Met Police chooses Capgemini as strategic IT infrastructure services provider

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has chosen digital transformation consultancy Capgemini as its strategic infrastructure services provider, which will deliver more agile IT services to help the force realise its digital policing vision.

Under a five-year contract, worth up to £600m, between Capgemini and the London Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime (MOPAC), the company will help the MPS improve the user experience for its more than 44,000 front-line officers and staff, as well as its digital interactions with citizens.

“Capgemini will help us continue to develop the next stage in our journey towards the Met’s digital policing vision,” said Angus McCallum, chief digital and technology officer at the MPS. “Capgemini was chosen as our infrastructure partner based on the strong capabilities demonstrated throughout the bid process. We look forward to working closely with Capgemini in the delivery of critical infrastructure services over the coming years.”

The contract is part the MPS’s Pegasus programme, a digital policing initiative started in 2019 to procure new key IT suppliers for the force, with the goal of ensuring better value for money and an improved user experience to meet the needs of the organisation up to 2030.

Under the programme, the Met will aggregate its six existing technology “towers” into a new “two-tower model” comprising infrastructure services and application services.

The first tower, which has now been contracted to Capgemini, covers a range of infrastructure services, including service desk, service management, hosting and datacentre services, security operations, mobile and voice data, and end-user and cyber security services.

According to the MOPAC website, although the second tower, application services, “is at an earlier stage than the infrastructure procurement”, it will provide support to applications across the MPS’s digital estate, including security and integration, to “ensure a highly available maintained estate”.

In the infrastructure services tender, the MPS said it “will be looking to procure a ‘run and maintain’ contract with no pre-planned transformation built into the contract, but with the opportunity to use the two towers to deliver change on the back of excellent delivery”.

It added that the force “has a strong preference for appointing a different supplier to each of the infrastructure and applications towers, to ensure independence between the two roles as the infrastructure supplier will be managing the applications supplier to some extent”.

Following the announcement, Nive Bhagat, CEO of cloud infrastructure services at Capgemini, said: “We are delighted to have been chosen as the strategic infrastructure services provider for MPS, one of the world’s leading police forces and one of the largest public sector organisations in the UK.

“We will leverage our automation delivery centre and deep hybrid cloud expertise to deliver a world-class service to MPS in support of its ultimate vision to be the most trusted police force in the world.”

In February 2020, the Police ICT Company and the National Police Technology Council (NPTC) published the National policing digital strategy 2020-2030, which flagged the top five priorities for UK policing in the decade ahead: the delivery of a seamless citizen experience, addressing harm, enabling officers and staff, embedding a whole public system approach, and empowering the private sector.

That document built on the Policing vision 2025 strategy, which focused heavily on improving data sharing and the integration of police forces with other public sector agencies.

The 2020-2030 strategy’s five ambitions are underpinned by seven enablers: data, strategic alignment and design, modernised core technology, connected technology, risk and security, talent, and transforming procurement.

The enablers primarily focus on the need to develop common standards, approaches and structures across UK policing organisations, as well as to deliver better value for money.