NSW Police reveals hybrid cloud push for core systems

NSW Police is planning to adopt a hybrid cloud platform to host the state’s future core policing systems.

The force revealed plans for the cloud platform through a restricted expression of interest process last week.

It represents the final piece of the puzzle in the once-in-a-generation overhaul of the state’s 24-year-old core operational policing system (COPS).

Chief information and technology officer Gordon Dunsford told iTnews the proposed hybrid cloud platform would be used to host a range of the force's frontline IT solutions.

He said the IT solutions would include the force’s proposed integrated policing operating system (IPOS), which is expected to replace the legacy COPS system.

NSW Police has been trying to replace COPS – currently used for everything from the logging of criminal incidents to intelligence gathering and the pressing of charges – since 2015.

After restarting the procurement in October 2018 following a brief pause, the force shortlisted three contenders in the first half of last year to provide IPOS.

IPOS will contain modules for core police functions like investigation management, evidence and forensic data management and investigation and charge and custody management.

It will also replace NSW Police's decade-old Fujitsu computer-aided dispatch system, which the force had originally tendered for separately.

But almost two years after the procurement for IPOS began, and almost a year after the suppliers were shortlisted, the force is yet to settle on a preferred supplier for IPOS. 

iTnews understands an announcement on the preferred supplier is now expected in the coming weeks.

Dunsford said the decision to go down the path of hybrid cloud had been taken “due to the significant co-existence required with legacy on premise IT systems for a number of years to come”.

“We view a hybrid cloud strategy gives NSWPF flexibility and access to high end capacity and compute such as multimedia analytics in GPUs,” he said.

Dunsford said the platform would build on the force’s work with Melbourne-based Amazon Web Services partner Versent, who developed a “high-level cloud reference architecture (CRA) for NSWPF”.

He said that this CRA “has been used to input some of the business requirements in our EOI, though it was developed to be “intended to be independent of any particular cloud platform”.