NSW Police plans major SAP upgrade

NSW Police will upgrade its core SAP R/3 system before an extended maintenance agreement expired in March 2013.

The state law enforcement agency sought a professional services firm to conduct a SAP strategic planning study, which it described as the "first phase of a long-term program of work aimed at upgrading this core information system".

It used SAP R/3 version 4.7 for its core finance, human resources and payroll systems, although it flagged expansion of the system to fleet and asset management.

"For some time now [NSW Police] has been considering options to upgrade to the most recent version of the [SAP] application," it said in tender documents released overnight.

"The upgrade has to be complete by no later than March 2013 as the extended maintenance for NSW [Police's] current version of SAP expires then, and there will be a major risk to the continued operation of this critical system if an upgrade has not been completed by that date."

NSW Police has been a SAP customer for about a decade.

It said it was "looking at drawing up short- and medium-term plans" to upgrade the underlying infrastructure supporting its SAP environment.

The consultant was expected to perform a "detailed review of business processes that depended on SAP [and] highlight opportunities for refining such business processes to improve their effectiveness".

But NSW Police said there would be "no major business process re-engineering activity" to occur as a result of the review.

And it highlighted at least seven IT projects it described as "future SAP-related projects" that were in planning.

They included:

• an e-learning system for staff training
• an injury case-management system
• e-procurement
• document management

The document management project would see tighter integration between SAP and the agency's HP TRIM system, which was also due to be upgraded.

Shared services

NSW Police sought an understanding of how it might adapt its SAP systems to a shared services model pursued by the state government.

The NSW Government revealed in August a blueprint for how it planned to restructure ICT and other shared-service operations over the next two years.

It would create a shared-services provider for police and emergency services – one of five providers to be created for the state's largest agencies.

"By the end of [financial year] 2010-11, NSW [Police] will be remodelling some of the administrative functions under its corporate services umbrella to form the new shared services," the agency said.

"This would also have some impact on the current SAP systems.

"NSW Police would like to understand the extent of this impact, how SAP-systems should be adapted to the new model, and how the users of the SAP-system should be tutored to handle the changes."