The continued unavailability of the District Policing Partnership websites is perhaps another example of the difficulties that public sector IT projects can face.
- Back in August 2009 the old sites were already frozen and couldn’t be updated by local DPP managers.
- By September the local DPP sites had been taken offline and replaced with a simple holding page.
- By November, the holding page was finally updated to include contact details for the 26 local DPPs.
As mentioned previously ...
The problem arose when they switched from hosting externally to move their servers into an internal civil service data centre at the end of August. For many months, local DPP managers were unable to update pages and documents on the old website which was frozen awaiting the relaunch.
The new hosting environment has much stricter security requirements and website testing procedures which so far seem to have frustrated the Policing Board’s relaunch of the local DPP websites.
So for seven or eight months, the NI Policing Board has failed to provide DPPs with a functioning online presence. In the meantime, some councils – like Lisburn – have hosted information and minutes about their local DPP information on the council websites. Though in Lisburn’s case, the main council DPP page still links out to the long-defunct official DPP website, and doesn’t inform readers that the council’s minutes and reports section holds an archive of the Lisburn DPP minutes (Though the DPP minutes haven’t been updated since November 2009.)
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