WRPS Case Questions Do you think the CIMS project objective of sharing across police service organizations is a good idea? Benefits of CIMS? Risks? What key factors have contributed to the current WRPS situation? Would you recommend WRPS continue with the CIMS project or halt it due to the difficulties they are encountering? If NoGo, what alternative do you recommend to meet the information sharing needs? Describe the rationale for your decision. Is this an outsourcing management, project management or leadership issue? Would you recommend WRPS continue using ITG as their vendor? Describe the risks/benefits to both positions (stay or switch)? WATERLOO REGIONAL POLICE SERVICES: THE CIMS PROJECT Chief Larry Smith of the Waterloo Regional Police Service (WRPS1) in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada returned from lunch reluctantly. It was February 13, 2001 and today was not turning into a good day. On top of the usual challenges he faced as manager of the police force, he knew that he was going to have to tackle the problem of the Common Information Management Systems (CIMS) project. CIMS was a four-year (and counting!) project of the WRPS and seven other police services organizations. WRPS and its partners had invested significant resources in this project over its life, yet there continued to be problems working with the principle contractor - Integrated Technologies Group (ITG). With the functional design specifications still under debate, Smith had to decide whether to sign off on payment of the installment of $350,000 to ITG or whether it was time for WRPS to cut its losses and move on to other options. BACKGROUND ON THE WATERLOO REGIONAL POLICE SERVICES (WRPS) The WRPS provided policing services to a population of 431,300 in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, which was an area of 1,382 square kilometers. Its mission communicates its commitment to a leadership role in crime prevention and law enforcement in a community partnership to improve safety and the quality of life for all people. WRPS had 538 police officers, plus 178 support staff for a total of 716 employees. There were three major divisions within the service. Division 1 encompassed the Kitchener and New Hamburg stations with 154 police officers and a support staff of eight, Division 2 was the Cambridge station with 112 police officers and seven support staff, Division 3 was the Waterloo and Elmira stations with 98 police officers and seven support staff, plus the headquarters location in Cambridge, Ontario with 178 police officers and 156 support staff. The 1999 annual report indicated that the WRPS had an annual net budget of $55.7 million, which was up 2.4 percent from the previous year. Eighty-two percent of the operating budget was allotted to salaries and benefits (See Exhibit 3 for a detailed breakdown of operating costs). POLICE CHIEF LARRY SMITH Chief Smith had been with the Waterloo Regional Police Service since 1973. He started his career performing patrol duties, and then accepted an assignment to the 1 For ease of reference, Exhibit 1 contains a listing of all acronyms used in this document. Page 2 * Police Traffic Branch - Motorcycle Patrol. He was seconded to the Ontario Police Commission for two years, from 1977-1979. Many special assignments followed, including Project Leader of the PRIDE.2 computer system; Executive Officer to the Chief of Police' Divisional Commander - Waterloo Division; Superintendent of Field Operations and Deputy Chief of Administration. He was also the recipient of the Police Exemplary Service Medal. On October 1, 1992 Smith was appointed Chief of Police of Waterloo Regional Police Service. He had also served as President of Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police from 1997-1998, and accepted the major responsibility of service as President of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police in 1999. In addition, was a member of the National Executive Institute Associates, a 400-plus-member foundation, affiliated with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations. An advocate of ongoing education, Smith completed his undergraduate degree at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo Ontario. Later, he completed postgraduate programs at the F.B.I National Academy and the University of Virginia, as well as Executive Development Courses at the Canadian Police College, and the Police Management Program at the Ontario Police College. Chief Smith had a long history of involvement with information systems. In 1981, he managed the implementation the first police network to extend beyond the Police Services political and geographical boundaries (PRIDE). At that time, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) had a network, but it did not cross the organization's boundaries. His appreciation for the value of effective management information systems in implementing strategies for operational success continued throughout his career. This was evident in his description of the role of IS in the police service: I have a vision for fully integrated systems accessible from mobile stations in the cruiser that would support improved crime analysis procedures for proactive action, and improved police services which support the facilitation of the community mobilization strategy where communities would be able to become knowledgeable and aware of their own safety or security issues, and would be better able to address these issues as a community successfully. This proactive approach is absolutely required for provision of improved police service. For example, in the Bernardo case3, if 2 PRIDE was the Police Regionalized Information Data Entry system. It was a joint initiative of WRPS and 3 other municipalities - Stratford, Brantford and Guelph. 3 Paul Bernardo committed at least 18 sexual assaults in Scarborough Ontario between 1987 and 1992. He was finally caught after the brutal assault and murder of two young girls in St. Catherines, ON. According to a government initiated review of the case, a key reason why Bernardo was not caught earlier was the inability of policy forces to share information. Page 3 * there had been more information sharing among the Police Services involved, Bernardo's criminal activity may have been discovered at an earlier stage. Information sharing is the key to identifying crime trends, allowing us to function proactively in an effective manner. To detect these trends, and to operate in an informed manner, system integration is required. We do not want to be in a position where we simply respond to calls for assistance. With the growing population in our area, we would need many additional resources to operation in this reactive manner. We want to use our resources fully and be able to identify problem areas before the situation escalates. The WRPS is a leader in the level of systems integration among police services, and intends to leverage this resource to provide premium service to the community. CIMS PROJECT BACKGROUND The Common Information Management System (CIMS) project was an extension and expansion of earlier police information systems projects, including PRIDE. This would be the 3rd upgrade of the systems for WRPS. CIMS was planned as a joint effort between ten organizations: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), the Metropolitan Toronto Police, and the seven regional police services boards in the Golden Horseshoe area of Ontario - Waterloo (which also represented the PRIDE agencies of Stratford, Brantford and Guelph), Halton, Hamilton-Wentworth, Niagara, Durham, York, and Peel (Exhibit 4 shows a map of the Golden Horseshoe area). The process began with about a year of background work with the involved agencies to establish the overall blueprint for the system. CIMS included five basic functions: Computer Aided Dispatch, Records Management Systems, Mapping, Mobile Workstation environments, and the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) module. Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) was used to record calls and assign work to officers. The Records Management System (RMS) was the primary system for maintaining information on crimes and offenders. Mapping was the software that could generate maps for dispatchers to identify addresses more quickly to officers. The Mobile Workstation environment referred to the systems in the patrol cars. CPIC was the module that was to provide integration with the Canadian Police Information Centre - a federally operated, computerbased information system that provides national information on crime. Standardized information (following the Universal Crime Reporting guidelines) was shared between police forces through CPIC on a regular basis. Page 4 * The CIMS project was key to providing the foundation for many operating efficiencies, further amalgamation of systems, and service improvements in the Golden Horseshoe area. Chief Smith observed: The CIMS project is important, as the objectives of this project provide the basis for effective information sharing among the regional police services. Systems integration and the information sharing it provides is key, as it will allow us to act in a more proactive manner and serve the community better. We will be in a better position to identify and facilitate the resolution of safety issues within communities before these issues become major problems, which typically result in calls for our assistance. Improved information sharing will result in improved police service to the community. REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) PROCESS The RFP process for CIMS began in 1998. Unfortunately, the initial process did not succeed in identifying any vendors that could meet the stringent integration requirements of this proposed project design. All of the proposed Statements of Work (SOW) failed to meet the integration criteria established by the team. The second RFP process took another year to complete. The integration requirements were made less stringent. Each of the ten agencies involved in the process independently reviewed the response from the only vendor that submitted a proposal, indicating their ability to meet the requirements. The Integrated Technologies Group (ITG) had a solid score based on the Statement of Work, and appeared to be able to deliver the level of integration required. At this point, however, three of the original ten agencies left the project. Metro Toronto and the OPP decided to leave the project in order to design and implement systems that would more closely meet their specific needs. The Metro Toronto region partnered with IBM to develop an Enterprise Case and Occurrence Processing System (eCOPS), which was featured in a Computerworld article in {2001}.4 The OPP contracted with Niche Inc. to provide implementation and integration of their management information systems.5 Niche, Inc. was a small family-owned business located in the Winnipeg, Ontario, which had entered the public safety systems arena through the success of their photo mug shot software. The RCMP wanted to stay on board with the CIMS project, but could not due to an operational policy that required any vendor to commit to a five year support agreement regarding the product or service provided. ITG could not legally commit to this lengthy support contract; therefore, the RCMP was forced to exit 4 5 Lahey, L. (2001). \"Ontario gets e-police.\" Computerworld, February 9, 2001. The contract with Niche was signed in February 2001. Page 5 * the project. However, since they valued the objective of the CIMS project and wanted to stay involved, they assigned a full-time project manager to the CIMS project. This left the group of seven regional police services on board6 with the CIMS project to work toward the standard system platform and systems integration. The contract with ITG was signed by all parties on August 19, 1999. In total, the contract was valued at approximately $16 million including hardware, software and systems integration. Each agency contributed a share determined based on the \"total authorized strength\" (or authorized number of police officers) in their respective regions. WRPS's share was about17% of the total. The major milestones in the project (and payment schedule) were: 1. initial signed agreement and delivery of performance bond (10% of payment) 2. delivery implementation plan (5%) 3. delivery of draft functional system descriptions (10%) 4. approval of functional design specifications for CAD and RMS (25%) 5. functional design specification approval plus 30 days (10%) 6. installation of application software (15%) 7. completion by ITG of train the trainer program (5%) 8. completion of functional system testing (10%) 9. completion of reliability testing/ beneficial use (10%) Exhibit 5 shows the project timeline. INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES GROUP - THE VENDOR The vendor selected for the project was ITG. A leading provider of integrated public safety and criminal justice systems in the U.S., the company had more than 5,300 employees in 80 offices worldwide. ITG primarily designed infrastructure and enterprise architectures, and sold itself as a customer-centric organization that realized that responsiveness and adaptability to meet customer needs is key. In providing these solutions, ITG specialized in complete client/server, storage and network solutions. ITG believed that their global presence and many strategic partnerships7 allowed them to offer the best solution to their customers. This meant that whether it was a single product or a complete product, services, maintenance, or training solution, ITG was able to deliver the solution. 6 Waterloo Regional Police Service, Halton, Hamilton-Wentworth, Niagara, Durham, York, and Peel. The company had strategic partnerships firms such as with Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, LexMark, Astor Technologies, EMC2, Veritas, Compaq, Oracle, Sun Microsystems. 7 Page 6 * Until 1998, ITG had had a branch office in Newmarket, Ontario, but it was closed due to business requirements in the United States. Because the CIMS contract required a Canadian office, the company re-opened an office in December of 1999 in Toronto, Ontario. As one of the team members observed: ITG opened a beautiful office in the 3rd floor of a building by the Toronto airport. This office space would hold about eighty people. However, I have never seen more than three people there at any time I have visited the site. They need to bring more resources north of the border to work on a major project like CIMS. ITG was also awarded an e-commerce deal with police services in British Columbia and Halifax, so maybe this will encourage them to send some more people up here. PROBLEMS SURFACE AS THE PROJECT BEGINS When the CIMS core project team, which had representatives from all regional police services, began reviewing the detailed functional design specifications (FDS) with ITG, problems began to surface. This team met daily to ensure progress on the CIMS project was achieved. It became clear that the CIMS project team and the vendor did not agree on the interpretation of requirements. Staff Sergeant Al Stauch, a member of the core CIMS project team, explained: At one point we had 200 issues in dispute regarding the FDS with respect to the CAD module, 60 issues in the RMS, all of CPIC was an issue, and two issues in the Crime Mapping software. Canadianization of the software is the big issue, and is the major misunderstanding between them and us. We paid $200,000 for this Canadianization, and they did not understand what was required. They (ITG) should have understood the scope of Canadianization, as they implemented an upgrade for us in 1993/1994 for the PRIDE agencies, so they had first hand knowledge of what would be required. Canadianization includes providing 'a fully integrated CPIC interface', the integrated rollover from our RMS into our CPIC database. We maintain that this requires all of the software functionality to complete this task. ITG's position is that the Canadianization integration means only the specific hardware integration. In addition, there are issues around words used for various terms. For example, they should have known things like the word Page 7 * \"juvenile\" in their software must be replaced by the words \"young person\" for our use. They have done this type of work for us before. If we have any documents that come out of our system using the term \"juvenile\