NPIA's mobile data accelerator programme

4 July 2008 by Rod McLaren

The other day we wrote about the Cabinet Office’s plan to fund 10,000 mobile devices via NPIA, and that post listed the police forces whose individual applications were successful.

However, the £50m also funds NPIA’s “accelerator programme” for mobile data, which is designed for police forces who haven’t yet undertaken significant mobile data pilots yet. There’s no press release on the NPIA site yet but details on the accelerator programme are starting to emerge. [Update, 22 Sep 2008: the press release was New investment for police hand-held computers, 22 July.]

NPIA selected two vendors, Airwave and the Cable and Wireless—Beat consortium. Police forces will invite either or both to tender for their accelerator programme requirements, and take a package of applications, devices and so on from the single, winning vendor. (However a comment in the Computing story hints otherwise: “Forces will still be able to procure independent systems should they wish, though the Airwave and Cable & Wireless deals are likely to be cheaper and faster to implement.”

Airwave are pushing their Tetra bearer of course. Their press release mentions that Lancashire Constabulary and Lincolnshire Police will both be taking Airwave mobile data solutions. They have a long article on the Bapco journal about their offering, which includes on the application side:

• “Airwave Mobile Email and Personal Organiser – manage emails, calendar and contacts lists away from the station
• Airwave Mobile Validate – PNC/SCRO access plus automated checks against the National Voters Register and Postal Address File
• Airwave Mobile Stop and Search – including mobile printing of forms and tickets
• Airwave Mobile Criminal Intelligence – search local intelligence databases and input ‘5×5’ intelligence reports from the field
• Airwave Mobile Command & Control – including dispatching, viewing and updating incident logs
• Airwave Mobile Driver Validation Service – (DVS) – mobile access to new DVLA drivers details and colour images
• Airwave Mobile Crime Management – investigate and record crimes at the scene and reduce delays and ‘re-keying’ of information in the back office
• Airwave Mobile Self Learning Tools – covering Police National Legal Database (PNLD) and Police Visual Handbook – PVH”

There’s not much detail yet on the C&W offering, though the Beat Systems client application toolkit and mobile gateway are likely to be at the core of it.

The obvious question is whether an accelerator programme can genuinely accelerate mobile data use in a police force. The answer is found in how well and flexibly a product suite can engage with organisations with complexity and processes. The Home Office and NPIA have certainly set challenging target dates.

Vendor winners and losers

So the winners in accelerator programme were Airwave and C&W/Beat and the losers are presumably BlackBerry and the other Windows Mobile-based vendors (though some of these, such as HCL, Detica etc, are already having significant successes in policing).

But that’s merely a single funding programme for mobile policing in the UK, albeit an important one. We expect the future picture for mobile data for police to remain heterogenous in both device and vendor. No single vendor will dominate (no doubt, an aim of NPIA’s), but Airwave and BlackBerry will be the leading platform vendors, and on the frontline application side Beat Systems and others like Detica, HCL, Kelvin Connect [Update, 22 Sep 2008: who have since taken a £1m investment from Airwave] and Airpoint will do well. (And unsurprisingly, we expect vendors selling specialist applications to do well!)

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Disclosure: Mobbu has two stakes in this, so we’re not unbiased. We develop software for Airwave. We also develop and sell our own software products for police services in the UK, mostly on the BlackBerry platform.

27 Police forces get £50m for 10,000 mobile devices NPIA funding, Airwave invests in Kelvin Connect, BlackBerry's 20k devices