Sopra Group Enables Successful Roll Out Of The 101 IT System For The Northumbria Area

Background

Vandalism, graffiti, fly tipping, abandoned cars, relentless noise and nuisance neighbours all have a long lasting and corrosive effect on the quality of people's lives.  In Spring 2006, the Single Non Emergency Number (101) was launched, as one of a package of measures to improve community safety and tackle anti-social behaviour.  Under the programme, funded by the Home Office and Department for Communities and Local Government, 101 delivers an innovative service providing people in England and Wales with a new, easy to remember 3 digit number to access community safety advice, information and allow the report of vandalism, anti-social behaviour and other similarly non emergency incidents.  This will enable better customer service to citizens, and greater efficiency savings through the joining up of public services.

The Northumbria Partnership is among the first five in the country to introduce the service across Northumberland and Tyne & Wear, serving around 1.4 million people over an area of 2,200 square miles.  Sopra Group was chosen as their prime contractor to implement the IT system to support calls to the new 101 number. 

Solution

In close partnership with IIZUKA Software Technologies, who supply the software at the heart of the new 101 system through their rapid development KOZO® platform and functional components, Sopra Group provided the Northumbria Partnership with a fully hosted secure internet based 101 Information System and supporting services.  We have also delivered a Disaster Recovery solution to ensure business continuity.  As 101 is a completely new service, there was no predecessor and no way of knowing how many calls, or indeed what type of calls would actually be received, until the system actually went live to the public.

Therefore the Northumbria Partnership had to be convinced that the system and infrastructure they chose was fully flexible to evolving need and fully scalable to take into account new call taking and service delivery partners.  The secure internet-based solution supplied by Sopra Group and IIZUKA Software Technologies, provided this essential flexibility, as well as guarantees of Government Level Security and scope for future service additions with minimal future development cost.  Peter Coates, Northumbria 101 Project Manager, commented "As part of wave one of the 101 programme we were required to implement, as a minimum, the nationally agreed "Core Service" under tight timescales.  We therefore required a prime contractor we could rely on to develop and support the technology solution which would underpin this." 

Using Sopra Group's flexible approach to solutions delivery a comprehensive project plan was developed with dependencies between tasks clearly understood.  This ensured that issues and risks could be overcome with maximum efficiency, essential due to the short delivery timescales.  A dedicated project team, with skills from across our specialist service lines, worked together to deliver a quality solution.  Sopra Group has an end to end capability for systems development and as such we provided project management, technical architecture for the new system as well as hosting, specialist testing and security services for the Partnership.

The new information system captures details of calls regarding non emergencies from members of the public and notifies the relevant organisations that action is required.  With over 300 users, the system fully conforms to Home Office Data Standards and is accessible from up to 12 different locations across Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.  Organisations including Northumbria Police, the five Tyne & Wear local authorities, Northumberland County Council and six further district authorities all have access to the system.

Integration

For the Northumbria Partnership, Northumbria Police are a major Service Delivery Partner, working alongside the local authorities.  Therefore, an important landmark in the 101 project was the successful integration of Northumbria Police's back-office Command & Control system (CCS).  The CCS logs and tracks all incidents escalated to the police, both through 999 and 101 calls.

Kashif Razzaq, Sopra Group 101 Project Manager said: "A key objective of the integration project was to reduce the effort involved in getting incidents logged, to give police a higher percentage of their two hour window to respond to a service request.  Using Sopra Group's secure XML messaging system, service requests can now be exchanged between the 101 and CCS systems in 'real-time'."

A significant success for the 101 project has been the ability to integrate the 101 system with the CCS without causing any disruption to Northumbria Police's existing work queue and processes.  Further, the integration required minimal retraining of police staff as the core functionality of the CCS was maintained.

Post-integration, as soon as a call to the 101 number is logged as a service request, an XML message is automatically and securely transferred to the CCS, where an alert pops-up to note that the request requires action.  To ensure reliability and to ease tracking, the 101 system receives an automatic message when the service request has been received.  When Northumbria Police update the service request in the CCS with the action taken, this is automatically logged and the request is closed in the 101 system.  This completes the 101 feedback loop which aids tracking and performance measurement.

Benefits

Sopra Group and IIZUKA Software Technologies successfully delivered a system to support the receiving of non emergency calls in line with the pre-agreed timetable.  The system provides improved access for citizens to a range of anti-social behaviour related services while enabling more joined up, coordinated service delivery between Police and Local Authorities.  Using the information gathered the 101 system will enable improved management information and business intelligence relating to customer needs and local issues.  This will facilitate information led service planning and effective targeting of resources to local priorities and in turn improve performance of Police and Local Authority non-emergency services.  It is envisaged that efficiencies will also be realised due to:

• Better service co-ordination
• Increased ease of data input
• A reduction in multiple and inappropriate contacts
• Clearer access channels
• Improved service delivery
• Stronger partnership working
• Enhanced service tracking and performance management.

Shared Services Model

Based on a Shared Services Model the software is currently being adapted to ensure that it is capable of supporting multiple partnerships, which can operate both independently and with their data secured against access from other partnerships.  To ensure maximum return on investment future infrastructure elements may be added without discarding any existing infrastructure.

Standards

Security was an integral part of the 101 project from the start, Northumbria Police and the Local Authorities require their messaging to be highly secure in order to comply with strict data integrity directives.  The SNEN System is built to meet the Home Office Data Standards v1.0, and incorporates security standards appropriate to a Restricted listing on the UK Government Protective Marking Scheme.

Future Plans

Sopra Group continue to support the Northumbria 101 system through a fully managed support service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We are also involved in the scoping work or planned additions to the service, including GIS, mobile working, web interface and SMS services.  The solution is flexible enough to support these evolving service requirements and fully scalable to accommodate new call-taking and service delivery partners, with minimal future development or infrastructure cost.