Ten months on from an announcement it would be scrapped, Greater Manchester Police officers could still be stuck with a troubled IT system for two more years. The force has been grappling with problems attached to iOPS (Integrated Operational Policing System) since it was introduced in summer 2019.
The issues revolve around the PoliceWorks system - which is part of the £27 million iOPS package used by officers for investigations, intelligence and records. Whistleblowers told the Manchester Evening News the system was plagued with problems and last March, Chief Constable Stephen Watson confirmed it would be replaced.
GMP's top boss warned last April that the system could still be in place for 18 months. But his second in command has today (January 17) suggested officers could still be using the same system for another '18 months to two years'.
Speaking to BBC Radio Manchester's Mike Sweeney, Deputy Chief Constable Terry Woods said: "iOPS is going - the PoliceWorks bit of it anyway, the bit that doesn't work is going. We've said that, we've made the commitment, that hasn't changed. It's a humongous IT system that you can't change overnight.
"We are about to go out to procurement for a new system. Obviously there are lots of legals around that. We will pick the system that works best with what's left of our current IT system and that will be purchased, and it will be implemented.
"I think realistically, and I say this to the staff when I get asked the same question, if you look at any force with a huge IT system the way it is... we're probably talking 18 months to two years to switch over to the new system."
DCC Woods insisted staff were 'coping' with the current IT system and it would be 'perfectly suffice to keep the public safe' before the new system is introduced. He suggested the cost for the new programme would be in the 'millions'.
"I'm certainly not a defender of iOPS," he added. "But we are coping with what we've got.
"It's not good enough. The solution is what we're doing. There isn't a quick solution - if there was we'd be doing it."
Former Chief Constable Ian Hopkins wrote to MPs in 2019 to insist iOPS was 'not a disaster' - despite whistleblowers insisting the software had left them unable to find information, input data or track crimes - while mayor Andy Burnham suggested it was 'not a scandal' in March 2020. Mr Hopkins was later ousted after His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services revealed that 80,000 crimes had not been properly recorded by GMP in 12 months.
His replacement, Chf Con Watson, previously described the strife his officers face when using iOPS. He told the BBC last April: "It's just been too slow. We've had officers sat in front of a blank screen watching a sort of whirling spiral of death - as it's been described to me - for ages on end.
"That can't happen, it's got to be quick, it's got to be instantaneous. There have been issues around counter-intuitive search descriptors and then there's been the problem of returning different answers to the same query."
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