'The functions and resources focused on the Met’s strategic business needs will remain within the Met and the functions and resources associated with solution development, deployment and service delivery will be outsourced.'

Yesterday, Computer Weekly broke the news that the Metropolitan Police plans to outsource 700 roles related to software development and IT services. This information came out over the course of two February issues of the Digital Policing Newsletter, s regular internal email newsletter sent by the Met to its employees.

It's expected that, of the 500 full time IT employees and 300 IT contractors working at the Met, just 100 will remain in-house after changes are complete. The Met announced that it plans to retain those in leadership and strategic positions, with the hope that their IT operation will evolve into an efficient, seamless outsourced operation headed by in-house employees.

Computer Weekly reported that the Met Police must save £800m from its annual budget (£3.2bn for 2015-16) by 2020.

The Met is no stranger to outsourcing. A year ago they moved away from their ITO relationship with Capgemini in favour of a 'tower model', where non-core services are broken up and outsourced to a number of third part specialists. The tower model has since been widely cricitised by the UK government.

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