A further five forces are in the process of deliberation. The seven forces - Essex, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Kent and Suffolk – will pay a total of £32 million.
Athena will replace up to ten existing police IT systems in each force, all of which cost money to maintain and upgrade and will eventually require replacing. The money the ‘early adopters’ are spending will be significantly less than that they would have to spend on replacing each individual existing IT system.
The agreement can be used by any other police authority or law enforcement agency in the UK – several others have already expressed an interest, further reducing opportunities for criminals to operate across geographic boundaries.
The system will be managed centrally, helping to save forces money by reducing the need for ongoing management of multiple IT systems.
Officers and staff at each phase of the criminal justice process – from report to court – will be able to view all records for the suspect from each member force and from all other stages of the process. This will mean that a suspect arrested for crimes committed in any of the Athena force areas can be dealt with for all offences in one custody suite without the need for the suspect to be transferred between each force and processed for crimes committed exclusively in that force area.
Time will be saved after a suspect is arrested, as those officers working in custody and preparing cases will automatically have access to all the intelligence already held about a suspect.
Further information
www.egovmonitor.com
Five new Police Forces booked for Project Athena
A total of seven police forces have inked contracts for Project Athena, a framework agreement for IT systems to help police identify criminals more quickly and cut crime.
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