On July 9, Greater Manchester Police went live with a new £27m computer system, known as the Integrated Police Operating System (iOPS).

In the weeks that followed, more and more officers and civilian staff contacted us to warn of their serious concerns about the Capita-built network - saying data was missing, that key information was not being sent through to courts and that many felt it was putting both staff and the public at risk.

You can read a summary of many of those concerns here .

For its part, GMP insists that the system is fundamentally ‘stable’ and that the various issues within it are being worked out.

Nevertheless officers have continued to contact us, warning particularly of risks to vulnerable people, problems in custody and at court , and of serious stress in the communications team that handles calls from the public.

In addition, at a private meeting between the mayor, Chief Constable and ten council leaders on Tuesday, the M.E.N. understands Trafford council’s leader Andrew Western walked out after demanding to know why town halls - which are responsible for child protection - had not been kept in the loop about the problems.

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At the weekend, we sent 13 specific questions to Andy Burnham ’s office, on the basis that the mayor is politically responsible for policing.

In response, we received answers - to most of them - from a force spokesman, along with a short statement from the mayor.

He said: “Both the deputy mayor [Bev Hughes] and I continue to challenge GMP on these issues and closely monitor the implementation of iOPS.

“Additionally, we continue to have an open dialogue with Unison and the GMP Police Federation around the rollout of the system.

“This Friday, I have set aside a number of hours and requested a series of visits to meet frontline GMP officers and staff to discuss their experiences of the new system.”

He added that the M.E.N would be invited to meet with the Chief Constable to discuss the concerns raised by officers.

Below is a summary of the questions we put to Mr Burnham, in bold, and the resulting responses from a GMP spokesman.

Some of them are a little technical, so where necessary we have added short explanations.

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Is the force really 100pc certain that there's no risk to vulnerable children as a result of the new system?

While the force has explained that individuals and not addresses are now flagged as being of concern under the new system, deliberately, officers say they are being called out to incidents without the necessary information to assess risks to youngsters.

Can GMP really say with such certainty that at-risk children aren't slipping through the net? Because some officers seem to think that's an inevitability.

The system has warning markers attached to people and events, not addresses, as people move and many have transient lifestyles.

Address flags pull this data through when a person is affiliated to an address through events created in the system.

It is a different way of working and this was a deliberate design decision, and reduces the risk of officers reacting to out-of-date markers, as the weeding process is more flexible.

The markers are created on the Person, Object, Location and Event (POLE) and this is a database structure that is a national standard and part of the National Enabling Programme [a data sharing system], which all police forces are aspiring to and working towards.

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A similar issue relates to sex offender management. On the closed Facebook page set up by officers to discuss iOPS a couple of weeks ago, it was reported that entire blocks of flats no longer exist in the new system. How can you track sex offenders in the community if their addresses aren't there?

iOPS has the flexibility for local addresses to be added and migrated.

We are working through the system issues that are reported and also with our staff to help them to understand how to use the new system.

The system has warning markers attached to people and events, not addresses, as people move and many have transient lifestyles.

See also the response above.

We have had a number of reports from officers and staff suggesting there have already been preventable deaths as a result of the new system. To the force’s knowledge, is this the case? Can it guarantee this will not happen?

We also received a report that a girl went missing in Bolton in late July, but her case was not actioned because of the new system and she went on to be raped.

We have no knowledge of any death in Greater Manchester as a result of the implementation of iOPS – public safety is our number one priority and I’m sure it would have come to the attention of the force leadership team if this had been the case.

The allegation of rape, which came from a third party, was investigated. This was a remark from a friend of the missing person and understandably reported in good faith. Officers spoke to the girl concerned who stated she had not been raped and the allegation was unsubstantiated.

Contrary to claims that this was not actioned, district officers in fact conducted inquiries following the report that a child had gone missing overnight. The missing child returned on her own volition the morning after her disappearance.

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What is the situation with the emergency radio buttons used by officers to request urgent back-up?

How many reports have GMP had from officers about them not working? We have had so many similar accounts of that, it is hard to believe there's no problem.

The emergency button on our radios works.

When an officer presses the button, their mic is opened and they have control of the airwaves.

They are then able to state their location and the issue. In addition, our mapping software will use GPS to identify their location.

We identified the GPS refresh rate had been set to five minutes and have now rectified this to be one minute in line with the previous system. As with all mapping software there are intermittent issues with GPS signals, depending on location signals and the locations of buildings.

This is the same as with the previous system.

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GMP has previously said iOPS has not gone over its original £27m budget. But we've been told by three separate sources that it has.

Surely overtime must be costing the force a lot at the moment, due to all the people who have had to be drafted in to enter data. Is it possible to get a figure for overtime costs relating to iOPS?

The new computer system to support operational policing has not increased beyond what was originally authorised and remains within its budget of £27m.

It is part of a much larger technology programme currently underway within GMP with a budget of £71.2m.

The force did not answer our question about overtime costs so it has been submitted as a Freedom of Information request.

Is it possible to provide figures for a) the number of arrests and b) the number of summonses issued by the force in July and August 2018, compared with the same period this year, after iOPS was introduced?

No answer was received to this question so it has been submitted as a Freedom of Information request.

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Why specifically did iOPS go live when it did?

We’re told testing and piloting showed up all these issues, including the constant crashing. We realise the old system had to be replaced, but who decided to go live on July 9, and were they not aware that this was likely to happen?

Did they know it was going live with addresses and data missing - presumably they did, since the old system was retained in a read-only format, so if that's the case, why was it launched anyway?

The launch date was set by all of the Chief Officers on the basis of a combination of risk management factors including; instability of legacy systems, readiness of the product, cost and resource management of delay, and window of operational opportunity in 2019.

Testing did not uncover all issues experienced on launch, which is normal in any large-scale IT transformation project.

All data is retained from OPUS [the old system] in a newly developed ‘legacy data store’ deployed on launch if not migrated into iOPS.

Why, in his letter to MPs and council leaders on August 13, does the Chief Constable say that the force needs to adapt its processes to the system, as opposed to the other way around? Wasn't PoliceWorks was designed by Capita for GMP, so surely that should not be the case?

PoliceWorks was not designed for GMP but was already in existence.

Several modules are live in other forces. GMP commissioned a bespoke module for problem-solving, which we helped design, but the remainder of the product as live today is a Capita design. GMP has commissioned future upgrades to modules.

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Have Capita been hit with any financial penalties as a result of this? It isn't clear whether they have been held to any kind of Key Performance Indicators

No response was received to this question but the M.E.N. has submitted a Freedom of Information request for the Capita contract.

We’re told there is a huge backlog of 101 incidents running into the thousands; that people are ringing in with crimes and they're being recorded in iOPS, but then they're getting lost/erased in the system and not finding their way through to the teams that would follow them up and investigate.

As a result, officers are telling us they're hardly being allocated anything - one said the number of crimes coming through to their shift had 'dried up to a trickle'.

As anticipated, in the cutover process, demand increased for GMP’s Operational Communications Branch.

Calls for service are returning to normal levels and backlogs of paper-based crime reports have been cleared and entered onto the system.

It is very encouraging that more people are using Single Online Home [the force website, which is linked to other police sites nationally] for dealing with queries and Livechat.

Were councils kept in the loop about the problems with the system and the implications for them, particularly around safeguarding?

If so, when? Because we did a quick straw poll of very senior people in four councils when we were researching our August 8 story and they appeared to know nothing about it.

The iOPS change programme has been running for a number of years and as such, there has been communication and engagement with numerous partners at various stages, including councils. [The system was commissioned in 2015, but its launch was delayed until July this year.]

The iOPS launch plan had a stakeholder communications strategy which included local engagement with senior partners in relation to the business impact of iOPS launch and hypercare [an initial period during which Capita provide extra support] .

Engagement with local authority partners was a specifically allocated task, supplemented by a standardised communications pack, with progress tracked through regular central governance arrangements.

Briefings have been tailored and delivered on a local district basis in recognition of the ten local authority areas across GM and the local relationships.

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This also provided the opportunity for feedback whilst the work has developed.

There have been central briefings at meetings with GMCA and additional correspondence sent directly to senior partners.

ACC [Chris] Sykes wrote to all Community Safety Partnership leads following the launch of iOPS on Tuesday 9 July 2019 and more recently the Chief Constable wrote to all Greater Manchester Members of Parliament, Chief Executives and Lead Council Members [on August 13] .

Finally, how long is the force going to continue with this system if things don't improve? What are the other options?

As a system iOPS is stable.

There are a number of significant improvements scheduled through the hyper-care period and beyond to fix defects and evolve the system.

GMP is prioritising key areas including Criminal Justice and working very closely with partners including the Crown Prosecution Service.

GMP has effective contingency plans for a critical software outage.