Police IT bugs

The new police IT system was slow, unstable and user-unfriendly and worse than previous systems in its first year, a report says.

‘Athena’, named after the Greek goddess of wisdom, went live in West Mercia last October after 4,000 staff received three days of training.

The Police and Crime Commissioner admitted there were “teething problems”, but said most of the country’s police forces will be linked up to it by 2024.

A report before the West Mercia Police and Crime Panel next week says IT consultants were appointed last month and the user interface is being redesigned.

Athena was designed to bring data on investigations, intelligence, custody and case management into one system, and is now sharing data between nine forces.

West Mercia Police, along with Warwickshire, switched over to it in October 2017.

“The implementation of Athena gave rise to a number of process issues,” the report authors add.

Officers took “longer than anticipated” to create crime reports with the new system, and time-consuming checks extended the backlog.

“The implementation of Athena presented officers and staff with a whole new system to familiarise with, and some of the Athena processes were not intuitive to use.”

The data sent to the Victim Support department showed a “dip in quality” and the network was unstable.

“The system has suffered from outages, in part as a result of internal ICT platforms, but also because of consortium-wide system changes, upgrades and the requirement to achieve a live status for all nine forces.”

Stations in Shropshire trialled building files about cases at the post-charge stage outside Athena then inputting them just before sending them on to prosecutors.

This system, the authors write, will now be rolled out to the rest of West Mercia and Warwickshire too.

Worcestershire-based IT consultants Process Evolution were contracted to review the system in September, and Northgate Public Service Ltd – Athena’s original designers – are working on a “much improved interface”.

The report says the update “promises to bring a fresher look to the platform together with a more refined and intuitive approach to workflow.”

At a recent meeting, West Merica PCC John Campion described the switch to Athena as “probably the biggest IT change in a generation”, and insisted the difficulties were not grounds for abandoning it.

“There are some teething problems in the system, but it’s not going anywhere,” he said.

“Nearly two thirds of the country will be Athena users in the next five years.”