Control

Control came from a few areas within the Sentinel implementation; position, funding and communication. Briefing and

Scoping Planning Implementation Evaluation

Positional control was found where a partner was able “to have control over the actions of others as a result of a position in the group” (Cairns et al, 2012, p.42). The positions observed which provided control within the partnership were:

• Group Chair – controlled group discussions.

• Project Manager – controlled the action of the project.

• Supplier Manager – controlled the communications to and from the supplier.

Funding control could be identified as a project specific factor of control (Cairns et al, 2012, p.42). Funding is a resource; control over a resource allows control over its use. The police were able to utilise funding control to prioritise the changes they required to Sentinel.

Communication enables control; communication controls information/knowledge, identified as a source of control by Cairns et al (2012, p.42). The process of communication with the partnership is discussed in section 5.5.6.

5.5.4 Suppliers

The suppliers were selected by the choice of the system. Sentinel represented an off the shelf product with the promise from the suppliers of development and personalisation. The supplier relationship was managed by Charnwood BC as their role of chair of the oversight group and project manager. The contract with the suppliers was negotiated between Charnwood BC and the suppliers. The suppliers were not contracted to the partnership in any way. The suppliers were a small software development house. The initial contract terms required the suppliers to implement the software on an externally hosted server and provide sufficient access levels as required by the partnership. In addition there was a budget for the suppliers to implement interfaces with existing systems. The partnership was unaware of the exact terms of the contract between Charnwood BC and the suppliers. The partnerships understanding was the agreement included any required development to make the system suitable for use by all the partners. The misunderstanding between the partner organisations resulted in additional costs for the project. The additional costs were incurred as the partners produced additional requirements after reviewing the selected system believing these changes would be incorporated into the system free of charge.

The additional requirements and reworks requested by the partnership throughout the project caused problems for the suppliers. The suppliers are a small company and did not have the level of resources required to carry out the additional work in the demanding timescales. This caused a four month delay to the initial implementation plan. The four month delay hid potential further delay as the system went live

without some of the requested features e.g. integration with Leicestershire polices search engine. The suppliers however were often presented with unclear requirements due to differing and at times opposing needs of the different partners.

5.5.5 Experience

Experience played two key roles in Sentinel’s implementation both with Charnwood’s lead agency role. The first related to a lack of experience of the project manager of previous IT implementations. This meant the project manager did not have some of the skills usually associated with project management. This many have contributed to delays due to unfamiliarity with required work for such a project. Another project manager may have been able to provide this experience and minimise these delays. However a different project manager would have lacked the information sharing experience which only Charnwood were able to provide. Dawes’ (1996) model of interagency information sharing highlights the importance experience plays when carrying out an information sharing project. Charnwood had over five years’ experience of sharing information with LO and LC LPUs. They had had time to experience the benefits and risks associated with sharing information on a single system and take the learning from this and apply it to the wider partnership implementation.

5.5.6 Communication

There were two main channels of communication used throughout the project; meetings and emails. In general information regarding Sentinel’s implementation came centrally from the project manager either at multi-agency meetings or via emails. Adopting a wheel pattern of communication (Mullins, 2002) between agencies shown in Figure 5-10. At the meetings it was expected that each partners representative would relay required information to relevant people within their organisation e.g. when discussing requirements for interfaces the representative at the user group was expected to liaise with relevant departments such as IT to identify required interfaces. The representatives attending meetings acted as a single point of contact within each organisation with the project manager acting as the point of contact for the project.

Figure 5-10 Overview of Pattern of Communication (adapted from Mullins, 2002, p.500)

Communication to the supplier until June 2012 was controlled entirely by the project manager. All communications were filtered through the project manager who passed on required messages to the supplier e.g. the project manager collated responses for request of information regarding versions of internet explorer each of the partners were using and sent this on to the suppliers. In June 2012 Leicestershire police instigated direct communication with the supplier to address their specific concerns.

5.6 Summary

The observed data gathered from day to day exposure to the project and attending meetings (detailed in Appendix A) identified numerous elements which affected Sentinel’s implementation and success. These elements have been categorised into five high level categories; individual, organisation, technology, economic and project specific. These categories were drawn from existing literature (Cairns et al, 2012, Riege, 2005, Dawes, 1996, Landsbergen and Wolken, 2001) to provide structure to the observed data. The observed data was used to develop a framework of factors impacting information sharing project which is presented in chapter six.

6. Information Sharing Project Analysis

Framework

6.0 Overview

The chapter begins by introducing a framework of factors which impact a multi-agency information sharing project (6.1). The creation of the framework is discussed in section 6.2. The high level categories of external environment (6.3), organisation (6.4) and information sharing (6.5) are then discussed with the chapter concluding with a summary (6.6).