forces as separate legal entities, holding hundreds of contracts directly and individually with ICT suppliers.

He continued: “However, the company has continued to drive a single message across policing, with its commercial partner, EMSCU, by challenging all suppliers to begin considering all forces as one client.

“Adobe were quick to recognise the greater market benefit from a single supplier model over multiple local users. Working closely with EMSCU and the company, as well as with all the individual police forums and committees, we were able to create a single commercial deal with Adobe that was open to all forces.

“I am delighted to say that the Adobe deal was not an isolated initiative and the company and EMSCU have been mapping out all supplier-spend against individual forces, and we have successfully identified further ‘local to national’ contracting opportunities. ‘Collaboration by aggregation’ is a template for transformational change in the Police ICT sector – and suppliers are beginning to take notice.”

The Police ICT Company together with the Home Office, has previously negotiated a single contract with IBM for all forces to use its i2 suite of analytical software at no additional cost.

Commercial Director of the EMSCU, Ronnie Adams, said: “We are delighted and proud to be recognised for this award, which demonstrates that collaboration in policing can be very powerful in delivering savings.

“With the support of the Police ICT Company, we have approached the market in a very different and much fresher way, and suppliers and forces alike are seeing the value in a more collaborative and coherent police sector market.”