The body that provides support services to Scotland’s eight police forces faces “significant challenges” delivering high quality services with less money, the watchdog Audit Scotland has revealed.
A report published today reveals that the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA) is unable to meet all the information communication technology needs of its customers.
However, the report also notes that the organisation has made improvements to services such as criminal justice, training and forensics since its inception three years ago.
Auditor General for Scotland Robert Black said, “SPSA had a difficult beginning and lessons can be learned from this experience when developing shared services in the future.
“SPSA has made improvements in some areas but it faces significant challenges if it is to deliver high quality services with less money. It needs to act quickly to address these challenges.”
Improvements made by the SPSA, which also serves the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, include delivering new training courses and reducing the time taken to analyse forensic samples.
It has made this progress, said Audit Scotland, despite initially having little information to help it plan service delivery, having limited support from its stakeholders and experiencing a number of senior staff changes.
Computer technology transferred to SPSA a year after it was formed, and the report reveals that there have “backlogs” in areas including Tayside.
“A number of important ICT projects, both at the national level and for individual forces, need SPSA’s input but it has had problems prioritising between these,” the report stated. “The Scottish Government recently published a review of police ICT completed by consultants which makes a number of recommendations on how SPSA and police forces can improve ICT provision.”
SPSA has delivered £5.3 million in savings over the past three years money which has been ploughed into contracts including the development of a new forensics lab in Dundee.
Audit Scotland found SPSA and its customers have the potential to deliver more savings by working in partnership.
The report recommends that the Scottish Government reviews how it measures efficiencies to encourage bodies to work together better.
Mr Black continued, “SPSA has the potential to deliver savings for police forces and criminal justice bodies but it cannot do this alone. All of these bodies need to work together with the Scottish Government to achieve this.”