Public Sector
Regulator says NCA's aging tech drags down productivity, forces officers to juggle hardware and do manual workarounds
Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) has been told to urgently overhaul an IT estate so dysfunctional that officers say they are fighting serious organized crime despite the technology rather than because of it.A new report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) has delivered a bruising verdict on the National Crime Agency's tech, concluding that the systems underpinning Britain's fight against organized crime are no longer up to the job.The criticism lands despite inspectors otherwise finding much to like. The NCA was graded "Good" in several operational areas, including tackling serious and organized crime and working with partners. But throughout the report, inspectors repeatedly return to technology as a fundamental weakness running through the entire organization.
"The NCA's IT infrastructure isn't fit for purpose," the report states. Inspectors backed that assessment with a long list of examples, from officers manually re-entering data and sharing information by hand to teams relying on spreadsheets and other workarounds due to a lack of confidence in official systems.
