PwC to guide Victoria Police through major tech renewal

Victoria Police has signed up PriceWaterhouseCoopers to help it through its major technology and business process reform program, which has the replacement or revision of the notorious LEAP system at its core.

This month the agency inked a 14-month, $2 million deal with the consulting group that will see PwC become the “strategic partner” to the long-term Policing Information Process and Practice (PIPP) reform program.

The PIPP program kicked off in 2012 and comprises an in depth review of how the organisation delivers information and intelligence to its frontline officers. The Victoria Police has famously struggled with information sharing hurdles in the past, as it maintains a burdensome legacy IT environment including the 20-year-old Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) crimes database.

The Victoria Police has already tried twice to replace the green screen LEAP system, which it has just delivered to officer PCs through a middleware installation.

The deal will see PwC staff working with the Victoria Police IT team - led by CIO Assistant Commissioner Wendy Steendam - until June 2016.

Steendam told iTnews earlier this year that the agency is still in the first half of the PIPP reform process, which is focussed on sustaining the technology currently in place and building its foundations for the second, transformational PIPP phase.