14 DAY TRIAL // A 144-page report, made by the Metropolitan Police after the riots that took place in August 2011, reveals that the software that's about to be used by the law enforcement agency to coordinate communications during the upcoming 2012 London Olympics dates from the 1980s.
The paper obtained by The Guardian also shows that because of its old age, the application, called MetOps, cannot be connected to the software used in the MPS Central Communications Centre (CCC).
This means that the CCC cannot communicate properly with the Special Operations Room (SOR), which uses the outdated software.
Because it’s not designed to handle dynamic incident management, there could be great limitations.
“This limitation means that Gold and Silver commanders have no simple way to view the latest situation in an evolving incident. Situation reports are created manually within the system but the software,” the report reads.
During the August 2011 events, this translated into things such as the inability to determine which sector had the highest work load, the inability to monitor specific incidents, and the lack of proper communications with commanders on the ground.
“These significant limitations coupled with the sheer scale of task around the flow of information, communication and co-ordination of resources posed an immense challenge for those within SOR,” the report continues.
Until a new system is set in place, officials are considering some temporary solutions, which include the use of a geographic information system (GIS) designed to assist the coordination of resources.
Hopefully, the manifestations at the Olympics won’t be as critical as during the riots, but the fact that a piece of software from the 1980s is used is somewhat surprising.
It’s well known that government institutions and agencies often rely on outdated software and hardware equipment for a long time, but 30 years is simply too much.