Hundreds of victims potentially put at risk by GMP's new computer system, report says

The rollout of a new computer system by Greater Manchester Police exposed vulnerable people to the potential risk of harm, a damning report has concluded.

The report, by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary says GMP "can't be confident it has identified and appropriately referred all people at risk".

The report goes on to say that GMP "doesn’t yet have a full understanding of the threat and risk that all the backlogs contain."

It states that following the introduction of the Integrated Operation Policing System or iOPS, the force saw a large increase in the backlogs it had across the organisation, therefore lowering the force's productivity.

These didn’t occur due to one particular factor, but were a combination of the complex and significant change both in its ICT and in its processes.

IOPS cost £27m and was 19 months late when it was switched on in July 2019.

Watch Elaine Willcox's report below:

Some statistics from the report after the introduction of iOPS:

The report states that the time the force took to answer emergency 999 calls increased from 12 seconds to 48 seconds. At the time of the inspection, the average time to answer a 999 call had improved to 22 seconds. It says however, "this still fails to meet the national target."

GMP says that Chief Constable Ian Hopkins requested an independent review on 14 August 2019. This was commissioned by The Deputy Mayor and undertaken in November 2019, four months after the launch of the system.

GMP Chief Constable Ian Hopkins requested an independent review of IOPS in August 2019. Credit: ITV News

In response to the HMIC report, a spokesperson for GMP said:

The system was delayed in its introduction in 2019. Credit: ITV News

Greater Manchester's Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Baroness Beverley Hughes, has responded to the report:

The HMIC report has set out a number of recommendations for Greater Manchester Police to follow:

  • The force needs to develop a full understanding of the threat and risk contained within all its backlogs. In particular, it should review all domestic abuse incidents recorded by the force between the launch of iOPS and October 2019 to ensure that an appropriate response has been provided and referral made to the relevant agency.

  • The force should satisfy itself that all districts have completed a full audit of child protection incidents which occurred between the introduction of iOPS and the implementation of a quality assurance process which commenced in October 2019, to ensure appropriate referrals to partner agencies have been made.

  • The force should take steps to enhance the search capability within iOPS to ensure that the facility for the system to search for different spellings of the same name (phonetic searching) is available at the earliest opportunity.

  • The force should review those cases where victims of crime were not referred to victims’ services following the introduction of iOPS to ensure that any vulnerable victims receive appropriate support.

  • The force should ensure that all necessary data previously available on the legacy systems is easily searchable and accessible to officers and staff.

  • The force needs to ensure it effectively engages with partners at force and local level when undertaking significant change programmes.

  • The force should review its internal communication plan to ensure all staff are informed, consulted and engaged in the ongoing development of iOPS.

  • The force should review and evaluate the operational effectiveness of its training plan for iOPS to ensure all staff are appropriately trained to enable them to carry out their role.

  • The force should develop a sustainable approach to address the underlying problems with systems capability, training and the new operational and working processes.