Police have warned the government they are facing a $180m deficit for this financial year. Photo: 123RF
Police have delayed a long-awaited and crucial overhaul of core services yet again, even as a new Commissioner comes in.
Richard Chambers starts on Monday.
Police say they are doing lots of other things to make sure services are delivered, but have not specified what.
The delay comes when police are under financial pressure and caught up in many other changes, such as reducing responses to family harm and mental health callouts, and enforcing the new anti-gang patch law, focused on the frontline, as opposed to the enabling technology behind the front line.
They are also changing how the public's calls for help are prioritised, and confirmed on Thursday a trial of the changes would be extended and expanded so that all officers were trained in the new approach by February.
Police have been saying for at least three years they need to replace fragmented old technology systems, including their overarching National Intelligence Application (NIA) with its millions of files, in order to keep the community safe and investigate properly.
The tech was so old it was making it hard to do police work, internal reports released earlier to RNZ said.
Despite this, and having already delayed the overhaul months ago, police have once again put it off.
"Police intended to submit a business case for Core Policing Services to Treasury and Cabinet by November 2024," police told RNZ.
"At a briefing session with the Minister of Police in August 2024 it was agreed that the initial business case be deferred."
Delay in face of demand
The last time the CPS (core policing services) overhaul was delayed, this was due to "police's financial situation" and conflict with the then-new government's 100-day plan priorities.
Earlier this year, police warned the government they were facing a $180m deficit in 2024-25; Budget 2024 put $120m towards meeting cost pressures.
After a six-month investigation last year, police expanded the scope of the CPS overhaul, from just a replacement of the "clumsy" NIA that, when searched, routinely missed vital information, to a sweeping upgrade because otherwise, they concluded, they would not be able to meet public expectations.
"Current disparate architecture necessitates manual, time-consuming processes to share and collaborate on large amounts of data or shared cases.
"The requirement to develop a long-term plan to improve the delivery of our Core Policing Services and resolve our core technology issues remains," said a report 10 months ago.
That report warned that further delays would increase costs and create a "significantly increased technology risk profile".
By February, 90 percent of the strategic technology requirements of the CPS overhaul had been agreed.
On Thursday, police offered the reassurance that, amid the new delays, "in the interim, police have many programmes that will incrementally improve the current operating model and are planning on commencing many more initiatives".
"These initiatives are focused on managing fiscal pressures and to deliver services to the levels that the public expect."
RNZ has asked police to specify the major programmes they were referring to.
Full pilot of how police decide on response
As for the reprioritisation of public calls on the 111 or 105 networks, this was moving to a full pilot across all emergency and non-emergency communications centres, following two months of a smaller trial.
Call-takers are using a new risk-harm framework, which is designed so officers still go to all priority one calls - such as when there is a risk to life or violence - but calls at priority two and below are less likely to trigger a callout.
A full evaluation of the expanded trial would be done in April-May next year.
"The phase one trial [since September] was designed to test the tools and determine whether there was improved clarity for staff in determining P1 [priority one] and P2 response for events where first responder services are required and to better equip all communications staff with a common decision-making framework," police told RNZ in a statement on Thursday.
"Feedback from staff involved in the initial trail is positive, which is why we are progressing to a full pilot."
Alongside this, at the start of November police began instituting a new regime to reduce the time they spend on mental health callouts, worrying health workers and nurses.
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