Port of Tilbury-Police Constable

[Fedster + 1,307]

Home Secretary says Home Office is dominated by neglected legacy ICT projects.

'Reset' Airwave replacement project 'will be signed off next month'
Date - 24th February 2021

By - Gary Mason

A revised business case for the replacement to the Airwave system is due to be signed off next month Home Secretary Priti Patel has told the Home Affairs Select committee.

She admitted that the Emergency Services Network (ESN) which at £3.1 billion is the second most overspent procurement exercise in the UK behind the Crossrail project, has had a “terrible, terrible past.”

The project had been reset and the new business case would bring the project back on track she said and give it “technical viability.”

Admitting that it was one of the “red ICT projects” that was so over budget and overdue it risked being scrapped she said it was now making “steady progress.”

She said it was vital that the Airwave contract was ended as quickly as possible as it is “very expensive” and the technology was reaching the end of its life cycle.

She said the Home Office was “dominated by legacy systems” which have been neglected by successive governments including a major project to replace the PNC and PND which will not go live for another seven years.

“We are working on projects we have inherited that were in a very difficult situation” she told the committee. “We have infrastructure that is out of date and struggling and we have to update our systems.”

A committee member asked the Home Secretary what was the impact on day to day policing of the recent data wipe on the 50-year-old PNC.

Mrs Patel said it had been minimal although “dealing with legacy technology is clearly a challenge.”

She said the PNC contained over 30 million records and the data deleted by mistake represented 0.85 per cent of that total.

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[BlueBob + 692]

Pure genius, a legitimate scheme that allows companies to charge millions, if not billions and yet create not a single end product.  Apart from a defence project, about the only scheme I can think that is do beneficial to the combatants would be, oh what do they call it?   Oh yes, a Ponzi scheme.  🙈.  Oh and the brilliance is, that contrary to the ponzi idea, ESN is totally legit.  Brilliant😳

[Beaker 817]

They're still rolling out new TETRA kit in other countries.  German Military has just signed off on TETRA gear.  Multiple Far East countries are rolling out fresh installs, some European countries are doing full TETRA refreshes.

Ultimately I think they'll either kill it in the next year, or drastically reduce the scope.  Someone seems to have forgotten that "99% of the population" Isn't 99% of the landmass.

Airwave could be refreshed (and will have to be in another 4 years anyway), it would be expensive but Motorola would be paying for it.  They'd also likely drastically reduce the costs if we comitted to 10 years or more. 

[Jeebs + 1,190]

Airwave really isn’t that bad.

It could be improved by not buying awful handsets made by Sepura though. 

I don’t understand why we need an all singing all dancing radio net. Why can’t radios radio and mobile devices do the other stuff?! Not rocket science really.

[SimonT + 1,185]

On 25/02/2021 at 12:12, Jeebs said:

Airwave really isn’t that bad.

It could be improved by not buying awful handsets made by Sepura though. 

I don’t understand why we need an all singing all dancing radio net. Why can’t radios radio and mobile devices do the other stuff?! Not rocket science really.

That sounds like a practical solution. Government are entirely blind to such ideas. 

I carry a work phone which does most things and an ancient radio which sometimes works. Maybe it would be nice to combine the 2, but perhaps the 3 billion price tag is more than is needed. 

It will probably be 4 billion and rubbish and someone will make a lot of money. 

[TheMoo 66]

In terms of reliability/resiliance, having a radio that *just* does radio things is probably a better idea - the battery won't drain as quickly, you can run multiple functions (listen to the radio, call the MH teams, read logs/Google Maps), and there's less chance of the system falling over and crashing at *that* critical time when you need that radio

[skydiver + 1,099]

I love the way that Patel states that successive governments had neglected the problem given that the Tories have been in power for over 10 years and have done sweet fa to tackle this or other legacy IT problem.  In fact I can't think of any project that the Tories have overseen which has worked well including funding formula reform which was spectacularly messed up by Penning before being brushed under the carpet.  In a similar way to Failing Grayling Penning who kept being given one government department after another as a reward for lack of success, Penning ended up being rewarded with a Knighthood!

[BizzieBee 100]

1 hour ago, skydiver said:

including funding formula reform

Controversial, but the funding formula was actually a sound idea and quite well thought out. The implementation, like a lot of things, was utterly woeful. 

Police, Ambulance (NHS) and Fire have more money than common sense and business nous and very little in the way of proficient budgeting. What the Government haven’t tackled is the ‘Procurement Law’ debacle. Perhaps then the IT systems wouldn’t be such a complex, expensive affair. 

[Beaker 817]

On 25/02/2021 at 12:12, Jeebs said:

Airwave really isn’t that bad.

It could be improved by not buying awful handsets made by Sepura though. 

I don’t understand why we need an all singing all dancing radio net. Why can’t radios radio and mobile devices do the other stuff?! Not rocket science really.

Airwave works.  That's all there is to it.  There are various issues they still haven't solved with the ESN handsets, and a couple are absolute game stoppers.
The UK's Airwave needs a refresh, the kit is old and it is becoming difficult to get parts for some things now.  Doesn't mean it isn't fit for purpose, it just needs replacing before kit breaks to the point it can't be fixed.

I work with the oldest operational TETRA install in the world.  It is still ticking away quietly doing it's job with little fuss.  Due for replacement this year, and my boss will be the one switching it off as he was the guy who turned it on in the first place. 

Edited February 27, 2021 by Beaker
Clarity

[Cuddles 5,413]

1 hour ago, Beaker said:

Airwave works.  That's all there is to it.  There are various issues they still haven't solved with the ESN handsets, and a couple are absolute game stoppers.
The UK's Airwave needs a refresh, the kit is old and it is becoming difficult to get parts for some things now.  Doesn't mean it isn't fit for purpose, it just needs replacing before kit breaks to the point it can't be fixed.

I work with the oldest operational TETRA install in the world.  It is still ticking away quietly doing it's job with little fuss.  Due for replacement this year, and my boss will be the one switching it off as he was the guy who turned it on in the first place. 

Absolutely. It does the job pretty well (although there are some areas with no signal - pretty much unavoidable and will be the same with ESN) and has its own infrastructure so that outside influences are extremely limited.

Thanks for ensuring I got an MTH800 instead of one of those new ones when my handset got waterlogged the other month. I've built up quite a collection of batteries over the years! 👍

[BlueBob + 692]

2 hours ago, Beaker said:

Airwave works.  That's all there is to it.  There are various issues they still haven't solved with the ESN handsets, and a couple are absolute game stoppers.
The UK's Airwave needs a refresh, the kit is old and it is becoming difficult to get parts for some things now.  Doesn't mean it isn't fit for purpose, it just needs replacing before kit breaks to the point it can't be fixed.

I work with the oldest operational TETRA install in the world.  It is still ticking away quietly doing it's job with little fuss.  Due for replacement this year, and my boss will be the one switching it off as he was the guy who turned it on in the first place. 

Isn’t it like many tech things, either keep the old and as it breaks, hope they’ve  got spares or eventually gofor new.   The moment the spare is not available, it becomes immediately not fit for purpose.     

[Beaker 817]

33 minutes ago, Cuddles said:

Absolutely. It does the job pretty well (although there are some areas with no signal - pretty much unavoidable and will be the same with ESN) and has its own infrastructure so that outside influences are extremely limited.

Thanks for ensuring I got an MTH800 instead of one of those new ones when my handset got waterlogged the other month. I've built up quite a collection of batteries over the years! 👍

If you have an old radio we replace with an old one.  I use the 6650 because they work in the 'dead' patches at Barton and West Lancs.

 

[Beaker 817]

27 minutes ago, BlueBob said:

Isn’t it like many tech things, either keep the old and as it breaks, hope they’ve  got spares or eventually gofor new.   The moment the spare is not available, it becomes immediately not fit for purpose.     

To a point.  I read that one of the countries in Easter Europe are refreshing their kit because it is 10 years old.  Still works fine, bit they're replacing anyway.