FOI Software Costs (172-2024/25)

Request

1.How many investigation departments are there within your police force (e.g. criminal, narcotics, traffic, cybercrime, etc)?

2. Is your third-party investigative software procured by a centralised IT team or by each investigation department?
3. What was your police forces overall spend on third-party investigative software last year? £…k
4. In percentage terms, approximately how much of this annual spend was:
a. One-off costs (e.g. installation): …%
b. Recurring software fees: …%
5. In percentage terms, approximately how has your overall spend, on an annual basis, changed over the past 3 years?
a. Why (e.g. increase in number of users within existing departments, increase in departments, adopting new software, price increases, etc.)?
6. Please populate the below table, specifying your police force’s third-party investigative software spend by category and listing your current software provider(s).
Note that the total annual spend across the below categories should approximately sum to the overall annual spend on third-party investigative software, as per Q3.

Response

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information. 

Decision

I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

North Yorkshire have a number of departments and teams which use investigation systems and software of some sort. For example: Operational Support, District teams, Professional Standards, CID, Collisions, PVP, Major Crime. There are also mandated national systems such as PNC, which are funded by different departments. We do not hold this in one centralised location or team and therefore this data is not easily retrievable. In order to retrieve the requested information it would be necessary to manually review each department for associated costs which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. 

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). However, due to the information provided above I am unable to suggest how you may refine your request and still receive the information within the cost threshold.  If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.