Police Scotland has begun the roll out of its upgraded network infrastructure under the National Network Project, otherwise known as NatNet2.
It has announced that connections have been installed at 20 pilot sites across the country with the full roll out to run until March of next year.
The implementation is taking place under a £3.9 million deal with BT under which it becomes a single provider in place of a legacy of network services.
The project is part of Police Scotland’s Digital, Data and ICT Strategy, which also includes an emphasis on mobile working, a standard working platform and a new core operational solution.
Police Scotland said NatNet2 should improve network performance.
“Delivering new network services for Police Scotland will have a big impact on the working lives of our officers, and improvements to the network effectively underpin our programme of technology enabled transformation,” said Martin Low, interim director of ICT for the organisation.
“NatNet2 will ease some of the frustrations colleagues feel about how our systems perform on a day-to-day basis.”
Struggle to upload
Officers involved in the pilot had previously reported struggling to upload files of any size, but NatNet2 should make it possible to access files of up to 40Mb, such as video interviews, within seconds.
Police Scotland says it is also making video conferencing available to many areas and improving the log-in speeds for access to legacy systems.
Under other elements of its strategy, the force has recently signed deals with Frequentis for increased integration of its ICT systems EE for mobile services.
Image by Dave Conner (amended), CC BY 2.0 through flickr
