National Police Procurement Hub to go live

The National Police Procurement Hub is to go live tomorrow, 12 August, with Lincolnshire Police being the first to use the service. The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which has developed the hub along with electronic procurement specialist ProcServe, said it will enable police forces to select, purchase and pay for a range of approved goods and services online from 500 suppliers. This will include IT, along with other categories such as vehicles and body armour. It said that all forces are expected to be using the hub by June 2012, and that it will provide a number of benefits, including saving forces time on their own procurement process, providing them with easy access to best value contracts, and enabling SMEs to work more efficiently with the police. It also predicted that it will save the police service £30m over six years. Sue Moffatt, head of commercial and procurement at the NPIA, said: "The police service is committed to deliver significant savings from better procurement. It is absolutely vital that those charged with buying goods and services have access direct from their desktop to the tools that make them available quickly, and directly to their desktop, and now Lincolnshire does. "The hub complements existing procurement processes across the police service so forces do not need to invest in replacing current systems. It enhances existing processes and provides a simple online shopping system to access best value products and services." The National Police Procurement Hub project forms part of the Information Systems Improvement Strategy (ISIS), a reform programme for the police service that is using IT to improve efficiency. This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates of news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here .