Surrey and Sussex forces describe current set-up as “unstable” and “poor at delivering internal communications”
Two neighbouring police forces are teaming up to find a supplier for a new joint intranet service, with a contract worth up to £150,000 up for grabs.
Surrey Police and Sussex Police currently have separate intranets, but say they are now looking for combined intranet overhaul as part of ongoing work to cut costs and improve service levels.
In a fairly brutal assessment of their current intranets, the two forces say that Sussex’s system, built on a 15-year-old content management system – is “unstable, cannot be accessed effectively through mobile devices and is poor at delivering internal communications”.
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Meanwhile, Surrey’s “relatively new” intranet is described as lacking responsivity and is said to be built “on a poor implementation of Sharepoint” with “architectural issues”.
“It is envisaged that a joint intranet will provide a single point of reference for applications, information and internal communications,” the forces say.
A notice on the Digital Marketplace says the new intranet should be accessible to all employees of both forces, offering a joint platform both for reading routine orders and sharing messages on the police teams’ wider mission.
The notice says the joint platform “should also be a one-stop online portal to receive messages from senior leaders, access core police applications, directories, policies, HR advice and guidance, and feedback dynamically about articles, issues and blogs / vlogs”.
Surrey and Sussex say they have already carried out “very early” technical and information scoping, but have not yet carried out an in-depth discovery phase or an information architecture review.
The forces say suppliers will be expected to clear security checks because of the sensitive nature of the work.
They also state their desire to work with a team that has a “proven record of delivery of intranet platform[s] across collaborative partnership”, as well as high quality staff, “experience on SharePoint specification, deployment, implementation and development”.
Surrey and Sussex estimate that the two-year development and ongoing support contract will be worth between £120,000 and £150,000, with work commencing in November.
With the September 6 deadline looming, the forces had, at the time of writing, received applications from five SMEs and one large supplier.
