The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has signed an outsourcing contract with IT services firm Steria, worth around £45m over the next 10 years.

The contract, which will commence later this year, will see a complete refresh of the IPCC’s PCs, servers and communications network over the next 12 months, plus a relocation of the IPCC’s datacentre to an off-site facility using storage area network (SAN) mirroring disaster recovery at a later date.

“The existing contract was coming to an end, and we recognised that we needed a complete IT refresh because the technology was so old,” said IPCC deputy chief executive and programme director Barry Simpson.

The IPCC is the public body that investigates complaints made about the UK police. Though it is funded by the Home Office, it is entirely independent from the police force itself, and has a legal duty to oversee the police complaints system created by the Police Reform Act of 2002.

Steria will provide IPCC with managed IT and telephony services including hardware, software, network equipment, applications and voice connectivity. IPCC servers currently running VMware virtualisation software will be upgraded, with a mixture of Wyse thin-client terminals and secure laptop PCs also deployed.

Data and application access will be provided through a common set of user interfaces including a Microsoft SharePoint portal, Citrix server and voice call management software.

The refresh is part of a complete business transformation programme being undertaken by the IPCC to prepare itself for the changing needs of the future, add business continuity and support new applications to improve working practices.

“We are doing a number of things to open up customer services, like introducing portals for our key recipients such as the Home Office and HM Forces, but also a mechanism that allows complainants to track progress online,” said Simpson. “At the moment, they can make a complaint via email but it has to be manually entered into the system.”

SharePoint services will also form the basis of additional portals to other applications used by the IPCC. These include customer relationship management and case management applications based on Steria's Perito software, and Agresso enterprise resource planning tools used by the IPCC’s human resources, finance and facilities management departments, as well as SQL-based management information and document and records management.

The Citrix application server will also host the IPCC’s i2 investigative analysis and Actuate reporting software. Steria will upgrade the existing IP telephony system with Cisco’s Call Manager platform and voice over IP (VoIP) handsets, plus softphones for mobile laptop users.

IT was previously supplied by Anite as well as local system integrator Northgate, which managed the IPCC’s contract with Cable & Wireless since 2004. While Steria will now be the IPCC’s main IT supplier for the duration of the 10-year contract, it is not an exclusive arrangement, and the IPCC will continue to work with Northgate going forward.

“We will be maintaining a relationship to continue core casework with Northgate during the transformation period, but otherwise everything is almost exclusively Steria,” said Simpson.

“We can use other suppliers where we think there is a benefit, but we were looking for a long-term partnership and that’s where Steria came in.”