Project & Full Business Case

The NLEDS project was initiated within the Transformation Portfolio in November 2022, with a core team from Change and Digital Division allocated to commence discovery and scoping. The Chief Digital Information Officer and ACC Criminal Justice are joint Senior Responsible Owners (SRO).

There are approximately 15,000 active PNC users within Scotland. Officers and staff across every area of policing rely on the PNC to conduct their duties, core user groups include Local Policing via mobile devices, Contact, Control & Command (C3), Criminal Justice, Local Intelligence, National Intelligence Bureau, Professional Standards, Scottish Police Authority (namely Forensic Services) and Roads Policing.

Given time constraints mandated by the Home Office and criticality of PNC data to operational policing, it was agreed with Change Board members in January 2023 that the project would advance with discovery in conjunction with the NLEDP engagement team whilst developing the business case in parallel. The project is now in the delivery phase, the FBC was approved at Change Board on 4^th July 2023.

Strategic Outcome - NLEDS directly supports the Joint Policing Strategy and its objective to ‘support policing through proactive prevention’. Operational decisions and actions are made through an assessment of the information available from PNC, specifically the level of risk posed, vulnerability and/or offending history of an individual.

Outcomes & Benefits – There are many financial and non-financial benefits outlined within the FBC and overarching Home Office business case, national benefits were identified and ratified with a variety of users across the law enforcement community. The largest quantifiable benefit relates to the introduction of modern technology sets and reduced running costs that will follow. Successful delivery of NLEDS will:

• Contribute to the safety and wellbeing of officers and the public
• Support operational policing by providing our people with appropriate and modern digital tools
• Increase opportunities to detect and prevent crime
• Improve system performance and reduce outages
• Improve access and data sharing across the justice community
• Reduce ICT overheads to support and maintain outdated infrastructure
• Reduce instances of manual intervention to update system information, maintaining integrity of data
• Provide opportunities to reshape business and data models to achieve greater operational impact and success
• Reduce national running costs, thus reducing Police Scotland’s annual contribution/revenue
• Reduce time for the Home Office to make changes by delivering a modern technology set. LEDS can be adapted in a more efficient and economical manner compared to PNC.

Economic Appraisal – Two options were presented within the FBC. Option 1, ‘do nothing’ was discounted at national level on the grounds that there is a technological need that has to be addressed to ensure regulatory compliance. Option 2 ‘progress with the adoption of LEDS’ was the only viable option for Police Scotland to maintain operational service delivery.

Timeline – The project is progressing well against plan. Once IT connectivity is in place, the first product available for adoption for Police Scotland users will be Property from November/December, followed by a gradual rollout of Vehicles and Drivers products. If the Home Office remain to track against the current timeline for delivery of all products, it is anticipated that the PS project will conclude Q3 2025, allowing for closure activities following transition of the final product by December 2024.

Dependencies were identified during the discovery phase and are actively managed via the dependency management framework; the implementation of Office 365 into Police Scotland is a major technology dependency. The project is also heavily dependent on Leadership, Training & Development to not only support the planning and delivery the Police Scotland/SPA LEDS transition plan, but also the design and delivery of new user courses in the long term.

Project resources are predominantly existing members of Police staff. Leadership, Training & Development, Digital Division, and Information Management & Assurance are key enablers and critical to delivery of project milestones. In addition to resources already aligned to the project, ad-hoc advice and consultation is sought on a regular basis from Data Governance, Audit & Assurance, and wider operational stakeholders.

Communication and stakeholder engagement have been positive to date. Existing PNC users welcome the introduction of NLEDS, particularly planned enhanced features and its intuitive interface.