Ministry of Defence Police and Guarding Agency

IT AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
The IT&T Department has continued to deliver a high quality
service to its customers within the Agency during the year.
Improvements to the MDP computer network which have
been delivered in year include: secure access to the Internet;
replacement of the majority of dial-up links with faster
broadband connections; providing the latest version of the
MOD’s Departmental Financial Management System for
Agency finance staff; and migration of the technical
architecture to one based on Windows 2003; access to the
Criminal Justice Extranet; and e-mail to the Police National
Network.
We procured and installed £1.2 million worth of new
Information Technology, replacing obsolete equipment,
improving the resilience of operational Information systems,
and assisting in the implementation of more flexible working
practices by replacing some CID desktop computers with
laptop computers.
We continued to work with Project Contact to replace the
obsolete legacy radio systems with the Airwave system. As
noted already, the new Airwave capability has dramatically
improved the service to police officers on the ground. It has
enhanced interworking with other police forces and, together
with new technology delivered to Control Rooms, has
improved the operational management of the MDP. When
Project Contact closed, the remaining project staff were
absorbed into the IT&T Department to carry on with some
post-project activities such as business benefits realisation.
Providing support to a number of other areas of the
Agency, such as the Defence Training Review Team,
continues to be a key role. New Agency Information
Management and Information Systems strategies were
produced and initial work on the IMPACT programme was
carried out before the task was passed to the Business
Development team. An Agency Records Management Team
was recruited and trained.
CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS
The Press Office remained a busy focus for media
inquiries, predominantly on criminal justice matters, though
several features in magazines covered the MDP’s
International Policing role in territories such as Iraq and
Kosovo. The Force was the lead profile in The Sharp End, a
new police magazine distributed to all Home Office police
officers in England & Wales, presenting MDP as an example
of a truly national police force, facing operational and
communications challenges not normally faced by the
average county force. In the
summer of 2005, an MDP
press officer was seconded
to the central G8 police media
handling team based at
Glenrothes in Fife, a contribution
warmly appreciated by our Scottish
police colleagues.
Internal communications across
the Agency and within the MOD
continued to improve. The Agency was
featured on the MOD intranet
(DefenceNet) almost on a monthly
basis, a great deal more than
previously. Our own intranet,
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE POLICE AND GUARDING AGENCY ANNUAL REPORT
established last year, though progressing now needs further
development. The two Agency staff magazines, Talk Through
and Flashlight - for police and guards respectively - are an
important part of the communications mix, and are setting
high standards. Talk Through, which is regularly seen by
journalists, devoted significant coverage to the G8 Summit
and T200 events in which MDP officers played a key part,
and then later to the post July 7th events in London when
Operation Toga was rolled out to reinforce central London
security in Whitehall. These high profile operations remind
everyone, officers and the Defence community alike, why this
Agency exists and why its work is important. Our
photographers were indispensable in getting this important
message across.
A new series of publications, designed to brief officers
and guards on important developments within the Agency,
has been well received. Whilst electronic communication is
speedy and efficient at the management level, it needs to be
supported by good quality information flow in other formats
to ensure that the large number of officers and guards who
do not work at a desk are kept up to date in ways that suit
their working conditions.
For the first time, the MDP nominated a candidate for the
annual Community Police Officer of the Year awards
sponsored by the Police Review magazine. Since the
community policing role of our officers on the Defence estate
is very different to the role as performed in Home Office
forces, our nomination was particularly welcomed by the
organisers. PC Pete Smith, the Unit Beat Officer (UBO) and a
popular figure with service families at RAF Coningsby, did the
Force proud as our nominee.
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