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AFP seeks partner to overhaul aging tracking software

Some systems still reliant on 3G telecommunications network.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has issued an approach to market seeking partners to overhaul its legacy people tracking systems.  

According to a new tender, the AFP currently uses multiple tracking applications, both developed in-house and commercial software, some of which are reaching end-of-life. 

Indeed, the tender noted that some of the systems are reliant on communicating via a “diminishing” 3G telecommunications network.  

In addition, the AFP claimed that “multiple systems” remain unconnected to its common visualisation interface, which hampers its efforts to share tracking information with investigators.  

“The AFP’s technical support staff are also unable to provide enterprise-level support to tracking systems that are hosted on standalone servers and laptops,” the tender added. 

As such, the AFP is seeking a partner to consolidate its IT tracking systems into a single management solution for devices, which will encompass both its suspect or target tracking, known as the Red Force Tracking, and its personnel and partner agency tracking system, Blue Force Tracking.  

The AFP said it will consider solutions deployed as on-premises or software-as-a-service (SaaS), which the latter cloud provider hosted and backed up in Australia. 

In addition, the solution needs to support the replacement of existing 3G devices with LTE and 5G capable devices, the tender said, while providing a geospatial viewing display on desktop and mobile of tracking data from both tracking devices and other sources of location data in real-time. 

On top of this, the chosen partner must provide a platform that allows authorised users, including investigators, surveillance teams and technical administrators to view and manage historical data for evidentiary purposes. 

Another required platform will be consolidated command and control functionality across multiple tracking devices including dedicated tracking devices, tracking components of other devices, covering internet of things (IoT) devices such as audio devices and cameras.  

Finally, the partner should provide a common ingestion pipeline for tracking data integrated into the AFP’s future Next Generation Law Enforcement Monitoring Facility (NG-LEMF) to facilitate viewing tracking data from the devices on a consolidated platform regardless of device type. 

The deadline to respond to the tender stand on 25 August with the solution intended for implementation and in-service by no later than 30 June 2022.

This latest tender follows the AFP's search for partners to implement managed hybrid cloud services last year. In 2019, the AFP engaged in a proof of concept to implement Office 365 in the Microsoft Protected environment.