£2B in UK taxpayer cash later, and still no Emergency Services Network By the end of this month, the UK Home Office will have spent just under £2 billion ($2.4 billion) on a new critical communications network for the country's police, fire and ambulance services – with nothing to show for it, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO). Even worse, the multi-year project has fallen …
Worked for a company which was integrating ESN into their main product, using functionality provided by Motorola. Whilst our code was beautiful, elegant and well tested, it ultimately came down to Motorola holding up their end of the deal. Unfortunately, Motorola's functionality was the most unreliable and inconsistent SAAS I have ever encountered in 30 yrs of professional development. It is truly the worst example of SAAS I have ever had to deal with.
To make matters worse, over the course of about 6 months, most of the project team realised they were being underpaid and left for pastures new, including myself. Last I heard, the company were having some redundancies to try and get the project back on schedule.
We're now 5 years past the end point of a 5 year design & implement project. Airwave looks set to out do the decade long NHS IT fubar that spaffed about £6Bn.
Duplicating the military tactical radio net with a few modifications to suit the slightly different operating environment* should have been a serious option.
* some secret squirrel stuff gets changed, base station network will be fixed and higher powered.
> What other net did you have in mind?
Well, I had largely forgotten the research project I had a small interaction with in the 1980s, until this recent ElReg article
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/07/us_air_force_awards_755m/
I think a MANET is probably a better upgrade to Tetra than commercial 4G…
Not disputing IR35 doesn't help, but ESN was a complete charlie-foxtrot long before that.
It's been pointed out to the powers that be (often!) that large parts of the UK are rural and hilly and barely have a 2G signal a lot of the time, never mind 4G and the level of infrastructure required just to sort that could not be delivered in the project time frame.
British taxpayers who are having a good day and want it ruined can download the report here.
Good day?
Think so?
British taxpayers who voted Labour and Remain surely did not expect much better anything else from the present government.
And they haven't had a good day in a great many years.
The only thing British taxpayers have seen is the UK go to.the.dogs.
Whilst being litterally sold by the pound, including seats at the House.
A really sad, sad state of affairs of which only they are to blame.
.
Not everyone who has voted Tory also voted 'Leave'. Only the loony far right were even mildly enthusiastic about BREXIT and those donkeys were led by two liars (Boris and Farage) who are both rich enough to survive outside the EU without even a thought..
Plenty of us are still of the opinion that BREXIT was about the worst thing we could have chosen to do other then shoot ourselves dead.
True, but Tory remainers have been sidelined, ostracised or just plain removed at most opportunities by the ERG.
The drift of the party to the right is blatantly obvious to all, and we should be terrified of that drift turning into something much, much nastier.
If everyone only commented about their immediate area of business, the world would be a truely awful place.
Or is it only people you disagree with who shouldn't comment about politics, and area of life that affects far more people on a daily basis than football ever will.
He sure has. Shame he didn't point out that he housed ONE migrant for a few days who wrote him a beautiful letter of thanks.
I know I'm going to get downvoted big time for this but maybe, just maybe, some of us would have sympathy for genuine refugees but lack it for economic migrants.
@Binraider
"True, but Tory remainers have been sidelined"
Sounds like the right thing really. We voted brexit, implemented brexit surely remainers should be less involved in aspects involving brexit unless they are able to be impartial and carry out their duties (hard in a polarized topic). Note how brexiters were sidelined while in the EU and probably would have been as MEP's if people didnt get to vote for them.
"The drift of the party to the right is blatantly obvious to all"
The leap to the left was obvious and intentional. Drifting back towards the right doesnt seem to be an issue, being still so far left is a bit of an issue for people wanting a centre right party to run the country.
"and we should be terrified of that drift turning into something much, much nastier."
Unfortunately while people focus on a nasty right they forget about a nasty left. One imposing policy to make us all worse off while trying to control our lives.
> We voted brexit
Is that the `Royal "We"`? Cos I bloody well didn't, and the country as a whole could hardly have been more undecided on that "non-binding referendum" if it had tried. And if it were 48/52 the other way round, i'm sure you'd be crying for another referendum, rather than calling it undemocratic to demand a sizeable majority to close the matter.
Had the referendum been a legally binding one, then it's very likely that many of the leave campaign would have gone to jail for all the lies and dirty tricks, such as those by Dominic Cummings, Alex Lebedev and Cambridge Analytica..
The only beneficiaries of Brexit are Russia, China and a few rich Tories with their snouts in the UKCA trough.
>The only beneficiaries of Brexit are Russia, China and a few rich Tories with their snouts in the UKCA trough.
And the happy fish.
I think a few european politicians might be breathing a sigh of relief that they don't have to deal with the [F/G/Bel/It]-exit annoyances in their own countries anymore
Let’s call it what but was .. and remains today. Proroguing Parliament, braking the law, breaking international treaties etc .. spot on the money.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office
Furriners, Shamina Begum, Migrants, NI Protocol, EU Retained Law Bill, Environmental Pollution (looking at you water companies), ClimTe Chances obligations, Covid Fast Lane, Lobbying, Palantir in the NHS ……
Alas Brexit was not implemented by Brexiteers, but rather by the Civil Service.
Even if the majority of them weren’t opposed to it (showing our “democracy “ in action), you don’t really expect them to have done it effectively do you?
HS2, Ajax procurement, Universal Credit etc etc
removed at most opportunities by the ERG
One Brexit had become the orthodox cant of the Tories, anyone of a different opinion either shut up or left. I respect those who left a lot more than those who carried on parrotting a line that they obviously disagreed with.
That lure of potential ministerial seats must be *very* powerful!
If you voted leave or tory, you need to apologise and pay a higher rate of tax to cover the damage you've cased. If you voted both, you need to surrender all assets for redistribution to those on the right side of history and have your voting rights cancelled until you can pass an exam that demonstrates empathy and basic reasoning skills.
If you really expect voting Labour to improve this situation you're in for a big disappointment. This is a Home Office civil service cockup, and since success in the civil service is measured by how big your department and your budgets are, expecting those useless plonkers to successfully manage an engineering project is a pipe dream.
the claim time and time again is that by outsourcing all the responsibility for a project you outsource the risk as well. I've seen too many public sector contracts go like this and then watched the bills for continuing to operate legacy systems role in while ccn after ccn is required to get the replacement completed
Theresa May
Amber Rudd
Sajid Javid
Priti Patel
Suella Braverman
Grant Shapps
Suella Braverman
.. are the list of Tory Home Secretarie, who ultimately lead this project.
I don’t see any of Suella Braverman’s - or predecessor’s - rabid anti-migrant/anti-Shamina Begum rhetoric allowing any time to be spent on this.
yes - essentially ESN is a 'mission critical' layer over the 4G network. As such, it relies on the underlying 4G network for functionality ie no 4G, no ESN.
ESN is built on an 'standard', so, in principle, the rubbish Motorola implementation could be swapped out for a more reliable one. In practice, each implementation has it's quirks such that changing an implementation is massive amount of work.
My nephew is a plod and was complaining of how patchy Airwave is. I said he'll be *begging* them to bring back Airwave when they switch over to ESN.
Pembrokeshire now has EE 4G coverage where previously there was nothing at all (ok, if you did the TV aerial dance while standing on a farm gate [1], you might get enough to fire off an SMS). Something has clearly happened in the roll-out situation, so well done to EE for that. And then run a 4G data/VoLTE service over that, how hard is that? Am I missing something?
TETRA was never the answer for national coverage as it is very localised, but yes running at 400 MHz does have its benefits.
[1] stand at the hinge end, friends, never at the other end.
... Here I was mentioning HS2 two or three days ago in the discussion about the UKAEA's suggestion to use MARTe as framework to manage the grid better... I guess Airwave/ESN can be added to the list then.
"We thank the National Audit Office for their report and are now working at pace to implement all their recommendations."
Let me just fix that statement.
"We thank the National Audit Office for their report and are now working at a snail's pace to implement none of their recommendations."
Intersting as I was involved in the complete radio replacement programme way back in 1996ish when LuL placed a contract with what was then Racal, under a massive PFI project called Connect. If I recall it was over £2Billion to provide 100% coverage in tunnels and walking areas, and was much vaunted at the time as being a major achievement.
https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/united-kingdom/news/connect-keeping-london-moving-under-and-over-ground-20-years
Sounds like its bullsh*t if it doesnt cover everywhere its needed.
Sounds like its bullsh*t if it doesn't cover everywhere its needed.
What good is an undergound radio network that won't /wouldn't interface with Airwave? However good an earlier system might have been there was a clear (as in blindingly obvious) operational requirement that emergency services had to be able to work within TfL so an entirely separate radio system would be of no use whatsoever.
Possibly for police, there are many contract organisations that provide "Policing Services" in places like Africa and the middle east - trouble is so many of them only speak Russian.
Ambulances? Unlikely, our parents and grandparents fought a Brexit to remove foreigners from working in the NHS.
The colonies do export firefighters around the world, but they generally come with water bombing aircraft - which might not be suitable for a typical chip pan fire.
But we would still need to invent our own radios for all these groups to talk to each other
25 years ago TETRA was trialled as a working system in Jersey (Channel Island, not "New") and after tinkering was then adopted for UK - wide implementation. In other words, it was not ordered until it had been proven as a system, albeit with limitations on data transmission, which might not have been fully appreciated at the time.
This time round some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to order a replacement system "off plan", and look where it has landed us...
And while I have no particular interest in Motorola, IMHO easing them out of involvement with the ESN is yet another mistake; what other company has the experience to be able to put together a functioning system?
Round up the usual suspects...
Tetrapol is France only system. Rest of Europe uses TETRA.
TETRA was in use in the UK nationally from around 1992/3 - The Dolphin network. Nokia technolgy. Aimed at companies who needed a radio network that work county or nationally; even provided telephone calls.
I was the project manager for our force from 1996 until 2000-ish. I'd been a patrol sergeant when I was called into the Communication Supt's office and told I'd 'volunteered' to collate the force's response to the Home Office Questionnaire collating individual force requirements for the PSRCP (Police Service Radio Communication Project, of course…), which is what it was known as before BT decided to brand it Airwave (to the general disdain of forces, who thought it was a stupid name…)
I went to the initial demo on Jersey, and another one on Skye – very enjoyable and, erm, informative. We put a lot of work in trying to work out how best we could use the technology, which really was a big step up from the old combination of VHF (cars) and and UHF (handhelds - the old Burndepts) we were using at the time. To most police officers, while we could see the potential of mobile data (and the other clever stuff like talk groups and direct mode) what we really wanted was radios which just worked most of the time.
Each force had to agree to support the project, and I wrote the business case for ours, which I know for a fact was nicked and rebranded by several others… One of the things I'm most pleased about was that the case managed to convince the police authority to provide handheld coverage across the whole force area, which meant that officers weren't stuck with lower quality radios which often didn't work once they left their cars in rural areas as they had been up till then. That was *very* expensive (this was BT after all), but worth it for safety.
Later on, the demand for mobile data grew, and then the limitations became more problematic, but at the time, much of the emphasis was on getting much better voice quality and reliability.
Nokia - a full national working network from day one.
Motorola - took several years to get the national network working.
Nokia - honest company, at time of signing admitted they didn't have the Air interface security working, was under development.
Motorola - less honest company, at time signing reported SO security was availble... Unfortunately took several years to implement.
For posting on the Reg ---> Thanks for an interesting and informative first post. ----->
But in all seriousness, who thought it was a good idea to put end-users (ordinary bobbies) in charge of collating engineering requirements? :P
To an engineer, it is elementary that the necessary radio transmit power goes up with the square of distance i.e. to go twice as far you need four times the power (and with multiple units broadcasting, available bandwidth goes down with direct area coverage, no matter the power..) so a handheld radio that could talk from Skye directly to the mainland was always going to be very expensive and not-very extensible. It might have been better to base the technology on the existing cellular network. Although it's true that reliability/coverage could have been less. How did the reliability of PRSCP/Airwave compare to the mobile phone network in the end?
But in all seriousness, who thought it was a good idea to put end-users (ordinary bobbies) in charge of collating engineering requirements? :P
Dunno, to me it makes sense for the end users who actually use the system to come up with the user requirements and then its up to the engineers to scratch their heads to work out how to deliver that (which will then be the engineering requirements).
Well, we weren't collating engineering requirements, but user capability and quantity specifications so that the size and cost of the network could be specced, of course. Do you know any engineers capable of assessing the number of talkgroups needed across the various units of the various forces, or which of the potential features would be useful operationally in the many different type of unit? I met a number of highly competent and friendly engineers, and none of them would have claimed to have understood police user requirements better than the police.
And the purpose of the Skye test was not to investigate island to mainland coverage! It was a demonstration of capability in a rugged rural area from a single transmitter - there was a similar test site in an urban area somewhere near London. These were early capability tests for the two bidders involved.
As for using mobile phone networks, ultimately emergency services need to guarantee communications at exactly the time when the public are ringing home to reassure loved ones that they're safe. There are protocols to switch off public networks to keep capacity, but at the time it was felt essential to have a dedicated network. I think this was the right decision at the time and Airwave was a lot more reliable in use than previous systems. It's 20 years since I was involved so can't give figures, but it certainly felt more reliable than any mobile I've ever used...
Motorola, IMHO easing them out of involvement with the ESN is yet another mistake; what other company has the experience to be able to put together a functioning system?
Motorola?
The ones I worked for back in the mid 1990's that could barely find their own backside with a map and their hands tied behind their back? The ones who never, ever sacked a manager, no matter how bad they were - instead they just promoted them and moved them to another site?
That Motorola? The utterly disfunctional one that had one good product (mobile base site) then did bog-all development or research to improve it and then got their lunch stolen by Nokia?
(Yes - I'm a little bitter about my time there - I learnt many things there - mostly how *not* to do IT and mangement. Like not promising your staff something you quite clearly can't deliver then making up an utterly specious reason why they can have what you promised them..)
The state of a project being constantly over-time and the completion of the project being quite out in the future.
Example:
"We were supposed to finish our SAP transition 5 years ago. However, at best we start the transition in 5 years, at the earliest. This project is really doing a fusion power right now."
£2B in UK taxpayer cash later, and still no Emergency Services Network ... And not even a tentative date for a system go-live either
SNAFUBAR and just like every other major project and program being championed by Walter Mitty types ..... with the sad crazy thing being that you would be expecting it to be any different and better with the revolving streams of incompetent clowns and self-serving degenerates in offices of state and corrupting influence with their sticky little hands and snivelling noses in the Treasury and Bank of England fiat currency trough.
*......“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”― Winston S. Churchill
And aint that the fcuking gospel truth.
J'accuse, and would point yet out again the current pathetic state of future UKGBNI play which is a dead ringer for pussy cat lions led by nodding donkeys.
No wonder novel disruptive and energising proprietary intellectual property is abandoning the Wild Wacky Wicked West to its bankrupting fate and taking its chances with migrations for deployment and enjoyment in the Exotic Erotic Esoteric East ...... although that is not the sort of realistic picture any mainstream media mogul operation will be painting for you/sharing with you.
The ignorant masses just love their daily arrogant comics filled to overflowing with their pages of toxic bullshit, don't they. Sad and crazy indeed. What an absolute omnishambles.
I live in Norway, and yes, we have the same struggle with a new emergency response network.
Are the needs of the first responders that different from country to country? Or could it be possible to create a system that would work for most, and then changing out crypto keys for the different customers, or even better, let the customer install their own keys as needed.)
(OK, apparently we need to add 100k £ in mods to any police car we get here in Norway, and for some reason the specs called out in requests for offers usually have a 99,9% fit on some model and tend to have demands that exclude some others... has nothing to do with a public sector that consider cost cutting to be foul language.;) )
Quote: "...a new critical communications network for the country's police, fire and ambulance services..."
Ha...........So Scotland Yard (aka Wayne Couzens University) might get new technology with which to share porn, demeaning messages about victims, demeaning messages about colleagues, and so on......
Your taxpayer pound (by the billion) at work!!!!
Brexit would have been great if.......
Great (UK) had followed on with tax haven status, free ports, incentives for start ups etc, but until the house of lords is abolished and the house of commons is filled with people selected the same way as jury selection...
You serve because you have not been found guilty of a crime and you have to serve for 4 years and you will be paid £100,000-0 per year) and not the elected scrotums that currently occupy or are trying to occupy parliament.
We will not succeed in being the power in the world we once were (note I said power in the world NOT world power...there is a big difference).
Aphorism: George Santanaya: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
Book: Peter Hall, Great Planning Disasters, Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1980
In summary, Peter Hall describes the history of troubled and failed projects, and then provides a "theory of decision making.....how the processes might be improved".
Peter Hall's book should be required reading for all project managers -- and George Sanataya's aphorism is particularly relevant!
Government Origin Disastrously Outsourced Tech.
Here's what happens next.
2023. Dido placed in charge. Budget goes up to £20bn. Several more years of delays due to war in what is left of Ukraine.
2024 Alpha build delays when cases can no longer be sourced from China due to national security and plastic concerns. Budget: £22bn.
2025 Alpha build and wooden Scots Pine cases completed. System turned off by E-On Smart Meters. Back to the drawing board. Budget: £25bn.
2026 Beta testing delayed due to Porton Down variant of Covid 26 emergence and war in Moldova, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Poland. Budget: £27bn.
2027 Everyone takes a year off to save cash as Sterling now worth 75c. Budget frozen at £29bn.
2028 Entire engineering team fired for Mother-in-Law jokes at Les Dawson themed virtual AirBnB party in metaverse. Budget now £32bn.
2029 Working systems rolled out. Everyone gets headaches (and splinters) using them. Fixes promised. Budget: £34bn.
2030 System complete and working but 4G phased out. 5G replacement bought from Radio Shack for $2bn (£4bn). Mission accomplished. Bonuses all round. Total cost: £49bn.
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