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Mission Critical Government Public Safety BAPCO
Most read, Policy


BAPCO 2023 ESN UPDATE: INTERESTING TIMES

Emergency Services Network programme director John Black outlines programme
strategy following Motorola Solutions’ decision to exit the project
Published Apr 12, 2023
Crit Comms Network and Philip Mason
2 contributors

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As always, one of the most well-attended conference sessions at this year’s
BAPCO Coventry was the annual Emergency Services Network update. This was
delivered, as in previous years, by programme director John Black.

For those who don’t know, the context for the presentation in question was
somewhat unusual, taking place as it did after key contractor Motorola
Solutions’ recent decision to end its involvement with ESN early. The company
was responsible for Lot 2, in other words the provision of ‘user services’ such
as the device interface, and systems/service integration.

Motorola left the programme – according to a statement issued by the National
Audit Office in March – to “remove the risk that the CMA would force it to sell
Airwave.” You can read more about Motorola’s recent issues with the Competition
& Markets Authority here.

As ever in Coventry, Black found himself in front of an audience which at this
point it would be fair to say was typified by a curious mixture of mild
exhaustion and inexhaustible optimism.

The exhaustion comes from the years of difficulties encountered by the programme
in question up until this point. The optimism meanwhile relates to the sector’s
ongoing faith in the broadband technology itself, as well as the way in which
ESMCP has evolved over the years to increasingly take account of the user point
of view.

This evolution is probably best symbolised by Black himself, who began his
presentation by making a point of stating that he was not only looking forward
to “getting this project done,” but also “being a lot more open about what’s
going on.”

Discussing the situation following Motorola’s withdrawal from the project, he
continued: “Lot 2 sits at the core of the system and holds it all together,
[consisting of] specific technical components.

“[Having said that] we're making really good progress through the work required
to build ESN and the loss of the Lot 2 supplier certainly doesn't invalidate all
that work.”

Regarding the latter statement, Black mentioned the coverage piece (as delivered
by EE), which continues apace, as well as the broader “ecosystem” consisting of
the air-to-ground network, control room integration and so on. “A lot of those
contracts,” he said, “continue to make very good progress.”

He continued on the same theme stating that a full programme reset would not be
necessary following recent events with Motorola, and that the key thing at this
point is simply to “keep the momentum going.”

While this is clearly necessary however, there still remains the thorny question
of who now is going to provide the crucial Lot 2 services. This is something
Black said that we wouldn’t know until sometime in 2024, with the re-procurement
process taking place over the course of this year. 

What he was able to clarify however was that the structure of the programme
would remain the same moving forward, with various options for change having
been looked at and rejected. There will be no stopping or pausing of the
programme for instance; no prime contractor or alternative lot structure.

Rather: “The last option we looked at was a one for one replacement. We're
losing a user services supplier, [so] we’ll put in a new supplier, sitting
alongside those existing six-year-old contracts. 

“We looked at [this question] very carefully through a financial lens, delivery
lens and a strategy lens. We need to get the plan to get this job done as fast
as we reasonably can, of course balancing officer safety.”

He continued: “We're not going to take shortcuts or become data driven. But
equally, we also don't favour options that put in several more years delay and
incur more time than is absolutely necessary to get the job done. 

“We knew that the structure we had in place actually works and that the
architecture is feasible. And we’re confident that whatever reason we terminated
the relationship with Motorola, it wasn't because [the technology] didn't
work.” 

He finished this portion of his presentation with an analogy, stating that ESN
is like a 60-piece (/contract) jigsaw puzzle. Just because one of the major
pieces has gone, he said, that doesn’t mean they’re going to “throw the whole
jigsaw back in the box.”

The procurement process for a new Lot 2 vendor began last October when the
programme issued a prior information notice, once Motorola’s decision about its
ESN future became apparent. 

Going into more detail about the Lot 2 procurement going forward, he said that
the programme had a list of organisations it would like to “come to the table,
and they’re all pretty much there.” One other thing of potential interest
meanwhile was his belief that “there isn’t one single organisation which can do
this by themselves.”

The programme, therefore, is relying on the market forming into what he called
consortiums. This is “in order to create that competition that we want to get
the best solution.”

Interesting times.

You can share your thoughts on the ESN updates in our ongoing discussion thread
here. 

+1
Multiple Contributors
Crit Comms Network and Philip Mason
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CRIT COMMS NETWORK

Content Team, CC Network

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PHILIP MASON

Managing Editor, Critical Communications Portfolio, Mark Allen Exhibitions

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Aaron Donnelly
9 months ago

As per when I was the performance and security test assurance authority on this
programme, an issue still remains in the form of no clear end to end ownership
of the overall technical solution.

Lack of centrally driven (architected) design processes facilitate suppliers to
narrow focus on their elements only, rather than taking a wider view of an
end-to-end solution and its interactions with other suppliers’ elements.  This
results in the assurance function outputs being ignored / overridden and
collaborative working between suppliers accepted by middle management as too
difficult to achieve right now.  So, a stalemate situation arises leaving
technical misalignment and gaps.  Leadership is then blind to the truth,
assurance functions are deemed to be providing no little to no value and
suppliers get away with raising a continuous stream of contract variations, in
an attempt to align the technical direction, but still in partial isolation and
favourable to them, rather than the wider programme.

An example / food for thought, who owns the security of digital forensic data? 
For example, photographs stored on the SD card of an end user device.

The solution is as @Peter Clemons has said many times before, you need at least
a central technical authority to provide architectural design governance /
oversight.  Diversifying the supply chain to avoid a monopoly makes sense, until
you try to hold them to account on elements that overlap.  Now whether you issue
the entire delivery to a single supplier / consortium or enhance the home office
central technical governance is a question I would love to begin a debate on. 
Personally, I would prefer the later as it was almost there before.

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BAPCO 2023 ESN UPDATE: INTERESTING TIMES

Emergency Services Network programme director John Black outlines programme
strategy following Motorola Solutions’ decision to exit the project

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