Capita plc has secured a two-year contract renewal worth £740,000 to deliver managed wide area network (WAN) services to Northumbria Police.
The WAN services enable the force to take emergency calls and mobilise resources to manage incidents, supporting communities within their service areas.
Northumbria Police serves a population of 1.5 million people, covering an area of more than 2,000 square miles in the North East of England. Capita’s network connects 41 sites across the force, supporting services such as working with communities to prevent crime and disorder, and protecting the most vulnerable people.
The contract extension includes the delivery of a ‘pilot’ software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), a software-centric network, enabling greater visibility and control across four of the forces’ active sites. This pilot will enable the force to adapt to changing circumstances, for example, by directing more bandwidth to key sites to support incident management or in parallel with increased contact centre traffic – ultimately improving overall network management.
Under SD-WAN management, applications such as Office 365 are fully visible and can be managed to ensure maximum performance and availability. SD-WAN also manages the network in real-time and can forecast problems and failures before they occur. This monitoring allows proactive responses by minimising network failures for the force.
Together, Capita’s WAN and SD-WAN networks will provide a resilient platform to ensure operations across the force are running consistently and effectively. The networks are built to the government’s public sector network (PSN) compliance standards, enabling the force to work better with its local authorities.
Capita has been delivering network solutions to Northumbria Police to support mission-critical communications since 2016.
Mark Cook, Executive Officer of Capita Technology Solutions, said: “This renewal was secured on the strength of our longstanding relationship with Northumbria Police and our innovative network design to support digital transformation journeys. It was also based on our ability to ensure that our technology continuously supports mission-critical services now and in the future.”
